I started losing weight, and everyone kept telling me about how good I looked.

I soon felt that I had to stay thin or lose weight to make everyone happy. Very quickly food, weight, numbers and exercise became an obsession.

For the first time in my life I began weighing myself. I was weighing myself many times a day: when I woke up, after I ate anything, after I went to the bathroom, after I exercised and then before I went to bed.

All day the only thing I thought about was my pant size, weight, how I would get through dinner without eating more than a few bites, how I could skip a meal and what the scale would say to me when I got on it next.

I was very scared. It all happened so suddenly I didn’t know what was going on with me. I was miserable, yet acted like life was perfect. I really don’t remember the first time I threw up, but then I was throwing up 8-10 times a day.

Finally I knew I had a serious problem because I couldn’t stop. Telling my mom was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I felt like I was a failure, that I had let my parents down and was a horrible daughter and older sister, being the oldest of four children.

There was a lot of crying, confusion, frustration and fear that day, but after we talked about it, my family was there to support me.

I tried counseling at first and it helped a lot, but I wasn’t quite ready to give up my eating disorder enough to do the things that the counselor taught me.

By the time I was a senior in high school, I thought I was beyond hope. I had been pretty open with my parents about how I was doing up until then, always hiding it at first and then telling them. I started blacking out from lack of food and from dehydration. I had no energy.

My Young Women leader knew I was struggling really badly, and one day she got me to tell her everything.

She researched hospitals where I could go to get the best help and told my parents about them. Within two weeks I was checked into a hospital for patients with eating disorders.

The night before I left, my 10-year-old little sister climbed onto my bed and said, “I love you, please don’t kill yourself by not eating.” Right then I knew I needed to go to the hospital and learn how to get better for good. That was the start to a full recovery—I made the choice to get better.

I spent one month at the hospital, where I had serious counseling and learned many tools to help me overcome my eating disorder. The first and most important tool was to always be honest when I first started to struggle so I could get help immediately. They told me to not try to stop by myself.

I also learned to never ever weigh myself again because I could slip back into my eating disorder. If I have to weigh myself now at the doctor’s I get on backwards and tell the nurse to not let me know what it is.

Now it has been three years since I went to the hospital. I can say I have recovered, but a day doesn’t go by where I can let my coping skills slide.

In the end, I am grateful for all that I have learned and experienced from this trial because it has made me who I am, and now I love who I am.