The first time I told myself that I was fat, I was six years old.

It was in the first grade, the same year that I learned that best friends don’t always last forever and that there were scary people in the world who could fly planes into buildings. At the start of the school year, my class was told we were going to be doing a little project. Every day, a classmate was chosen to stand in front of the class and give a presentation, answering a list of questions from the teacher so that we could get to know each other a little better.

The day before my own nervewracking presentation, a tiny speck of a girl stood in front of the class, knees shaking and eyes glued to the floor, as the teacher patiently walked her through the questions. Among all the obvious questions – “What’s your favorite color?” “What do you want to be when you grow up?” – was this one:

“How much do you weigh?” 

My classmate whispered, in a shaky voice that was barely audible, “I weigh forty-five pounds.”

And the presentation went on. But I was struck, and I was ashamed.

When I brought home the presentation prompt to my parents a couple weeks prior, my mom read through it and, upon reaching the weight question, went out and bought a scale for me to check. “We need one anyways,” she quipped. “I feel like I’ve gained some weight this year.”

And apparently, she had – the scale confirmed it. She was no longer the same weight that she was before having my baby brother, and the commotion that came with this realization quietly shook our house. I watched her watching the weight loss infomercials that blared on our boxy ‘90’s TV set with rapt interest. I quietly mimicked it when she started cutting back on the fried pork and bistek that made up the backbone of our Filipino diet at the dinner table. I walked into her room to catch her standing in front of the mirror, poking her stomach and standing sideways as if to gauge its size. I saw my dad shrug his shoulders noncommittally, agreeing in his silent compliance as my mom asked if she was getting fat. I watched her picking up the bottle of diet pills at our local Walmart, turning it over in her hand and reading its label that promised sunshine and bikini bodies. I saw a woman who I thought was the most beautiful woman in the world telling herself, day in and day out, that she was not.

When the girl standing at the whiteboard told the class her weight, I realized that my own weight was a full five pounds heavier than hers. I was fat.

And when I gave my presentation the next day – my first clash with the horrors of public speaking, no less – I lied and said I was forty-five pounds as well.

I flash back to this moment more times than I care to admit – it’s embarrassing to say that something so small, and so seemingly insignificant, could hold that much weight in the formation of my budding self-worth. But after that project, I thought about my weight so much that it became intricately tied to who I was as a person. At seven years old, I decided I wasn’t going to eat cake anymore, turning my nose up at the confection that I was dying to have and reaching for a piece of unsatisfying fruit instead. At twelve, I picked up my first gaudy teen magazine and eagerly devoured the recipes and the exercises that swore that, if I followed their advice, I would reach my dream summer body in two months.

It didn’t matter that I was growing up, childish plumpness giving way to awkward teenage gangliness and long limbs. Every time I looked at myself in the mirror, all I could see was that my stomach wasn’t flat, that my legs were solid tree trunks and not willowy stems. When I saw someone who I thought I was pretty, I analyzed the photo, staring at it and guessing at what they scale looked like when they stepped on it. As the internet and social media in its early phases started to grow, I would Google it, anonymously send pretty girls questions on their Tumblrs.  Every time I spoke with my girlfriends about our weight – which was a lot – nobody was happy, not even the smallest and thinnest of us. We all wanted to lose, lose, lose.  We wasted our youths trying to waste away. And for what?

I’d like to say that I have grown past this. Recent years have seen a much-needed revolution that suggests that uncompromisingly loving your own body cool – what a concept! I pursued a degree in nutrition, learned how to cook and eat well and teach others to do the same.

And yet, I am still obsessed with my weight. It’s gotten better, thankfully – I eat well because I genuinely enjoy it, hit the gym because I want to be stronger, faster, more mentally clear. But I still have a hard time looking in the mirror and seeing anything other than pudginess and disappointment, no matter what the scale says.

I am realizing, though, that I am happiest when I am genuinely living a healthy lifestyle, for no other reason than to be healthy. When I focus on eating my vegetables, balancing my carbs, and fueling myself with protein, I am more productive, less likely to snap. At the gym, I set goals for myself to lift as much weight as I can, not lose it, and get to celebrate my accomplishments in a way that has nothing to do with my physical appearance.

Will that stuff follow on the scale? Sometimes. I’m learning not to let it bother me when it doesn’t.  

I have made a career out of trying to empower women and give them the validation I so desperately needed, all while encouraging healthy eating habits and lifestyle changes. I’ve helped them reach their goal weights, but I was markedly more interested in hearing how they lowered their cholesterol and were able to get off their medications for the first time in fifteen years. I celebrated when they told me that they were finally able to chase their toddlers around, cried tears of joy with them when they improved their lifestyles enough that they were confident they would be around for their grandkids’ weddings.

But it needs to go deeper than that. I am sick of women – strong, perfectly healthy women – feeling like they constantly need to hit a specific number on the scale. I hate helping women as they struggle and starve so that they can be the same weight they were in high school, while their kids silently watch and absorb from the side of the consultation. How many times have I seen someone hit their goal weight, only to decide they needed to be even smaller?

When I think back to my own childhood, I ask myself: When was the first time that someone told me that I didn’t need to change anything?

I envision a world where my future six-year-old won’t pick at herself, unraveling her strength and her joy, because the scale doesn’t say the number she thinks that it should say.

I’d like to go back in time and give six-year-old me a hug. I’d remind her that she was beautiful and strong, and she could beat everyone in her class in arm wrestling, even the boys. She could outskip anyone when jumping rope and consistently hit home runs when playing softball. I would tell her not to waste another second stressing about the scale, and to count joy and ecstatic experiences instead of calories.

I’ve only recently begun to eat cake, and I am only sad that it has taken me this long.