Dieting made me fat AND neurotic

The Indy had a story that got picked up at Alternet about how dieting makes you fat. And if there is anybody who knows just how true that is, it would be me.

My first diet that I can remember would have been when I was five or so. My mom and grandma heard about a fad diet going around at the time that had to do with hard boiled eggs and I remember having to eat a lot of them.

At six years old, my pediatrician got involved. But the diets didn't seem to get any less strange, at least not to my young mind. I remember not being able to eat corn. And the little Valentine candy hearts my Girl Scout leader got each of us. But I did drink a lot of "Sego" diet drinks. I don't recall losing much weight.

We moved when my mom remarried a few years later and the new pediatrician was positively apoplectic that I was so fat. Indeed the nurse checking me in spoke in fearful tones about how upset he was going to be when he saw how much I weighed. And boy was he! He demanded to know what I was eating and how much exercise I was getting. When we told him that I wasn't eating anymore than my skinny siblings and was exercising at least as much, he practically came unglued. "Impossible! She's lying!" he said to my mother. "She has to be secretly eating." I knew that I wasn't, and even if I wanted to, I never had the pocket money to do so. But he was a doctor -- a sort of super adult who dare not be questioned.

But still I tried to lose weight. I followed the diet a friend of my mom's had been on -- a mere 1000 calories a day for a growing ten-year-old. That time I managed to actually gain a half a pound.

The pediatrician sent me to a psychiatrist and a dietician. I don't remember what the psychiatrist said but I only saw him once so I'm assuming he didn't think he'd be much help. The dietician had me counting calories and walking everyday. Unfortunately, this was about the time that I was developing what would later become full blown ME/CFS, and I frequently felt exhausted. Or was in pain due to my right ankle that didn't heal properly after it broke when I was ten. Years later when I came across my chart with the dietician's notes, her disapproval dripped in blue ball-point ink. "Michelle always finds excuses for not exercizing."

Suddenly in eighth grade, when I was 14 years-old, I dropped thirty pounds. I wasn't dieting. Wasn't exercising any more than usual. I tried to tell the school nurse this when she started giving me the paper "kudos" faculty at my junior high gave to students who did something amazing. She would have none of it. She showered me with words of praise and kudos with "behavior modification" written in the "for" line.

That thirty pounds made only a little difference in the hundred pounds I had gained between 10 and 12 years old. And by the end of my freshman year, despite being on a no-sugar diet for five months, I had gained all of those thirty pounds back and then some.

Not that I gave up hope of losing all my excess fat. My mom made a deal with a nutritionist to give her free manicures in exchange for working with me. I met with her a few times. She gave me lots of work sheets and we talked about different foods and calories. At one point during my first visit when she asked me what I'd eaten the day before, I remember being so ashamed to tell her that I'd eaten four Oreos. It seemed like such an excessive amount of sweets. Who eats that much?!

It was only later that it occurred to me that lots of people eat four Oreos at a time. Skinny people eat six and eight Oreos at a time -- and even more. And that's when it began to dawn on me that my relationship with food was so different than it was for most people. Food was all about shame for me.

I wish I could say that stopped my dieting, but, alas, I went on to dabble a bit with anorexia in college (if I just don't eat anything than I would have to lose weight) made all the easier by the fact that the university cafeteria was only open certain hours that were easy to miss. But I also had this nagging built-in common sense that made me stop starving myself as I knew it was just going to make me sick. So long as I ate well and exercised, I had to simply accept the body I had. I can at least say I didn't gain the infamous Freshman Fifteen, at least not until I moved back home to take a work break before going on to my sophomore year at a state university.

When I started at that state university, I moved in with a family from my church. A very typical suburban family with Fudgsicles and ice cream in the freezer and Little Debbie's cookies in the cupboard -- so very unlike my free-school-lunch family. And a funny thing happened a year or so after I moved in with them: I lost thirty-some pounds again. If anything, I was eating more than ever. I was pleasantly baffled.

But it wasn't enough for one of the prominent ladies in my church, who took me under her wing, so long as I went on the same diet as her. I liked the attention from her; she was someone I had admired a great deal. And I figured I'd just do the diet and show her that I don't lose weight from diets. The mother I lived with was diametrically opposed to my dieting. "There's nothing wrong with how you eat. And there's nothing wrong with your body." But I read the "love hunger" book anyway, stunned to read that people actually eat whole cakes at a time. And loaves of bread. I couldn't recognize myself in any of the people featured in the book because, due to Irritable Bowel Syndrome, I was physically incapable of eating like that.

Worse yet, as I began, yet again, the onerous task of counting every little calorie I ate, I found myself sub-consciously thinking "today I only ate 800 calories -- let's see if I can make it 700 tomorrow." As soon as I recognized what I was doing, I realized this was bad. Very bad. I had to stop the "love hunger" diet. But when I explained this to the lady from my church, she accused me of being in denial of my overeating. It was like my pediatrician all over again. I remember wishing I could wear a camera on me 24/7 so they could see every little thing that I ate -- or didn't eat. Once I stopped the diet, my ostensible mentor was no longer interested in mentoring me. Thankfully I had the mother I lived with there to reinforce for me that I did the right thing.

For the next few years I was content with my body, or at least sought to be. But after a summer of great loss (long story -- novel forthcoming), I gained back the thirty pounds with a few more to boot. And then I had surgery on my ankle and knee at the end of 1998, with subsequent complications including a virus that appears to have finally triggered full-blown ME/CFS. And I gained even more weight. And no matter how much I told myself that dieting would be bad, and that I had to accept my body the way it was, I just couldn't tolerate the number on the scales. I sought out a bariatric physician and started the most drastic diet yet: a protein-sparing modified fast. I ate between 600-800 calories a day, mostly protein to keep my body from eating up my organs. And this time I lost weight alright -- 73 pounds.

But you know how this ends. Within five years of ending that diet, I'd gained every single one of those pounds back, plus an extra fifteen. Just like the other 95% of dieters. And the pounds I gained back have settled around my waist (the more dangerous place) where previously I'd been a nice hourglass shape.

Within a year of losing those 73 pounds, I was bedridden with ME/CFS. I can't make a causal link, of course. Yet I can't help but feel it certainly contributed.

I still can't eat chocolate without feeling guilt and shame. Or any food that is "bad." And I still find myself counting calories here and there, knowing I'll have to eat 1100 calories for the rest of my life if I want to make sure I don't gain weight.

So thank you very much, Geoffrey Cannon. I wish somebody would have told me, my mother, and my doctors that dieting makes you fat all those many diets ago.