I feel that lots of things have contributed to my eating problem, low self esteem, anxiety,depression etc. It all started when I was a kid. I was a fussy eater and my parents were poor so food was limited in the house, we had enough but not many treats like most of my friends houses.

When i started school my weight was normal but as we were so poor I had to have free school meals and as I was sooooo fussy i very rarely liked anything on the menu so I would virtually starve all day, to come home ravenous and ram anything i could find into my mouth, which usually happened to be bread. After afew years of eating like this I began to fear hunger and would eat whenever I could regardless of wether I was hungry or not.

I began to put on extra weight when i was 7 and by the time i was 8 I was chubby.

We went on holiday around this time and went to see a 'friend' of my fathers in his caravan. My dads 'friend' asked to show me around his caravan/trailer and when we went into his room he attempted to do things he really should not have(sure you can guess)luckily I was a force to be reckoned with I wasn't having any of it and got out of the room pretty quickly.

It's only recently that i have realised how much of an effect this had on me. It left me feeling like there was something wrong with me for someone to want to do something like that to me. I felt I couldn't talk to anyone about it so had noone to tell me any different.

I was a beautiful little thing but this experience left me not wanting attention from anyone outside the home(particularily male) so perhaps I felt that my extra fat would protect me.

At the same time I learnt how much of a comfort food could be and at this time in my life I desperately needed it.

Over the years food became my best friend and my body the enemy and my education suffered immensely. I became very depressed and once tried to take my own life which amazingly noone ever found out about despite me necking 15 paracetomol. I suffered silently putting on a big front.

By the time I reached 15 I was fed up that all of my friends had had a boyfriend or two and noone was interested in me, so I began to diet. At first with success, lost around 30lbs only to put it back on again when I lost focus.

I have since been on various other diets and and my weight has yo-yo'ed, as a result I've become completely obsessed with food. Dieting has been one of the major contributors to my problem as it threw me completely out of sink with my body, made me very critical of myself and left me feeling that if I am not slim I don't deserve to be happy. After dieting for so many years I got to the point where I was putting my whole life on hold until I was slim. Even simple things like buying clothes, i didn't want to buy any until i was slim which is ridiculous! All of these ideas kept me in a binge eating rut that i am still struggling to get out of now.