Each time I started a diet, I had high hopes that this one, despite my many abject failures, this one was going to succeed. We all know how it starts, don’t we? Our best friend, or our aunt, or a cousin, or a coworker, or a celebrity has been on the most amazing new diet. She’s lost 10 pounds in 2 weeks! She’s never felt more energetic in her whole life! We’re dubious, but we’re envious. Maybe, maybe this is our Holy Grail. If we’d just give it a try, recommit to losing weight, yes, yes, this time we will be living our dream of being thin.
So, we rush out and buy the book or purchase the CD. We download the plan from the internet. Or, we join the organization that is a sure-fire support group to help us succeed. We plunk down our hard-earned cash in the belief that the other diets were failures because we failed. This time, failure is not an option!
At first, with a burst of enthusiasm and a dedication to the cause, we dive in with absolute devotion. Ever the true-believer, we follow every last rule, every restriction. If the diet allows no carbs, we never let a carb pass our lips. At night, we lie in bed fantasizing about bread and pasta and steaming hot baked potatoes. But, no. We have committed. There is no turning back.
If our new plan requires meetings, we show up early, eager to embarrass ourselves in public when we step on the scale. Who cares, right? If this is what it takes to succeed, we will be fearless.
If the plan requires us to purchase expensive meals, we do it. Not in the budget? We convince ourselves that as we shrink, we’ll be able to buy those cute outfits that go on sale, but are never in the larger sizes that sell out first, and at full price, just to add insult to injury. Losing weight requires sacrifices. So what if we have to forgo that planned vacation to the beach? We don’t fit into last year’s swimsuit anyway. We don’t want to be seen at the beach unless we’re wrapped up on a towel, so it isn’t exactly a sacrifice, is it?
At first, all goes well. We start to lose weight. The waistband on that too tight pair of jeans is loosening up. The blouse that we couldn’t button a month ago fits smoothly. People are starting to notice. The compliments begin to flow. “You look different.” “Have you lost weight?” “Gosh, you look great!” “What’s your secret?”
OK, admit it. You’re chuffed. You can’t wait to share. You pull the CD or book out of your purse. You write down the name of your diet counselor or your group. You give your friend or coworker the email address. Everyone is noticing you in a positive way, for once. Isn’t that incentive enough to keep you going?
But, then, the inevitable happens. Like a former smoker who convinces herself that one cigarette won’t hurt, you eat that bowl of ice cream or bag of chips, yes, the whole bag because once you’ve started, hey, you’ve already fallen off the wagon, right? Or, you get tired of the restrictions. How long can you go without a slice of crusty Italian bread or Chinese food without rice or a bagel without softened cream cheese delicately swirled on top? What are you? A martyr? You have to live a little bit, don’t you?
And so it starts. A little here. A little there. You resolve to start again. On Monday. Monday is the start date. You promise to return to the plan, but you don’t. Monday slips by. Then Tuesday. By that time, you figure you’ll let this week go, but just this week! Eventually, the weeks become a blur of guilt, confusion, and denial. In the end, you regain all of the pounds you’ve lost. And, even worse and more inexplicable, you add a few more.
You feel defeated, deflated, miserable. You’re heavier than you were before. Why did you even bother? Your aunt, or your cousin, or your coworker, or that glamorous celebrity has also fallen off the diet bandwagon. They’ve failed, and you’ve failed. Again. Misery loves company, right?
In my next post I’ll be explaining why diets do not work. Diets are a set-up for failure. You have not failed. The diet industry has failed you. Meanwhile, please share your own diet stories either here or in your own private journal.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
My Weight Loss Story
My story will be familiar to anyone who has ever tried to lose weight. By the time I was 20 years old, I had packed 230 pounds onto my 5’3” frame. Even before I started kindergarten, my mother had me on my first diet. She did not want a fat daughter. Her solution? Cottage cheese on potatoes instead of butter. Jello instead of cupcakes. No melons, no buttermilk -- no to a lot of things she assumed were fattening even though they weren’t. If she thought I’d had enough, she’d snatch away my plate and dump the rest down the garbage disposal. I soon became, and remained, the faster eater on the block.
My older sister was thin. No, she was skinny, but she was held up to me as the girlish ideal of beauty. She was a picky eater, which my parents considered delicate and feminine. I might as well be a horse with a feedbag over my face. My sister was constantly being offered strawberry malteds and delicate cupcakes frosted with toasted flecks of fragrant coconut. She had to have gravy with her meat or an extra pat of butter on her mashed potatoes. Before bedtime, she was wooed with chocolate chip ice cream slathered with chocolate sauce.
While my mother was alive, I wasn’t actually overweight, even though I’d taken to stealing food and eating it while hiding in the basement. But, when she died of breast cancer, I quickly ballooned and became her worst nightmare. I went from being a 10 year old who was on the high side of normal to an obese child within months. I ate, and I ate, and I ate. Doctor diets, weight loss pills that made me shake and kept me awake nights, liquid diets, grapefruit diets, group diets, starvation diets—nothing worked. In fact, each time I lost weight, I’d fall off the wagon and gain back everything I’d lost plus an additional 5-10 pounds.
Each year, when we had the class weigh-in at school, I’d die of shame. My classmates would snicker and tease me, taunt me on the playground, call me “whale” and “fatso” and “piggy.” The more they mocked me, the more I ate for comfort. If no one wanted to be my friend, so what? Food was my friend.
By the time I entered college, I was up to 194 pounds. By my junior year, I weighed close to 230 pounds.
People who are morbidly obese do not get that way because they love to eat, or because they are lazy or self-indulgent. People who gorge are eating for emotional reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with food.
So, how did I go from a 230-pound college student to a mature woman who lost over half of her body weight? How did I do it? But, more importantly, how do I keep it off? Join me as I share my story, my struggle to create a plan that worked and my triumph over emotional eating.
My older sister was thin. No, she was skinny, but she was held up to me as the girlish ideal of beauty. She was a picky eater, which my parents considered delicate and feminine. I might as well be a horse with a feedbag over my face. My sister was constantly being offered strawberry malteds and delicate cupcakes frosted with toasted flecks of fragrant coconut. She had to have gravy with her meat or an extra pat of butter on her mashed potatoes. Before bedtime, she was wooed with chocolate chip ice cream slathered with chocolate sauce.
While my mother was alive, I wasn’t actually overweight, even though I’d taken to stealing food and eating it while hiding in the basement. But, when she died of breast cancer, I quickly ballooned and became her worst nightmare. I went from being a 10 year old who was on the high side of normal to an obese child within months. I ate, and I ate, and I ate. Doctor diets, weight loss pills that made me shake and kept me awake nights, liquid diets, grapefruit diets, group diets, starvation diets—nothing worked. In fact, each time I lost weight, I’d fall off the wagon and gain back everything I’d lost plus an additional 5-10 pounds.
Each year, when we had the class weigh-in at school, I’d die of shame. My classmates would snicker and tease me, taunt me on the playground, call me “whale” and “fatso” and “piggy.” The more they mocked me, the more I ate for comfort. If no one wanted to be my friend, so what? Food was my friend.
By the time I entered college, I was up to 194 pounds. By my junior year, I weighed close to 230 pounds.
People who are morbidly obese do not get that way because they love to eat, or because they are lazy or self-indulgent. People who gorge are eating for emotional reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with food.
So, how did I go from a 230-pound college student to a mature woman who lost over half of her body weight? How did I do it? But, more importantly, how do I keep it off? Join me as I share my story, my struggle to create a plan that worked and my triumph over emotional eating.
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