My History of Dieting, Part 1
As I started writing this, it ended up being much longer than I expected (though I’m not sure why I’m surprised given my history with dieting), so here’s part 1 of 2…
I thought I’d go ahead and write about my own personal history with dieting. Looking back at pictures, I was a pretty normal weight kid up until maybe 3rd or 4th grade, where I put on some weight. I recall having to wear a jumper to school around that time and being ashamed that the buttons on the side didn’t close anymore, so I wore a sweatshirt over the jumper to hide that fact, even when it was hot outside. I insisted I wasn’t hot, but I was dying! I was just so ashamed to ask for a bigger size. Thinking back on it now, I was probably just growing - it’s normal for kids to outgrow clothes! But coming up in the 90s with the diet culture we had at the time, I felt so much shame for outgrowing my clothes and being a little chubbier than my classmates.
I think my first diet experience goes back to 7th or 8th grade, though honestly it could have started earlier. I just distinctly remember being that age and on some type of diet that involved grapefruit, hard boiled eggs, and a small amount of vanilla ice cream for dessert. Doing some googling, it looks like that may be the Military Diet? I’m sure it was something my mom had heard from someone in our family or someone at work, and decided to give it a try. It’s so obvious now that this weird, regimented, extremely low calorie diet was not going to result in lasting change, and was definitely not appropriate for an 11 or 12 year old, but hindsight is 20/20. In any case, it was short lived, and I don’t remember losing any significant amount of weight (probably because I doubt I stuck to it and shamefully hid eating treats at friends houses).
In high school, I remember trying Weight Watchers for the first time with my friend and her mom. We had the sliding scale of points values, so you could calculate the points in any food with the nutrition facts. I never went to meetings, but I definitely recall tracking points in my food - that was probably my first real experience in trying to track my caloric intake in some way. Like the Military Diet, I don’t recall ever actually losing a significant amount of weight. Not that I had a ton of weight to lose, honestly. I have probably chronically been 25-30 pounds overweight most of my life; not a lot, but it can feel like so much. This was my first of many encounters to come with Weight Watchers.
As far as exercise went, I was both an active and inactive child at the same time somehow. I hated exercise, but my parents made me play sports throughout my childhood (something I am grateful for now, even if I may not have agreed fully with their motivations for doing so). I played basketball, volleyball, and soccer in my pre-high school days, and then joined the tennis team in high school and took lessons and went to clinics during the off season. I actually ended up loving tennis, even if I was never great at it. I was the kid on the team who pretty consistently won the “Coach’s Award”, meaning I wasn’t good at the sport, but I kept showing up anyway.
Throughout the rest of high school, I desperately wished I could develop an eating disorder. Honestly, this is all really sad to think back on, but I want to share my history because I know it’s similar to so many other people’s history with food and dieting, and if it can help one person break this cycle, it’s worth it. I just remember being in high school, seeing the cute, thin girls who were popular and had boyfriends, and thinking, if I could be thin, that could be me. But I will do anything to not vomit and I love to eat, so I could never “commit” to bulemia or anorexia. I honestly kind of saw that as a moral failing as a 14 or 15 year old. So I ended up developing what was probably a form of binge eating disorder, secret eating candy and other unhealthy foods and hiding it from my parents. My inability to be thin pushed me to the other extreme, as I was so depressed and ashamed that I couldn’t have the self control to be like the thin girls. I recall sneaking to the drug store to buy diet pills once I had a car, hoping that would help, all while trying to get my caloric intake down to 500 calories a day. It was a bleak time, and one in which I ended up gaining weight rather than losing.
During my senior year, my mom took me to a doctor to try and help. I think she may have specialized in weight control, or at least worked with patients with that issue. I can’t really recall how she suggested I change my eating, but all I remember is her telling me that if I didn’t get my weight under control now, it would just get worse as an adult. While this is all true, it probably wasn’t the best way to approach a teenager struggling with her weight. I needed the right tools and support, and I felt like all I got was shaming from the adults around me.
Going away to college was one of the best things I ever did for my growth as a person. I met amazing friends, learned about other people and cultures, and opened my eyes to all the things that could be in my life. I also lost about 50 pounds my first semester of college, but it wasn’t really the healthiest way. Like high school, the thin girls all around me taunted me - not personally, but I wanted nothing more than to be like them. So I started going to the rec center on campus. There was a step aerobics class I decided to try and fell in love. I started going every single day. It was such a fun way to exercise, and I really credit this as the beginning of my love of exercise. However, I became obsessive. I had to go every single day, and if for some reason I missed a day, I would go to 2 classes the next day. This new habit, on top of now walking everywhere, helped lead to some weight loss.
My diet, while low calorie, was atrocious. I didn’t care for much of the dining hall food, and the large vats of bacon for breakfast grossed me out, so I cut out beef and pork entirely for a year, which was probably the lone positive in my eating habits in college. I usually ended up having Diet Coke for breakfast (see this post for why that was terrible), a can of soup for lunch (more ultra-processed nonsense), and a plain baked potato with salt and tomato for dinner. I always had frozen yogurt for dessert, and snacks late at night consisted of reduced fat Oreos or low-fat microwave kettle corn. Just a ton of ultra-processed, fake foods (with the exception of the potato), in low calorie forms. But it worked! I lost a ton of weight, very quickly, and loved feeling like a “thin girl”. To be clear, I don’t recommend ANY of what I just wrote; this was a terrible diet, I had an obsession with exercise, and it was in no way sustainable or healthy.
I went back to my high school over Thanksgiving break to talk to students about Vanderbilt, where I was in school, and my counselor came up to me afterwards and was concerned about my rapid weight loss and said I should talk to someone. I laughed her off and thought she was crazy, but looking back she was probably right - I definitely had a problem, even if it didn’t look like a traditional eating disorder to me.
After my freshman year, I continued to keep my weight off by exercising consistently and even signing up for a gym membership while I was home over the summer. During my sophomore year, my roommate and I would “fast” for a day or most of a day after we ate something “bad”; more disordered eating. We were so focused on staying thin, that we would do whatever it took. I started to get more into the drinking and partying scene my junior year, and the weight slowly crept back up as I was drinking more and eating junk food late night. Senior year got worse, particularly as the year went on and I had no plan for my future, while all of my friends seemed to know exactly what they wanted to do. I was lost, and quit going to the gym as much and drinking more.
The first couple of years after college, my weight pretty much hovered around that 30ish pounds overweight. I exercised intermittently, was constantly trying to cut down my calories, even while going out several nights a week and enjoying finally being 21, but I was still eating mostly ultra-processed foods and my weight continued to hover. In 2008, I moved away from my friends in Washington DC to my first “big girl” job in Dallas, where I didn’t really know anyone, and food was my comfort again. I didn’t really gain a ton of weight, but I know I wasn’t eating great. Until 2009, when I felt like I finally figured it all out…
