"Food should be a source of joy, not agony. Exercise should be about enjoyable movement, not penitence. We should respect our bodies' wisdom."

I am not going to get all preachy and tell you that you should love your body. Because I would be a hypocrite. But, you should try to focus on the positive things about yourself, and not what you perceive to be the negative. I know it's hard...Lord knows, I know...but as soon as I find myself grimacing in the mirror, I really do try to find at least one thing that I am proud of. Like maybe I feel fat, but my hair looks luscious and shiny... when I'll think to myself, "DAMN, I am HOT!" and it makes me feel great ;)

When I was in college, I was determined not to gain the freshman 15. That dreaded number that every mom, aunt and grandmother warned me about before I went off to Boston. I took to going to the gym everyday for hours, eating only Special K for breakfast and dinner, and having a salad with chicken for lunch. Yogurt and pineapples were my "binge" items. By the time I went to bed, my mouth ached because of all the pineapple I devoured during the course of the day. But that is neither here nor there. I had an unhealthy relationship with the need to get skinny and the need to burn calories.

I was at my thinnest during my sophomore year. All that exercise had paid off! I was down to my goal weight (give or take 5 lbs). I wasn't emaciated or anything like that. I was not a bobble-headed girl, who was dead to the world. But something was happening. I looked good on the outside, while I suffered on the inside; until one day, my brain and my body went on strike.

Now, I can go back and forth attributing this crash to many things, but the one thing I know for sure is that my perverse lifestyle had caught up to me, and I needed a break.

That break has lasted for almost three years. And there have been times where I have been miserable because I stop and think, "Why did I just let it go?" I naively "remember" being the happiest I ever was, when I was squeezing myself into a size 4. But I guess hindsight is 20/20.

I was happy, because I didn't have to hear comments from my well-meaning family, about losing "5 more lbs", and I was happy because I could go straight to the size 6s and 4s in any clothing store. I was proud of the body I had sculpted. All that hard work, all those hours! It was great. That wasn't the problem. The problem was that I was obsessed. It wasn't my weight that was harmful, it was my mindset.

If I didn't go to the gym at least once a day, I felt miserable. I would beat myself up all day, trying to come up with ways to make up for my "laziness". I knew exactly how my clothes were supposed to fit and if there was anything that I thought was out of place, I would rush to the gym and try to make it right again. I couldn't think of any else. It consumed my every thought.

It has taken me a while to get to a place, mentally, where I am now going to the gym on my own terms. I am not doing it for my family. I am not doing it to prove anything to anyone. I know what I am comfortable with, I know where I want to be, and I know what is healthy for me. If I miss one day at the gym, I don't beat myself up. I balance it out, in a healthy way. I no longer have that aching pit in my stomach, that mean voice in my head telling me I'm not good enough. I feel even better than I did back then, because my joy and acceptance are genuine.

Reading Hungry, it was like having an opportunity to look at who I was back then. Like I said, I wasn't emaciated. I didn't stop eating altogether. So I can not go as far as to say that I know what Crystal Renn went through. But when you have that obsessive body-dismorphic mentality... it's like you are part of a club. A club that has no parties, because you'd then have to worry about whether or not you should eat that awesome guacamole or those delicious empanadas.

The writing is a bit elementary in this book, but the story is compelling. Renn is given an opportunity to model, if she loses weight. On her quest, she enters the obsessive world of anorexia. She slowly realizes modeling is not all it's cracked up to be. She loses her motivation, her hair and herself. And then she has, what Oprah likes to call, an A-HA! moment. She's not happy and doesn't want to suffer anymore, so why not become a plus-size model? Once she makes that decision, her career skyrockets. She gets more photo shoots then she ever did as a "straight-size" model. And most importantly she's happy.

Do you remember this ad? Her story is inspiring for women who have struggled with weight and she is role-model for girls who are suffering in the "straight-size" modeling world. And to top it all off, she is doing her best to break down the barriers for plus-size models.

"It's essential to see that size is only one of the battlefronts. Those of us who want to see more plus-size women represented in fashion should also be supporting the use of more women of color and age. There's strength and solidarity in numbers. Diversity helps us all. And thin people are not the enemy...We have to change the culture by rewarding and applauding diversity in all its forms, not by vilifying individual women."

Is this your first time??

My first literary tryst was in the first grade, with a dark humored and captivating lover known to the masses as Roald Dahl. His flirtatious pages beckoned me from behind the yellow book cover with the petite and brilliant Matilda waiting to be met at the precipice of what would be my long journey into full fledged bibliophilia (actually I consider myself more of a bookworm, than a bibliophile, but that doesn't really roll off the tongue does it? "full-fledged bookworm-dom", "bookworm-ia"? Well, you get the point.)

It was my first time experiencing a kindred connection with a character who came from the inner workings of someone's mind. I read and re-read those 140 pages every year until I was 11, intrigued by the young girl intoxicated by her love for books.

In retrospect, I can say, this book was full of what we in the '90s liked to call "girl power", but that wasn't what drew me to those well-thumbed pages every year. It was that I could put myself in Matilda's shoes. I could identify with her need to gobble up every book in sight. She was this small frail girl who had no fear. And I was super jealous that she read ALL the books in her library!

Back to the point... I know I had a point in here somewhere....oh right.

Nowadays, I get made fun of for choosing chick lit as my #1 go-to genre, but it isn't the predictable storylines that get me to go to that brightly colored table at the bookstore. It's that one character or scene that I can identify with right from the first chapter and it stems from the first time I saw myself in Dahl's pages.

The saying goes, "Don't judge a book by its cover", but you also have to remember: Don't judge a reader by her book. I read the classics, I know the serious best sellers, and the hidden gems that only the true "literati" know about; but reading isn't about rattling off facts from those "impress-your-friends" books. It is about fulfillment. For some it is intellectual. For most, it is just catharsis. It is that human nature that begs us to find a healthy way to renew and revitalize ourselves.

From the moment I stepped into this world of words, I couldn't look back. Stories only go forward, there is a beginning, a middle and an end. There are never regrets, just well placed challenges and kind hearts to help you along your way.