From the ripe age of eight, I have always viewed my body as something to talk down to. It never looked the way I wanted it to, and never looked like it was supposed to in my mind. I then struggled for years with my body and how it should look.

I spent many of my formative years wondering why my body was not tiny. I always wondered why it never could fit into a size two, and why when I ran my body would jiggle. I would avoid mirrors, trying on new clothes and eating too much in front of my peers.

As I grew older, I was told I would grow into my "baby weight" and just eat less. I never had health problems with my weight, and I was a very active child. I never outgrew that weight.

I would dread having to get a new outfit for anything because I would have to hide my tears after leaving the dressing room because I hated the way things would hug my hips, enhance my broad shoulders, and amplify the extra weight around my body.

I even lost weight one summer. I developed a problem with food that was not healthy and hindered me in many ways. I would get so upset with what I ate that I just would not. If I did eat, I would count every single calorie to make sure that what was going in my body could be worked off with exercising. I was "healthy", I was "skinny", I was "beautiful".

I cried while eating a fried chicken bowl that summer and I realized that while my body was smaller, my mind and my eating habits were not healthy. I got ahead of what could have been a very scary thing. It still took me a few months to be okay with eating and eating "unhealthy things". It still took me a few months to get out of my head and even now I still sometimes get into that headspace with food.

Coming to college I knew I was going to gain weight. After my first year, my hypothesis was true. I gained that freshman fifteen plus a few more. It was difficult because I was starting to feel that hatred towards my body again. That resentful feeling of not being able to fit into jeans, that painful feeling of dresses just not looking right.

Between all these obstacles with my body, I did learn to like a few things. I learned to love my thighs. I learned to love my eyes and the way my hair looks. I learned to love my ears and while these may be small weird things to like, it took me a long time to favor these.

I learned that a lot of women do not like how they look. A lot of the people I have met this year have their own struggle story with their bodies. They all have problems with how certain things look on their bodies and I have even met a few guys who struggle with this too.

We are all our own worse critics, this factor hinders us tremendously at times. There is no perfect idea of a body and there never will be. People have different relationships with their bodies and how they view them.

You need to be able to have a healthy mind to be able to love your body in a healthy way.