My History of Dieting, Part 2

In January 2009, I made a new years resolution like I did most years to lose weight in the new year. I remember getting off to a slow start, but come February, I found inspiration in a series of episodes of Oprah, where she talked about “living your best life”. I used that as my mantra moving forward into the year and joined Weight Watchers and began counting points. I also started running; I had always wanted to be a runner but could barely run around the block. But there was a Thanksgiving Day 10k in Cincinnati where I grew up that I had always wanted to run, but given my inability to run around the block, obviously never did. So I started doing the Couch to 5k, and I remember even that one minute of running feeling impossible at the beginning. But I stuck with it, and by summer, I was able to run 3 miles (and I did run that Thanksiging Day 10K)!

I stuck with counting points and running consistently and the weight fell off through 2009. I don’t recall exactly how much I lost or what I weighed, but I do know that I felt and looked the thinnest I’d ever been. I felt on top of the world if I’m being honest - I had finally conquered my weight and figured it all out. I don’t think I ever officially hit “goal” through Weight Watchers or entered maintenance - I think I probably quit paying for WW before I hit what they suggested as my goal. I mostly kept the weight off until mid 2010 when a breakup and a journey through different medications for depression resulted in me losing track of my physical health while I tried to heal my mental health (even though I know now how much the two are related). I put some weight back on, and yo-yo’d quite a bit over the next few years. I would occasionally try counting calories, and then macros, back to WW, buy supplements, and try different forms of exercise, thinking one of them was the silver bullet. I tried MyFitnessPal, LoseIt, and any other app I could find that promised to help you lose weight. I did countless boot camps, group exercise classes, ran with groups and on my own, and tried so many yoga classes, hoping I would find one that was tolerable (I never did).

In 2014, I went back to WW again (who knows how many times I started and stopped counting points by then), and also worked to train for the Chicago marathon in October of that year. I had trained for the Dallas marathon the year before, but it was canceled due to an ice storm, and honestly, it was probably the best thing that could have happened to me, even if I didn’t feel that way at the time. I was not well prepared, and had struggled through my training. I vowed to take things more seriously for Chicago and dial in my nutrition as well as my training. And boy, did I! I went back to counting points and gradually increased my mileage over the year. And the weight came off, though admittedly it slowed down as my mileage increased since my hunger increased exponentially with the miles. And I struggled with that a lot; the points that WW “allowed” me at the time felt far too low for the activity I was doing, even if I tried to eat my activity points, which I had a hard time doing because if you read any of the comments online about WW, people will discourage you from eating the extra points. So even when I was fueling my body, I felt immense guilt about doing so. I remember adding up what the calorie equivalent was to my daily point allowance, and it was 1100-1200 calories. I will shout it from the rooftop, but THAT IS NOT ENOUGH CALORIES. This was the era of the 1200 calorie diet for women though, and I thought that’s what I should be eating since every app and calculator spit out that answer. I made it to the marathon though, at one of my lower weights in my lifetime (though not the lowest), and felt great and had a great time. 

I kept up my activity into 2015 and even though I gained a few pounds, the sheer amount of running I was doing kept my weight from getting out of control, even as I felt my eating veer in the wrong direction. I was constantly trying to “reset” with myself, trying DietBets to financially motivate me to eat less, and worrying about every meal. I started dating my now husband around the middle of the year and the weight came back on quickly and aggressively as I skipped more runs, at more of what I wanted, and drank far more than I should to be healthy. 

The following years were more of the same; constantly starting and stopping different diets and struggling to eat healthy. But now I had a partner in crime to struggle through diets with me. We tried Whole30 in 2017 and that lasted about 4 days until I talked with a dietician about the diet and she noted that while it’s good because it gets you to eat real foods, it cuts out important foods like legumes for no good reason. So that was my excuse to no longer follow that diet, but looking back, I can see that experience as the start of my journey to letting go of diets. When you do Whole30, you have to pay really close attention to ingredients in the foods you buy to avoid sugar, and it was eye-opening to see how many foods have sugar in them. It was also the second time I had worked with a dietician, and I think that’s such a valuable thing to do, but I question how some of them operate; at least, I don’t necessarily agree with some of the approaches they take as I educate myself on nutrition. The one I had seen in 2017 told me about the importance of fiber, which was the first time I’d really explored fiber and how important it was in my diet. However, she suggested using supplements to get enough fiber, which is not something I find value in, as it’s so much more beneficial to get fiber from real foods, and it’s really not difficult if you eat the things that fuel your body.

In 2019, when I was living back in Cincinnati, I got fed up with feeling like garbage and started seeing another dietician and a personal trainer. I made the decision to invest in myself, and it was one of the best things I did. I did a 4 month program with the dietician, seeing her twice a month for 45 minutes each time, and she helped me develop a better relationship with food and to pay attention to how different foods made me feel. There was no calorie counting, no meal plans - just discussion of how to eat for my health (focus on fat, fiber, and protein at each meal), and to listen to my body. While I didn’t lose a ton of weight, since I was still drinking way too much alcohol, I still found the work we did together transformational. This was yet another big step on my journey to where I’m at today. Seeing a personal trainer three times a week was also incredible; she taught me how to strength train and made me see how strong I could be. 

And then…2020. My training sessions stopped as everything shut down. Eric’s restaurant closed down. We had cases upon cases of wine from the restaurant, plus a huge cellar of beers, many of them heavy, dark, bourbon barrel aged beers. And so we drank. And ate. Rinse and repeat. We did start little fitness challenges throughout the pandemic, like pushup and plank challenges, which was helpful, but still could have done more to focus on our health. I think all of that drinking is what led us to try our first Sober October in 2020, and in addition to not drinking all month, we decided to change our diets as well and eat only real foods, with no refined sugar or flour. We had mocktails on weekends and ate real foods…and felt amazing. Then came the holidays and all hope of the pandemic ending soon, and so while we knew we felt great eating well and drinking less, we loosened the reins a lot as we worried about another year of lockdowns and continued masking. 

Sometime over the next year, I decided to try Noom since that was the latest buzzy weight loss app, and that again lasted a couple weeks as I realized how restrictive it was. Like, WW, it equated to very few calories a day and demonized certain foods that I knew to be good for overall health. It wasn’t until 2022 when I started to feel in control of my health, which you can read more about here.

Ok, so what’s the takeaway here? 

I’ve tried it all, thinking one of those things would be “the thing”. I think about a quote from Mindy Kaling where she comments that dieting is like a hobby for her, and I kind of feel the same way. Like so many women, I’ve struggled with my body image over the years and have constantly battled wanting to feel better in a swimsuit or rock a pair of jeans, and the promise of a new diet is exciting. There’s always hope that the next fad will be the thing that sticks, the thing that solves all of your problems. But as they say in Ted Lasso, it’s the hope that kills.

My approach to my diet has evolved so much over the years, to something that I finally find sustainable. I had to get to a place where my focus is on my health and longevity and how I feel and not my weight. Once I learned about how different foods impact my health and really thought about what I was doing to my body, it became easier to make the right choice. Understanding the impact my food is having on our climate and how the people who produce it are treated also steers my food choices. This is not to say I’m perfect - I am absolutely not perfect. But most of the time, it’s easy to make the right choice, easy to want fruits and vegetables when I know they make me feel good and are helping to keep my cholesterol in check and my cancer odds lower. It’s easy to turn down the Oreos when I know how few real ingredients are in them and how many of the ingredients came from a lab and not the ground. Easy to turn down factory farmed meat, despite its convenience, when you know that it’s contributing to climate change, leading to more people living in poverty, and likely contributing to food borne illnesses due to farming practices. It’s worth getting up on Saturday mornings and trekking to the farmers market to get the produce that tastes great, the meat and eggs that were sustainably raised, and give my money directly to the people producing my food.

But it took me time to get here - the meeting with a dietician about the importance of fiber. The important work of learning how to listen to your body and what it needs. The realization that sugar is in everything in the grocery store. The experience of not drinking alcohol for more than 2 months to see how much better I felt and see the increase in productivity in my day. Reading more and more books and articles to educate myself about our food system and how the choices we make every day impact others and our planet. It’s a journey, but it’s one that’s so worth it. And I’m not done; it’s an ongoing process, but I’m happy to continue to learn more and find ways to improve my health every day, and hopefully help others do the same along the way.