Hortus Deliciarum

As Graham put it, I seem to have rattled some cages with my post yesterday…so I thought I’d clarify a few things.

I don’t think the intention to lose weight is automatically a bad thing. I just think that, as statistics really DO prove (and doctors know, despite telling everyone and sundry to diet) that trying to lose weight is, in the end, a losing battle (pun intended). It’s easy to Google any number of pages that will confirm that yes, indeed, anywhere from 90-97% of dieters will regain the weight. There’s debate on why this is the case but the numbers speak for themselves. There is a good reason that all of those diet ads (including that great “lifestyle change”-r, Weight Watchers) have to put the disclaimer “Results Not Typical” in small print at the bottom of all of their ads. You might lose 20 pounds. You might lose 120 pounds. But will you keep it off? Ay, there’s the rub.

When it comes to dieting, I’m a bit of an expert. I started early and as even this pro-weight loss website states,

New research published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association has revealed that teenagers who diet or take unhealthy measures to control their weight are more likely to end up overweight as adults.

The research studied more than 2,500 teenagers and found that those who tried to control their weight were three times more likely to be overweight five years later than those who weren’t dieting. Furthermore, dieting teenagers were also at an increased risk of binge eating five years on – and were also more likely to try and control their weight by using extreme and unhealthy means such as vomiting or taking diet pills, laxatives and diuretics.

Given that statistic…my diet history, let me show you it. Bear in mind that during all of this time, even when not actively dieting, I hated myself every time I ate. Looked in the mirror, stepped on the scale compulsively, and detested myself more and more every time I let anything pass through my lips, even a piece of cabbage or a bite of fruit. I saw my thinner friends and thought they were smarter, more beautiful, and more attractive than I was. I never once believed that I would find a boyfriend or a husband, because nobody could want someone as hideously fat as I was.

I thought this even when I wore a size 12/14.

Junior High:

• 11 years – The “Un-Diet” – this was a diet plan touted by a group that visited my junior high PE class. They came around, did public body mass measurements, and my junior high PE teacher said I was overweight and needed to lose weight. They showed scary plastic models of a pound of fat vs. a pound of muscle, I bought the diet book, and I tried to follow it. I didn’t lose much.
• 11-12 years – Weight Watchers – My very first WW class and I attended the one for teens with a friend. She stopped going after a couple of weeks (she’s thinner than I am today, by the way, having never dieted again so far as I know). I kept it up for a few months, lost pretty well, then started binge-eating my way back up the scales.

High School:

Am going to skip ages here in favour of just a bulleted list, as I don’t remember the complete order. Throughout high school I was unhappy with my weight and hated my body more and more. I envied anorexics and bulemics, because at least they could control what they put in their mouths! If I could have forced myself into anorexia or bulemia, even if it had killed me, I would have done it. I’m glad I became a compulsive overeater instead – it’s kept me alive.

The only time I ever lost weight and actually did it in a healthy, non-critical weight was during my semester in France, when I got constant exercise on the long, hilly path to my high school and ate what I wanted when I felt hungry. I probably lost somewhere around 30 pounds and dropped two or three sizes. I didn’t even notice that I’d lost weight until my parents saw me at the end of the six months and were amazed at how fit and healthy I was.

• Diet pills – I used these three or four times, both under the supervision of a doctor and over-the-counter pills. They worked for a few weeks to stave off my hunger and then eventually stopped working (as they inevitably do – your brain eventually builds up a resistance to them).
• Calorie-counting – I kept notebooks with the calorie counts of various foods, poring over them for hours to figure out what I had eaten in a given day.
• Fasting diets – More than once I either tried to starve myself or drank weird lemon-juice, water, and honey “lemonade” instead of eating for days at a time. Didn’t work well for weight-loss and I eventually caved in and ate.
• TOPS – AKA “Taking Off Pounds Sensibly,” this was a group that met weekly with no fixed diet plan except to “take off pounds sensibly.” Members would give presentations on healthy eating and when you weighed in you had to pay a dime for each pound or increment that you gained. At every meeting you chanted the TOPS slogan, which was: I am an intelligent person. I will control my emotions and not let my emotions control me. Every time I am tempted to use food to satisfy my frustrated desires, build up my injured ego, or dull my senses, I will remember that even though I overeat in private, my excess poundage is there for all the world to see how foolish I have been. The last, bolded phrase has been changed, it appears from the current website, but I remember thinking that it WAS so obvious from my fat how dumb and horrible I was. Eventually my mother and I stopped going.
• Acupuncture – I tried acupuncture for weightloss, including a really awful Chinese diet plan that excluded dairy products (at which time I discovered that I HATE soy milk) and made me take some really awful herb capsules that I hated. Oh, and no more real chocolate – I tried diabetic chocolate and hated it. Didn’t work, was expensive, and I quit.

Adulthood:

I gained a lot of weight in college. Being at Smith was in many ways a wonderful experience but also bruised me deeply, leaving me feeling stupid, incompetent, and incapable of matching up to the standard of intelligence I saw in everyone else around me but never in myself.

• “Healthy Eating” – I did TRY to eat healthily at Smith. I ate a small salad before every lunch and dinner and did my best to drink skim milk, etc. I still gained weight thanks to compulsively overeating main dishes and never exercising. Junior high and high school PE taught me early on that I didn’t want to be seen exercising and a first-year tennis class (taught by a PE graduate student) made it clear early on that if I wasn’t good right away, I was going to get less attention than the people who showed promise. I never took another exercise class – exercise was NOT fun, because I was a failure at it.
• Dietitian/Nutritionist – On my junior year in Geneva, I started seeing a nutritionist, who gave me a sensible eating plan. I didn’t own a scale. I think I lost some weight but again, depression ended up taking hold again and I abandoned it all.
• Metabolife – This got a lot of bad press a couple of years later. I tried it the summer after I graduated from Smith and got very jittery on it but DID find that it cut back on my appetite. Yay! Eventually the jitters got to be too much and I stopped taking it. Regained all the weight, plus a lot more.
• Weight Watchers – My second try at WW was in Seattle, after graduation. I never made it to my 10% first target because I’d lose and gain, lose and gain. I was so depressed and hated my body so much that I’d follow plan really well for a few weeks and then binge. This was, however, the first time I discovered what it was like to be hungry and feed myself. In high school I rarely remember being hungry – I’d compulsively overeat and had to be constantly eating, so I never knew hunger, except for the times I was on a diet (and not caving in). WW got too expensive, I never got to my 10%, and I stopped going.
• Wedding Diet – My second year in graduate school I discovered that stress + depression + thesis-writing = no time to eat. I felt ill a lot. Lost so much weight between ordering my wedding dress and wearing it that the month before my wedding my dress had to be taken in six inches. I still hated my body and dreaded that everyone at my wedding would be chanting, in their heads, “Here comes the bride, BIG, FAT, AND WIDE!!!” I didn’t want to see wedding photos and even though I felt pretty in my dress, I didn’t want anyone to look at me because I hated my body so much. I wore a size 18/20 and thought I was the fattest creature in creation.

And then I stopped.

Someone in one of my online WW or weight-loss communities found a book called Overcoming Overeating and said they weren’t going to diet again. I bought the book too…and a miracle happened. Suddenly, I realised that this entire time that I had been “failing” at diets…diets had actually been failing me. All this time I had been waiting to live my life until I was thin, all this time I had been hating my body because it was so “hideously ugly”, I had actually been cheating myself out of happiness and contentment. Joy didn’t reside in being thin, because I could have joy, have self-acceptance, have love, have fitness, have everything I had always wanted, at my current weight and without needing a scale or diet to tell me when I could have them.

I don’t blame anyone for wanting to lose weight. I don’t blame anyone for wanting to happiness. I’m just not convinced that losing weight = long-term happiness because I’ve done it…and I didn’t find happiness at the lower end of the scale. If I had, I would still be there, not weighing whatever it is I weigh (300+?) and wearing the size I do. I overeat because I am depressed and unhappy. If losing weight had solved either of those problems effectively, I would no longer have overeaten once I lost weight.

I applaud everyone who wants to be fit and eat in healthy ways. I think those are marvelous goals. I strive for them myself and currently fall far short of where I’d like to be. I just don’t think that either of those things fix the long-term problems that keep many of us, those of us who emotionally overeat, binge-eating or compulsively eating. If they did, we would all already be happy and at some ideal goal weight, because we all have exercised and eaten healthily. If there were not underlying reasons why we overeat, we wouldn’t be doing it. If we understand those underlying reasons, we will find a weight that is healthy for us, even if it’s not in an “ideal” BMI range or what a doctor would call a perfect weight for our height, etc. etc. We’ll find a place where we can be fit…and even if we aren’t there yet, we will be happy and successful WHERE WE ARE because we don’t need a scale to give us permission to do everything in life that we want to do.

If happiness is depending on losing weight and maintaining a certain size, depression is sure to follow if either of those circumstances changes and, really, why wait to find happiness? I’d rather find joy, fitness, and self-acceptance NOW and maybe, someday, have a thinner body, than spend my whole life trying to find that elusive sense of happiness that is already there inside all of us, waiting to be found.

I wish I weren’t in the minority, though, in thinking that people are fantastic and worthy of love/happiness/success regardless of their size (thin, average, or fat), rather than thinking that we all have to change ourselves before we deserve to enjoy our lives. I wish we all loved ourselves NOW and could make healthy changes in our lives not because a number on a scale (or a potentially incorrect belief that overweight/obese = unhealthy and doomed to an early death) tells us so but because in our self-love we find enjoyment in growing more fit and answering our bodies’ true food cravings rather than the calls of emotional eating.

I’ve preached enough, now, so I’m stepping down from the pulpit. I don’t hate dieters. I don’t hate weight watchers. I don’t think anyone who weight-watches, diets, counts calories, fasts, etc. is a bad, stupid, worthless, or misguided person. I just don’t think those things bring real, lasting happiness.  Everyone has to make their own decisions regarding how to improve self-esteem. The above list is the reason that I am so anti-diet, calorie-counting, and weighing. If you find those things satisfying and empowering, then by all means do them! You don’t need to apologise to me or feel guilty for enjoying that sort of thing any more than I need to apologise for finding them soul-destroying and saying so!

Tags: fat