I see so many stories on AFF detailing "weightloss journeys" and "how to look like a K-pop idol". Years ago, I devoured those kinds of stories and the advice they gave me with a desperate fervor, hoping against hope that it would make me beautiful. But despite all their good intentions, all it did was make me sick, to the point where in July of 2015, I ended up in the hospital for two weeks, diagnosed with malnutrition caused by anorexia nervosa.

I constructed for myself an imaginary world out of words like "S-line" and "ant waist" and "chopstick legs". Tried diet after diet, read Koreaboo and Soompi articles about beautiful girls who ate three bananas a day, chewed up chicken and then spit it out, all in the name of achieving/maintaining a beauty standard that seemed forever out of reach. 

It took me years to recover, years I could have spent other ways, doing other things. And I still find myself drawn to these stories I see posted here, on this website, teenage girls posting their heights and weights and measurements just as I did, not knowing the things I know now. 

So, I want to give anyone who reads this what I know now. What I know about nutrition, about healthy dieting (because what you read in news articles, no matter how they frame it, is not sustainable or healthy. Believe me, I tried), and "how to look like a K-Pop idol" - by being yourself and being happy. 

This story will be part memory, part present diary. At the current moment, I am not "dieting" so much as trying to change my lifestyle. Not that there was anything wrong with my previous lifestyle, I just felt like something new. I want to undergo this journey to prove that you can strive to make yourself better while still being happy with who you are, to show that there is a way to look like you want without having to go through the pain and self-hatred that disordered eating creates. 

I hope that perhaps this may reach someone who was like 16 year old me - so self-critical and anxious, so desperate to be seen, who wanted to make herself so big by becoming small. This is my hand, reaching out to you, in the hope that you might take it and we can both be healthy together.