I was fat as a kid. Not severely I don't think, maybe "chubby" is enough to cover it, but I still felt fat and that's what's important. I felt weird and out of place because in Europe you're not supposed to be fat and my whole family wondered what the problem was and how it happened, but I soon learned that in America you're not supposed to be fat either and people make fun of you for it just the same. I went on my first diet when I was 9.
Eventually I lost the baby weight (child-weight? middle-school-weight?) but I still didn't feel okay -- I was smaller but I wasn't skinny. I wasn't sinewy. The nurse still had problems finding veins when I got my blood drawn. I dated boys in high school who were Jack Skellington-esque and I felt like a whale next to them, underneath them, and would flatten myself against them when they hugged me and try to take up less space. There was a girl in my Spanish lecture who wore the same pants as me one day and looked better in them and I hated her for it, hated myself for my hips and my genetics and hated my mom for feeding me meat when I was a baby, I was sure that was part of the problem. Above all, though, I hated myself for having no self-control.