My name is Victoria but everyone calls me Tori. Like most twenty-somethings, I’m a blend of narcissism, insecurity, and optimism. My whole life I’ve wanted to be a writer but I’ve never really known where to start. In 2011, I jumped back into school, majoring in Creative Writing, and it’s opened a gateway of opportunities for me. Despite this, the creative process has never come easily for me. You see, I love to write but I struggle with inspiration.

The majority of my free time is spent reading, in which I am constantly in awe of the ability of all of these people to create such incredible, complex stories. Five to seven hundred pages of characters, plots, and subplots that they somehow all managed to tie together; how do they DO that?

I’m twenty-nine years old and clinging to a dream: I want to publish a novel and I want to change the world with my words. Small aspirations, right? Certainly not too much to ask of myself at this point in my life. Now I just have to think of something to write.

After another one of my many (practically daily) quarter life crises phone calls to my mother, she suggested something so simple, so prolific… I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it on my own. I could barely listen to the rest of our conversation because all I wanted to do was hang up, grab my laptop, and start writing.

“Tori, honey, you need to start by writing something you know. Something that’s a part of you. Something that you consider yourself an expert on. Do you have anything like that?”

Why, yes I do, Mom… yes, I do.

You see, ever since I can remember I have been on some sort of diet. From white rice and water diets to beef and cheese diets, I’ve tried every diet under the sun. Want to know about Atkins? I’m your resident expert. Trying to cut calories? Please allow me to suggest one hundred different low-calorie dessert recipes. Why yes, they are tasty — I’ve tried them all. In large quantities, I might add.

Was there an exact day in my life that I can pinpoint the beginning of my yo-yo dieting? Not sure if I can identify a specific moment but I do recall memories that I’m certain have dramatically shaped my life, some as early as elementary school.

So it began, sometime in middle school I would guess… the calorie counting, fat cutting, carb trimming, cardio-blasting routine that I’d turn on and off like a light switch from childhood through teen years and am now dragging with me as I approach thirty. Some days I wake up with an OCD-like fixation on my diet and exercise regime and other days I couldn’t give a damn one way or another. I cannot recall one day in my adult life where I didn’t worry about what I put into my mouth (or didn’t put into my mouth, for that matter) or how much exercise I needed to do to balance out a binge I had already finished or was about to undertake.

My name is Tori and I’m a yo-yo dieter.

This is my life.

Welcome to the journey.