"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."

"A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment." - Jane Austen

For our 11th grade summer reading, two of the books we were assigned to read were Beowulf and Pride & Prejudice.

Well my classmates were not shy in voicing their opinions, or those they had heard through the grapevine. Consensus was, Beowulf was great and P&P was bo-riiiing.

Poor Jane Austen, how was I to know that my classmates were bereft of any good sense or taste?

All things considered, I had to prepare myself for anything. Since I was going on a month long trip with my parents, I threw in my Stony Brook School provided paperbacks along with the saving grace of any lazy high-schooler: Cliffnotes. I wasn't going to waste my time reading P&P if I didn't like it after the first 50 pages!

I know, I know, my dedication to my studies must just revolutionize your world.

Well after lugging my books and bathing suits on the 12 hour flight to Greece, I was ready to hunker down and make my way down the summer reading check-list, one excruciating page at a time.

Do you think that I read P&P first, you know, to get the pain over with?? NOPE! I decided to leave it for last, avoiding Austen at all costs. Finally, when I had no where else to go, and no other book to read, I settled into my beach chair, careful not to get any suntan lotion on my beloved Cliffnotes and began:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

Ok, I can dig that, whatever, this book was written in the late 1700s, published in 1813. This book is famous for its first sentence, but that isn't where Jane hooked me.

"However, little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters."

This woman is hilarious. Any rich and single man was considered "rightful property to some one or other of their daughters"? Hold on, there were gold diggers even in the 1800s????? That is priceless.

This is probably around the time that I decided Jane Austen was to be my best friend.

Needless to say, it took me one afternoon to read the whole thing, including Cliffnotes (just in case I missed anything).

Ever since then, I have been unable to quell my infatuation with anything Austen. From Pride & Prejudice to Persuasion I have left no Austen page unturned. I took a Jane Austen class in college, I've seen almost every movie adaptation and if I see any fiction novel that has "Jane" or "Austen" in the title, chances are I have read it or plan on reading it.

Some may say this is unhealthy, but really? I don't drink coffee, I don't smoke cigarettes....should I really be ashamed of this vice? Perhaps you could even call it a virtue.......