My father, his second wife (not my mom), and his best friend suggested that I lose weight. I was about 18 and normal weight and nicely curvy - not looking like a teenage boy. My step-mother looked like a teenage boy, my father's best friend's wife looked like a teenage boy, my dad adored women who looked like teenage boys - all these people did something seriously wrong by giving me the direction to lose weight. I starved myself. A few bingeing and purging episodes, too. Recovered myself without professional intervention, which was unheard of back then anyway. Now I cannot shed excess weight and my endocrinologist says that one of the reasons is the history self-starvation - my body that has gone through starvation holds on to every single calorie and it is hard to lose weight.