While cleaning out a file cabinet recently, I came across a document I created many years ago when I was dieting. It was a recording of my weight.
Seeing those numbers caused me to pause and reflect on the person I was when I was entrenched in diet culture.
It was not a pretty picture.
Although I couldn’t see it then, my obsession with dieting and weight loss turned me into someone I really didn't like.
My efforts to become more likable made me completely unlikeable.
At the time, however, I thought I was hot stuff. I walked around with an air of superiority because I believed I had cracked the code. I had finally achieved what so many others struggle to do: I lost weight.
But that wasn’t the only thing I lost.
I also lost touch with myself, my body, my values and what truly mattered.
Addicted to Weight Loss
When people complimented me on my smaller size, little did they know they were rewarding me for having a pretty disordered relationship with food, exercise and my body.
Unbeknownst to them, their praise encouraged me to pull the reins in tighter, to eat even less and exercise even more.
My original goal weight was no longer enough.
I had become addicted to losing weight and the admiration I was receiving. I didn’t want my high to end so I kept moving my target lower and lower.
Withdrew from the World
The more obsessed I became with micromanaging every morsel I ate and mile I ran, the more I withdrew from the world.
I started stressing out about social events. My food and exercise rules made socializing, especially over food, very difficult.
Already a homebody, I found myself staying home even more.
I avoided parties, happy hours and restaurant gatherings. I was scared to be around food that was off-limits and worried I’d lose control once I started eating, especially after a glass of wine. I fretted if I stayed out too late it would hurt my running performance the next morning.
I also became anxious about traveling.
I feared going to places where I wouldn’t be able to control what food or running spots I’d have access to. I’d cram my carry-on bag with all my safe, allowable foods.
Sneaking and Bingeing
As my list of illegal foods grew, I began playing hide-and-eat.
I started sneaking my forbidden foods and eating them in secret—often at night while standing in the kitchen in the dark.
I was ashamed to be seen eating anything “bad,” especially the large quantities of it I craved. I worried about getting caught and tarnishing my super-disciplined, healthy eater image—an identity I took a lot of pride in.
Because I was depriving myself so much, my secret eating took on a binge-like, Last Supper quality.
I’d urgently stuff cookies into my mouth all while telling myself “What the hell, I might as well go for it because I’m never going to let myself do this again.”
Relationships Suffered
With most of my time, energy and headspace focused on controlling my weight, my relationships suffered.
When I hung out with friends, I was often preoccupied with thoughts about what I couldn’t eat, what I wanted to eat and how my body looked.
My rigid rules also started to drive my boyfriend away. Understandably, he grew increasingly frustrated with my resistance to eating certain foods, my insistence on exercising every day, my mood swings, and my need for complete control.
I was no longer the fun-loving, go-with-the-flow gal he once knew.
Completely Different Person
I was now a person who would contact a food manufacturer to express my outrage when they increased the calorie count on their soy crisps.
I was now someone who, while everyone else was dancing at my friend’s wedding, would sneak handfuls of chocolate truffles off the dessert table then hide them in a napkin inside my purse to eat later in my hotel room.
I was now someone who almost missed a flight because I just had to get a 5:00 a.m. run in before leaving for the airport.
I was now a hyper-vigilant dieter who spent more time tracking my calories, miles and weight than I did connecting with others, laughing and enjoying life.
I was so ensnared in diet culture and so desperate to conform to the thin ideal that I was oblivious to how dieting was damaging my physical, mental, emotional and social health.
Stopped Me from Going Back
Although I am appalled by and ashamed of my behavior, I feel compassion and sorrow for my younger innocent self who bought into our culture’s very convincing, toxic narrative that thinness would bring me health and happiness and that the size of my body determined my value and worth.
I also feel gratitude for finally being able to see so clearly the harm dieting was causing.
My cringe-worthy behavior ended up playing a key role in helping me escape diet culture, recover from chronic dieting, and heal my relationship with food, movement and my body.
Whenever I was tempted to start dieting again, I reflected on the person dieting turned me into and the incredible damage it did.
Knowing that I never wanted to return to that person and place again motivated me to stay on my healing path.
