Andrea's Story

My name’s Andrea Auerbach Vieira. I’m a social media influencer, I was born in Brazil. Everybody knows Brazil for its stunning beaches and perfect bodies wearing tiny bikinis. Since my childhood I struggled with eating disorders, always overweight, by 12 I started taking amphetamines, by 15 I had my first anorexia crisis, but I was happy because I lost weight...By 20 I gave up dieting and when I moved to NY I was 117 Kgs,when I returned in 2002 I was 143kgs. I said to myself, I preferred to die to live like that forever. There was an experimental surgery, very simple concept you remove part of your stomach and lose weight. I decided to go for it. And in January 2003 I had the surgery. Took me 2 years to lose 70 kilos and I went through over a dozen of aesthetics procedures to rebuild my body. I thought the problems were over. When I was okay I could eat normally, anything that would change my mood would made me vomit or stop eating. I decided to get pregnant and happily after 2 years my daughter was born, healthy but underweight because of my condition. After having my baby I joined an eating healthy program to lose weight and everything was fine... Not inside me! Because of the motherhood anxiety and not being working I got depressed,went on Celexa higher dose possible and therapy every week,sometimes twice a week. I resumed my career when my daughter was 1 and after achieving everything in my career I found myself unhappy again and struggling with my self image. I'm 1,73cm and weighing 74 kilos,some days I was ashamed of going outside, considering myself too fat to wear anything! Never going to the beach or wearing shorts, always ashamed of my body! Of course the lack of support home made things worse. Two years ago at my worst depression I decided to travel to India and to work on myself,on my life, making my choices! I quit my career and decided to work as a full-time influencer on Instagram and empower other women that go through the same process. Only by 40 I could finally find peace with myself and to learn to love myself.