The other day I got a package I wasn't expecting.

All right, a journal from Virgy Tovar, the body positive journal. Fergi broke my world wide open when she wrote this book a few years ago called,

You Have the Right to Remain Fat.

She's known as one of the leading scholars on the intersection of fat

phobia and racism. This really couldn't have come at a better time. I love

journals. My Uncle Benny got me my first one when I was nine. It was cute and

pink with a little white blonde girl on the front wearing a prairie dress. It even had a

lock and key. Getting Virgy's journal felt like such a coincidence

because a few days earlier, I thought it would be cool to go back and read some of what

I wrote in those old diaries.

Maybe there'd be some powerful messages to my future self.

May 17th, 2004.

Breakfast, coffee, one egg scrambled with spinach, one slice of turkey bacon.

What?

Two decades of journals, many filled with food, logs and self-loathing.

I was horrified.

August 16, 1995.

I want to be happy, truly happy.

I think what's been holding me back

is that I really believe that if I were smaller,

if I were slimmer, my life would be so much better.

Oprah and several other experts have said otherwise,

...