When I was 15, I weighed a whopping 125lbs. That wouldn’t be a problem if I was 5’4”, but unfortunately, I was already fully grown up, and stood at a massive 5’8” tall. As you can imagine, that’s pretty skinny. My family was always telling me “you need to eat more”, “you’re so thin!”, and my personal favorite “what, nobody feeds you?”. Not exactly encouraging stuff.

You see, in Arabic culture, we love to eat. A skinny person isn’t seen as being in shape or having a fast metabolism, but rather as someone who doesn’t eat enough. Thus I was constantly told to eat, and was regularly offered food by pretty much everyone around me. Ironically enough, this had the opposite effect on me: I never felt hungry. I was always too busy playing games, watching TV, or reading comics to waste time eating. In fact, whenever I DID actually eat, it was in front of a movie or TV show, and occasionally, with a sci-fi novel in hand.