I can’t tell you how many times I have heard those same seven words: ‘I love you just as you are.’ Ever since we first got together when I was just 16, my partner Carlos had always reassured me with that delicate expression of his love – no matter what my size. But it’s taken more than 30 years for me to say those words to myself and, finally, I now love myself just as I am.
I’d always been a big girl. As a teenager I was too chubby to wear the skimpy clothes all my friends were wearing and I was always trying to lose weight. By the time Carlos and I started dating I was already a size 18.
