Did you know that three million American women in their lifetime would experience some form of an eating disorder? You think that statistic is startling. According to figures, nearly one in fifteen adolescent teenagers will battle an eating disorder. An even more frightening fact is that about fifteen percent of those who struggle with an eating disorder eventually die as a result.

When will America realize that eating disorders are not going away, but are affecting children younger and younger? Girls as young as six years of age are beginning to look at themselves with a negative view, and this is due in large part to the world around them. Kids are barraged with unrealistic images of how a woman is "supposed" to look. We have all seen them...and not necessarily on TV, (although this is usually where it starts). Scantily clad, rail thin women are plastered all over nearly every magazine, on internet ads, and billboards driving down a city street. When will people begin to understand that your words alone are not enough to reassure your daughters, wives, sisters, friends and mothers that their bodies are just fine?

Unfortunately, my family's history with eating disorders stretches far into the past. My mother was adopted by a successful couple who lived in a beautiful area of Keizer, Oregon, which is a suburb of its state capital. She was spoiled rotten, as was her brother who was also adopted in his infancy. The two grew up in a lovely home, in a quaint little neighborhood, and with plenty of equally spoiled friends. My mother enjoyed attending the best private school in the city of Salem, and she was very content as a child. It was when she reached puberty that her life turned upside-down.

When my mother was a young teenager, she discovered that she didn't share the same physical attributes as the girls around her. She was short in stature, robustly framed, with a very small waist-hip ratio, which made her appear to be thicker in the middle than she actually was. My mother was teased for being the "chunky girl," especially in PE when the gym teachers made everyone step on a scale in front of the entire class to be weighed. The embarrassment she endured for being short and thick is what spurred her low self-esteem, and began a life-long battle with self-image.

My mother tells me stories of how she just loved speed as a teenager, because it amplified her focus, made her full of energy, but best of all, it suppressed her appetite. She admitted that she became addicted to it, and the experimentation of this narcotic opened the doors for her to delve into other drugs. Succumbing to this lifestyle, and having a negative idea of how to achieve the right kind of attention from boys, she quickly found herself a high-school dropout, addicted to drugs, and with no self-confidence.

She gave birth to a brood of girls with similar bodies and similar minds. My first memory of hearing the word "fat" was actually not from my mother, but from my older sister, who we'd nicknamed "skinny minnie" because she was so thin. I think I was in first or second grade at the time. At that moment, I thought nothing of it, because I was too young to care, but I can also remember people joking about how "round" my younger sister was and that she was the "chunky" one. Nearly every single one of my sisters is now overweight, with severe body image issues. My oldest sister used to starve herself and over exercise. The second oldest struggles with over eating. My younger sister has experienced bulimia, anorexia, drug abuse, and over eating all before her fifteenth birthday.

I haven't escaped this misfortune either. I, like my mother, am short and have no real discernible hourglass shape. I had the body of a twelve-year-old boy for most of my teenage years, but this never bothered me. I was aware of eating disorders and the affect on my family, but I ignored much of the negativity. All the way up until I became pregnant at sixteen I hardly acknowledged the whole weight issue, because I felt that it was more stress than I wanted to give attention to.

I have to admit, though, that being weighed at every doctor's appointment while pregnant with my daughter screwed with my mind. Every time I saw the scale jump up closer to the 150 marker, I would berate myself for losing control. I wish I had looked at this differently, because this set off the low self-esteem I had tried fervently to avoid.

It wasn't all me, though. Little, "innocent" comments from my grandmother like: "You're getting a little belly" or "Should you be eating that?" made me look at food like an enemy instead of nourishment. Having friends approach me while I walked around the mall with my toddler-age daughter and ask excitedly, "When are you due?" was even more of a confidence killer.

My younger sister was using methamphetamines around the same time I gave birth, and seeing her unnaturally bony form walk through the door when I was still recovering from having a baby gave me an immediate complex. I was jealous of how thin she looked, and that she'd gone from the "chubby one" to being thinner than me. This was immature, of course, but girls on meth would continue to have this effect on me. When my cousin ended up using meth as well, and abandoned our close friendship, the loneliness and sadness I felt only exacerbated my problems.

When my boyfriend moved in with me right after my twenty-first birthday, I was on the rebound of a long bout with anorexia and self-mutilation. I was finally feeling good about myself. I felt comfortable in my own skin, probably for the first time in my life. I was thrilled to have him there despite his history with meth, because we had been friends back before I got pregnant with my daughter. He quickly picked up the habit again not long after being settled into my apartment and the lifestyle was thrust into my face yet again. I encountered beautiful young women who were taller, much thinner, and ridiculously over-confident. In the back of my mind I knew that they were deluded by the drug, and that meth is a confidence boost; no matter how trashy or disgusting you actually appear, it makes you feel like the sexiest thing in the world. When Jason dragged these types around me I felt fat, dowdy and paranoid. Since I refused to partake in the drug, I starved myself to achieve the same svelte form and endured many nights of sleeplessness. I cringe thinking back to this period in my life. What kind of example was I setting for my dear daughter, who was watching me become such a neurotic basket case? Fortunately, he went to jail and was able to sober up, and I was able to put everything back into perspective.

After my boyfriend got out of jail, I decided that staying by his side through his recovery was important. We both used the time as a way to heal from the horrible five months we'd just experienced. This honeymoon period did not last long, because just a few months after getting a great new job, I found out I was pregnant again. My body was still trying to recover after months of torturous starvation and sleep deprivation, so I gained far more weight than I ever anticipated. I started the pregnancy at a relatively normal size, and ended at close to 180 pounds.

After giving birth to my beautiful son, I kept eating like a pregnant woman, because I was breastfeeding (not to mention I was still healing.) Jason acted like a complete jerk, stone sober for months from a drug he'd used off and on for the better part of a decade, lonely for his old friends, and exhausted by the new position of parenthood and responsible working father. He made comments constantly about my size, occasionally calling me fat in our more vicious fights. When I couldn't fit into my pre-pregnancy clothes, I seriously wanted to get back into the starvation mind-set.

Instead of succumbing to anorexia again, I was determined to lose weight the right way. The methods that my mom and sisters continually decided to ignore in their pursuits to lose weight. I decided in February of this year, when my scale said I was at a high of 169 not pregnant that this would not be about being "skinny," that it would be about being healthy.

I started slowly with everything. Slow with exercise, slow with dieting. I started reading positive books. Began writing in a journal again to express my feelings. I forced Jason and I to stop buying processed foods and more fresh fruits and vegetables. It seemed like nothing was happening much of the time, but I kept at it. One day, when my size 14s were practically falling off of me, I tried on my treasured size 6 jeans that I had bought in December of 2006 and hadn't had the opportunity of wearing more than once. They fit. And it wasn't using unhealthy weight loss methods. I felt victorious.

It took me a long time to have the right idea of what beauty and healthy means. I still struggle with it to this day. My boyfriend, I admit, is the typical male, who audibly admires a pretty girl, and when he sees a nice body, I have to hear about how great she looks. When I look in the mirror I see a thinner body, but I still critique it to what it could be. But I catch myself much quicker nowadays.

Good and bad thinking are contagious. No matter how we feel about ourselves, when we meet people or visit loved ones, we affect their thinking, whether in a good or bad way.

"Eating disorders afflict millions of people, thousands of which will die from them yearly. There is good news though, eating disorders can be beaten. You do not have to be a prisoner to this anymore. You have the power within yourself to beat this and you will. Recovery takes a lot of time and hard work, but in the end it is all worth it. You will finally be free and you will love yourself."