When was YOUR first time?

Do you remember your first diet? I do. Well, I think I do. If I was put on a diet before Grade 5, then I don't remember. But I can vividly recall being on a specific and restrictive diet at some point in the fifth grade. It was taped to the fridge, outlining how many half cups of plain tuna, cottage cheese, and cantaloupe I had to eat over a 4 day period. I've seen it circulate the Internet since; it's that lose-5lbs-in-4-days diet that is often recommended before surgery. It was not designed for me, or for a child. I'm not even sure whether it was my doctor who told my mom to put me on it, or whether she thought she'd try it for me out of desperation. Grade 5 puts me around 10 years old. Around the age when I should have been playing with yo-yo's, I was getting caught up in weight cycling. Thus began a lifetime of Yo-Yo dieting.

Recently, I wrote about how early I started having problems with being fat. I'm fairly certain that hormones played a big role, as did environmental factors (parents, peers, media). What likely didn't help was what I did to fight that fat. As I mentioned, I was still sort of active, even though I wasn't good at many sports. And I was not exactly over-eating or eating particularly unhealthy foods. The binging and hiding food and rebellion didn't come until a few years into being "fat."

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Because, as I grew, so did my sense of shame and self-loathing. I knew I had to either fight my body, or hate it. Every so often I'd decide to do something about it. I would diet. I would restrict. I would try to stop eating altogether. I'd keep it up for a few weeks or months, until I lost the willpower and "fell off the wagon" or "caved in" or "was bad." The problem with a diet is that when you stumble and fall, you fail. Rather than getting back up, I'd give up. And then the weight would go back on, more than before, and the cycle would begin again.

Instead of just being a little thicker than most kids, instead of ending up just a little bit overweight (as many adults do), I launched myself into being morbidly obese because of weight cycling. I was taught that the way I was, was not okay, and I had to fight to change it. When you put a child on a diet of food that she doesn't like, and doesn't understand, and leaves her hungry, it sets her up for begging food from other sources or learning to sneak it wherever she can.

My behaviour as a child was pretty much exactly what the body does when it goes into "starvation mode": it clings to energy for dear life. When you restrict calories, the body initially responds by shedding weight. But our bodies are still functioning as if food is scarce, and we have to hunt it, and could go days without it. Which is why, after a period of restriction or starvation, it says "hold on, I don't know when or where my next source of energy will come from, so I'm just going to hang on to this while I can." When I was put on diets, I ate whenever and wherever I could, and my body was hanging on to all the fat for the same reason.

At some point I think I just gave up and said, "okay, whatever, I'm just gonna stay fat." It wasn't healthy, but it was probably better in the long run because at least I stabilized and didn't continue to grow and grow and grow. The only problem was that I was stable at a pretty gigantic size for my short frame.

This is why dieting doesn't work. This is why getting my eating under control and finding balance is the key. Because, every time I consume too few calories, or even just stay right on the line of barely enough to get by, there will inevitably come a time when I indulge or introduce something back into my diet which I had eliminated. And then the weight goes back on, more than before, and I'm back in trouble.

I have to remind myself of this constantly, because I'm human and I lose patience with how slow the process is. Especially at times like this, when I can feel that some weight has gone back on. Clothes are fitting snugger. I can see it, I can feel it. And my instinct is to panic and crash diet, to lose a lot in a short time. It's tempting. Except that I know that it will go back on. I know it from experience.

So, slow and steady wins the race. One day at a time, doing my damndest to keep the eating as clean as possible, to get enough calories and say no to chocolate. Ditch the yo-yo, and find a better game to play.