Wallace Lee's Story

Thank you Jessica for the inspirational story.
My story begins even before I was born. My parents grew up during the Korean War and with all wars there's always a food shortage. They grew up with the mentality that food was the most valuable commodity in a person's life. They applied this theory to their children. My mother would always prepare a meal by cooking huge portions of food. We not only had to finish our first servings but also our second, otherwise she would be offended. I suppose food represented a kind of normalcy she never had as a child.



I gained a lot of weight as I grew older. And it never really bothered me because I was too wrapped up with other interests, until my trip to Korea. My aunts and cousins would comment on my porkiness and soon my mother began to nag aggressively. While she heaped a huge pile of food on my plate, she would complain about my weight. It's a little hard to lose weight when I'm required to finish off the second servings. She's just a great big ball of contradictions.



My brother was a chubby kid. My sister developed an eating disorder. And being the youngest, I naturally followed in the footsteps of my older siblings. For a very long time, every article of clothing I had cut off the flow of circulation and I too developed an eating disorder for a very brief time.



But the madness stopped. I went off to college, 2,500 miles away from my parents' influence. All those years of negative reinforcement disappeared. I had lost the weight without even trying and without really even noticing. It felt good, not so much about the weight loss, but more so about taking myself out of an environment filled with unrealistic expectations to be perfect. I know that my parents meant well because they loved me, but you don't really love someone until you accept them for who they are inside and out.





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