Diet, schmiet!

To stave off my apathy I decided I should write about something close to my heart. Dieting! The fact that I am; my need to; how much I hate it etc. As I opened my laptop I suddenly remembered that this brainwave had come to me on a previous occasion. So, I will share with you, an excerpt from a year or so ago!

Diary entry – sometime early in 2008 – could be anytime (given the number of times I ‘started’ a diet!)

I thought I would document diet attempt no. 1,765,907 (at least!). Okay, so I am not actually starting today. It is day 0, or maybe -1. This is the day that I cram as much crap as possible into my body before I start ‘dieting’ tomorrow.

Okay, okay…. Now I have dieted enough (!) to know that one shouldn’t ‘diet’, it should be a way of life etc etc. Blah blah. I am (if I do say so myself) very ‘evolved’ in the world of dieting, health and fitness – as are many women. Ask us about the inner workings of a car engine and we draw a blank, but anything to do with calories, carbohydrates, GI, Atkins, Zone, South Beach – and so on – and we are literally walking encyclopedias!

I am pretty sure I started dieting in high school (not primary school, though that was when my brother started teasing me about my weight). Of course, I started with the tried and true methods – the liquid diet (where one only drinks liquid all day). It only goes for a day so is really quite sustainable – highly underestimated as a scientifically-proven, balanced eating plan?!! However, naturally the kilo or two you lose that day reappears the next day. Which is probably why I moved onto the far more responsible and effective diet, the Israeli Army Diet. I think that was what it was called anyway. You eat apples for two days, cheese for two days. Or something. Not sure I got past one day – possibly my dislike of apples was a problem.

Anyway, just before I turned 15 I became more serious about my chosen sport (basketball). I had an encouraging coach who boosted my self-esteem and had faith in my abilities. Even so, I can’t recall now how or when I started “The Diet” (ie. aka, the diet to end all diets!). But, I exercised more – lots of sprints to prepare for our training sessions and started cutting back on food.

Again this was before I had any idea about food (and before I bought my first pocket-sized Calorie Counter), and I think I survived on corn chips (CCs had just come out – circa 1983) and orange mineral water. Over the month of December 1983 I lost about 1 ½ stone. My parents started to get worried. I had gone from 10 ½ stone to 9 stone. (See, given that I am 177cm tall, I wasn’t actually overweight to begin with). They took me to a doctor (who helpfully told me that if I wanted to be a model – obviously ALL girls of that age aspired to be models – I could be, because, he encouraging told me, ‘there were plus sized models’). Despite his extraordinary help (NOT!), I became more obsessive about it all, lost another 1 ½ more stone which started the spiral that has been my life since then.

I won’t bore you with details but, I eventually got to about 47kgs – skipped parts of school to go and sprint around basketball courts. Baked obsessively, ate stuff, exercised for hours after etc etc. For the next couple of years, as I finished high school and went to Uni, my life was all about food. I eventually learned how to vomit, and becoming bulimic was (of course) handy as I started to eat more. Not so handy, however, in that I started binge eating for the first time in my life (having always had a good appetite, but not obsessively so) which lasted on and off for years and still haunts me today sometimes when I don’t feel in control.

Of course, having hit 47kgs, I have managed to also hit 120kgs over more recent years. I recall the day that my life became less about food and dieting – remembering that I hadn’t counted calories that day and what an achievement that was! Of course, the binge eating has lasted and it depresses the hell out of me to realise now that I have hit 40 and it is 2008, that I have spent 25 years dieting and ‘not dieting’. Imagine what else I could have occupied my mind and my life with had it not been about that.

I have lost and gained at least 20kgs so many times over the past 15 years I don’t care to even think about it. I have done Weight Watchers – successfully a number of times…. Only to regain – either quickly or slowly. I know all of the answers – lifestyle choices, sustainable habits, food, exercise – cardio, weight-bearing etc and yet I can’t seem to act on my knowledge. I often joke that I am motivated – HELLO, I am 40, single, childless and have never been in a relationship - of course I am bloody motivated. But I don’t seem to have the level of commitment I once had as a 15 year old – to stick to anything (including normality).

My most recent diet was some vague version of one of those low-carb diets. It worked. I lost some weight and felt better. Then came Christmas, I suspect the weight is all back on. I don’t really know because you see, for the past 5 or so years, I don’t want to know. I am tired of numbers – calories, kilos etc. Tired of my life being ruled by the scales and what they say. I remember my last successful stint at WW – despite having lost 21kgs I was desolate when I hit a plateau and each week I would weigh in to no avail and I would spend the rest of the day in a state of depression.


Sunday, 25 January 2009

Back to the future. So, here I am, possibly a year later and in the same predicament. I consider options like lap-banding, in times of desperation. I was told that you can lose about half of the weight you need to through the operation. For me that could be 20kgs. A great loss, but I have done that before through dieting and think I would prefer that option rather than the more severe notion of surgery!

So, this time I am doing the meal replacement thing – shakes twice a day. I am almost 2 weeks in and am already waivering. I have never been a believer of meal replacements. My problem isn’t really my meals (though possibly the size of them is an issue!). It is the other eating – chocolate for television. Comfort food. Food for when I am sad, lonely, depressed, happy, or just because I deserve it. However, I have decided that I need a kick up the backside and so I will do this for a while. Still no weighing of course, so I will wait until I feel a difference in my clothes and then consider something a bit less severe.

I am doing pilates twice a week (once with a small group and one private lesson). My lessons involve a lot of strength work as well as ‘core’ strength, so it is really my cardio exercise I need to focus on. I am aiming for three times a week. At the moment I am hoping to keep up a program of interval training – alternating walking with very slow running. I am only doing 20-30 minutes, but if I can keep that, I can increase the time and amount of time running.

Am I sufficiently motivated to continue? I am not sure, but I really hope so. I suspect my BMI is over 35. I am now 41 years old. Time is literally disappearing. One of my new year’s resolutions was to actually STOP focusing on trying to meet a man. “The One”. I have decided though, that I am not ready to accept a life alone. Without a family. Without having had a child. So, another resolution involved looking into sperm donor programs and the possibility of having a child by myself.

So, surely that should give me the motivation I need. I am certainly hoping so and will keep you up to date with my progress.