I'm just likely to say it. The majority of my entire life, I have been on the advantages of skinny. I understand. I sound vile. Keep reading (it won't last).

My thin frame was something I actually clung to in college, when, moving from small-town Massachusetts to Manhattan, I felt less smart lida daidaihua old and complicated than everyone else. My ability to remain "willowy" while all the beautifuls and perfects pounded beer, pigged on pizza, and put on the freshman 15 helped me feel proud. Skinny was a small rope of confidence to hold onto.

But feeling good within my skinny jeans got me only so far. Despite publishing my first book -- a career highlight -- I wasn't happy in my personal life. I had dates (often with impractical guys) and flings (cue Mr. Unavailable), when you are skinny wasn't keeping me warm and safe at night -- something I deeply craved. So this past year, I booked a vacation to Italy to flee the emotion-sickness of my entire life.

As fate would have it (this was Rome, after all!), the moment my strappy sandals touched the floor, I met a guy. Yep, I fell in love in under four seconds, on a cobblestone street, just beneath the Colosseum, after requesting directions to my Airbnb. Before I possibly could even unpack, i was softly touching knees with an old park bench interlaced with begonias. Needless to say, I extended the trip. (It only sounds reckless. Like a freelance writer, I'm able to work from anywhere!)

Works out, things i thought was first-date foodie fun -- margherita pizza, pizza pesto, pizza Gorgonzola ... washed down with flowing carafes of robust dark wine ... finished off with thick licks of gelato and long sips of Limoncello -- wasn't an action of seduction. This is how they eat. Every. Single. Night.

Who could complain?

Well, a semi-vain skinny bitch who, many months later, couldn't button her jeans. Nothing fit. After a couple of weeks, though, I started feeling type of fabulous -- fleshy and foxy in that Jessa-from-Girls way. Italy helped me aglow with dreams and need! They call them love handles for any reason, you know.

Enter Nyc.

Seven months later, I returned for some months of labor. As always, I hit SoulCycle to kick the jet lag. Changing within the locker room, I saw some gym friends, who repeated what I'd just heard from my parents and sister: "You look so ... healthy!" My (too hostile?) response, "Are you trying to say I look fat?" Despite the denials -- No. What? Stop! -- I gone to live in a bicycle at the back of the room.

Suddenly, without my boyfriend or even the Italian backdrop, the extra pounds no more evoked la dolce vita. In Ny, "a good body" is usually lida daidaihua new understood to be a healthy, thin, disciplined one -- and now, those once voluptuous-looking extra pounds felt like a burden. With my self-image playing tricks on me, I began asking anyone who would listen (my mother; BFF; even my Starbucks guy, Tristan), "Do I look fat?"