Stop Dieting And Start To Lose Weight

At 12 years old, I wasn’t a fat kid. As a matter of fact, I was pretty skinny (that’s me on the right in the blue jeans).But, all the girls at school were on diets, and the women’s magazines were recommending diets, and my mom was on a diet as well.

I remember thinking, “I should really go on a diet.”

My chronic dieting began by eating “diet” food and drinking diet soda. I also ate low-fat and non-fat, yogurt and cheese.

And, an interesting thing happened – I began gaining weight and didn’t understand why.

By the time I was 15 years old I had created a warped idea about food.

I remember going to my best friend’s house every day after school. Omi, her German grandmother, would prepare us the most delicious meal – Braised pork or chicken with gravy, creamy mashed potatoes and roasted vegetables. Twenty minutes after we ate, we would lock ourselves in the bathroom and force that homemade food out of our bodies.

I remember Omi knocking on the bathroom door asking, “Are you girls okay?”

We’d say, “yeah we’re fine,” and turn the radio louder so she wouldn’t hear us throwing up.

But, the truth is we were NOT okay. We were damaged. It was the 1980’s and we were brainwashed by the dieting industry to think eating food with fat would make us fat.

At 17 years old I attended Weight Watchers “fat camp” in Pennsylvania. It was sensible dieting. We ate meals that were very low in fat, drank diet soda, used artificial sweeteners instead of sugar, and slathered fake butter on our bread.

I remember one night at camp, I got stoned (hey… I was a teenager), broke into the food shack, and ate an entire jar of peanut butter.

Apparently, my body was craving fat.

After fat camp, I joined weight watchers and bought a food scale. I weighed and counted every fat gram and calorie that went into my mouth. Unfortunately, this made eating a laborious task.

Eventually, I grew tired of weighing, measuring, counting and scrutinizing every morsel that went into my mouth.

So, I joined Jenny Craig. They sold boxed food that was already weighed and measured. Whew! What a relief. It certainly wasn’t delicious, but it did the job and I lost a few pounds.

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