“The size of a body was never just the size of a body. Thinness was a door that opened to a world of happy marriages, perfect children, enviable careers, meteoric ascents. It was a divine healing fantasy: all the wrongs in their lives would be righted by endless self-flagellation, and the mantra of the penitent. Calories in, calories out. Thinness was a mark of morality. It meant earning a happy, full, unblemished life. My body wasn’t just a failure, it was a barrier to a gleaming afterlife reserved for the deserving and the pious. All I had to do was leave my fat body behind.”