The 10 Year Diet plan that didn't work

Lucia's experience with disordered eating

Because for 10 years, I truly believed all I needed to be happy was to lose weight. Once I got to my goal weight, life would be wonderful, I would start eating like a normal person and stop obsessing over food.

When I saw that magic number on the scale, life would be fantastic. I had an elaborate fantasy of life at goal weight. It was the place to be.

The thing with disordered eating, is you are very afraid of food, but also obsessed with it at the same time.

This post about my experience with disordered eating and how breaking up with dieting was the hardest thing I have ever done. And even if someday I hike Mount Everest, it will still be the hardest thing I have ever went through.

LUCIA LOVES DIETING (the 10 year part)

was it actually 10 years? well I remember in 3rd grade being so stressed and worried because I weighed 5 lbs more than my cousin. I remember stressing about events with food, and feeling bad if I ate a lot. I remember weighing myself, running on the treadmill, and then weighing myself again and being shocked that the number hadn't dropped. Calories burned = no weight loss? how can this be?

My first actual diet was in 8th grade. The Military Diet - Lose 10 lbs in 3 days!! I was hooked.

Disordered eating is a paler shade of an eating disorder. There's no throwing up, or anorexia or anything a doctor could diagnose. Its just that 99% of my brain power was going to the latest diet plan and the ONE thing I really cared about was losing weight. Yes there were other things going on in life, but I was really just fixated on this one goal.

The irony here is that although I was spending 99% of my mental and physical energy to GET SKINNY NOW!! the fixation on food and goal weight was having the opposite effect.

Thoughts, Beliefs and Confusion during the 10 year diet

I thought I had two choices

a. be miserable because I was always trying to control my hunger

b. be miserable because I was overweight.

choice a was the obvious choice, at least there was a goal.

And you might think, well that's not so bad. But the thing is, when you continually fail at the same thing, it effects you negatively. Especially when you are putting in SO much time, effort, money at this goal.

I couldn't figure it out. I was successful in other areas of life but this weight loss, this thing that SO MANY PEOPLE DO WITH ZERO EFFORT, was this unattainable thing. I felt like a dyslexic person trying to write a dissertation.

I truly thought something was wrong with me, that my control around food brain sensor was just missing. At one point I was doing whole30 and I stuffed myself with boiled potatoes. Which, by the way, cold boiled potatoes don't actually taste that good.

I saw this as proof, something is wrong with me, I can't even control myself around cold boiled potatoes.

What I didn't realize at the time was nothing was wrong with my body. It was just trying to keep me alive. Sometimes no food was available, so when there was food, survival instincts kicked in. Cold boiled potatoes will keep a body alive. This led me to feel powerless and believe I had no self control.

STRANGE behaviors during the 10 year diet:

1. Not eating after having a bad day. If the day was going to be terrible at least it could be a "good eating" day that was bringing me closer to my goal.

2. Not eating all day until dinner time. All of this not eating only lead to prove Newtons third law, It would be followed by a binge, followed by feelings of hopelessness.

3. Spending a lot of time researching the newest diet, THIS one will work!

4. Having a fantasy that a doctor would find something deficient in my body, give me a pill and I would get skinny. ( I didn't realize ozempic was only a few years away)

I would go out to eat with friends but not really be fully present because I would be trying to find the healthiest thing on the menu without being a buzzkill and just ordering a salad. I was trying to not eat all of the bread that came before the meal. I was watching how my friends could eat and leave food on the plate and wonder how they can be so nonchalant about food.

So many vacations I wasted by not really being present and instead just thinking about what I had eaten and worrying about the weight gain.

For years and years- I believed that there was something wrong with my body and it would only lose weight under extreme conditions.

And this was a FACT, nothing you could tell me would convince me otherwise.

I was ashamed

I was embarrassed

I was determined to whip myself into shape.

A pretty miserable way to live.

But this was the only life I knew. I loved finding new diets, new "science" to back it up. I loved getting my planner out and mapping out when I was projected to reach my goal weight. I loved the feeling of working toward something BIG, something that was going to make a huge difference in my life. I loved the compliments I got when I was (temporarily) successful in the weight loss. I loved the challenge of it, the glorious pride I felt after logging in a good day into myfitnesspal.

LUCIA QUITS DIETING (the 6 month part)

Which is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life thus far. Nothing else has even come close to the challenge of breaking up with diets. I basically had to reach in to the very core of my body, where these beliefs were intertwined with my DNA, and yank them out. Take them all the way out by the ugly root.

Which is a terrifying thing to do. The whole thing felt like a protection, something to lean on and keep me safe. I didn't know who I was without diets.

What I didn't realize was that this was actually a complex coping problem. Living in this headspace I was never fully present. My brain was always in the future, where my fantasy self was skinny and happy and loving life. My future self didn't have any bad feelings because how can you have any problems in life if you are thin?

So anytime I was feeling bad, I didn't have to feel the feelings. I had a complicated formula I reverted to any time something bad happened.

Instead of feeling the pain and shame, I would focus on my latest diet plan, and count the weeks until I was at my goal weight. I would think about how wonderful that was going to be and it would help whatever the current problem was.

The problem could be anything, from feeling fat, to crashing my car, to failing a test. The formula worked wonderfully.

Feelings of shame or embarrassment about myself just got tucked away as I distracted myself with the latest plan. And each one diet works as a wonderful distraction, it was so fun to find the keto/fasting/weightwatchers podcasts, success stories, recipes etc and I had no extra brain space to waste time on feelings.

The End of the Diet Regime

The last of the 10 year plans was a 5 day fast. I was feeling so discouraged and so hopeless that I decided not eating for 5 days would prove to myself that I actually did have self control and worth as a person.

The week after the 5 day fast, I was talking to a friend, I had gone to see an eating disorder counselor because I kind of knew I had a problem. She said that what she would recommend was going off of diets. Eating when I was hungry and letting my weight regulate. The very thought filled me with so much anxiety and fear. I thought this lady doesn't know who she is dealing with, that might work for some people but not me. I was telling a friend about it and was telling her how if I do that I will just keep gaining and gaining until I'm obese and suddenly I was sobbing.

which like, okay I cry pretty easily except this time I could not stop. Like 4 hours later i was still sobbing. I wanted to stop. My face muscles were tired and tear ducts overworked but it was like my body wanted to cry. All these emotions I had so tactfully tamped down for years were all bubbling up to the surface, all at one time.

that whole next week I cried. I would get myself up, cry on the way to class, go to class, cry on the way to the next one, get through it, cry on the way home cry cry cry.

close up view of the tear ducts finally letting out 10 + years of negative emotions

Finally a week went by and the water flow stopped. A dove flew back with an olive branch and a rainbow appeared. Well not really but I did realize that how I had been living was not according to God's will. I knew that this was a problem and I could go back to the diet cycle but it would not get to the root of the issue. And I knew God wanted me to live a full life, and not only use my math skills for counting calories/macros/ketones. It was the first time I had thought my lifestyle as a sin and not according to God's plan.

Still, it was incredible hard. Suddenly I had no coping skills when I tried on clothes and was horrified at the dressing room mirror. I would think negative thoughts and then they would just sit there. I couldn't jump into my fantasy future self because there was NO DIET!! what was I doing just accepting my reality? So many times diets tried to seduce me to come back, and many times I almost caved.

I felt so lost, and so afraid.

I had nowhere to turn but God. During this time I said so many prayers, and read so much in the bible, did a lot of journaling and therapy. Facing life without these coping mechanisms that had been there since such a young age felt impossible.

but I kept moving forward, even though I worried that a year from now I would be back on another diet and obese because of my current choices.

Many scary things I faced during this time.

At one point before class I stopped at a vending machine because my current direction from the eating disorder counselors was to not be hungry for a while. If I felt hunger- I was supposed to eat.

There wasn't much there but I bought a bottled starbucks frappuchino. 300 calories and my brain was screaming at me EMPTY CALORIES!!! what a waste! but I took a deep breath and drank it anyway.

And you know what? It made a difference. I wasn't hungry. I thought, huh maybe that whole thing with empty calories is just a myth.

Steps to recovery and living a normal life

• naming the diet voice that yelled at me about food and weight, and giving it a persona. Whenever the voice showed up, I would tell it to go away.

• realizing my appetite was a lot less then when in the feast or famine mode

• finding new things to occupy my time

• time - slowly building trust in my body and hunger cues.

LUCIA IRONICALLY REACHES GOAL WEIGHT? (the 3 year part)

So the first part of this stage is acceptance. I was heavier than I wanted to be. okay.

deeep sigh

I pretended that someone sat me down and offered me two choices.

a. death

b. life but ONLY at my current weight

I tried for an option c, where I could trade in a few years for being skinny but that was denied.

so i reluctantly chose b. Then I thought okay, If I have to be at this weight, I am going to do everything I can to love life. To be a fun, vibrant person that people want to be around. I am going to focus on being happier, feeling fulfilled in life, and have other goals that matter to me.

And I had so much extra brain space! I focused on enjoying life, having a good time, being funny making friends, helping people, I tried a new hair routine, learned to break dance, lived in a commune, and even joined the peace corps for a year**

I had the best summer of my life, I was so busy doing things and enjoying experiences, I did not worry about food. I just ate (almost) like a normal person.

Then Brad entered stage left, and that just turned up the brightness even more.

Having Brad in mt life was a huge help. Every once in a while I would read something or hear someone talk about how sugar affects your brain just like cocaine and it would spin me out. I would start thinking maybe I should go off sugar. Then I would tell Brad and he would just say sugar is not cocaine Lucia. And apparently Reuben and Helen have a piece of chocolate after dinner every night and here they are still living. Food is meant to be enjoyed. I would calm down and step out of the spiral.

fast forward life a bit and a while after Thomas was born something strange happened.

I was living life, eating how I wanted to, and one day I stepped on the scale and saw a number I hadn't seen in YEARS. This number was always my goal weight. When I had been at that weight before I was trying so hard to stay there. I had long ago accepted that I wouldn't see this number again because I didn't want to have to live life hungry all the time.

and yet. here I was. at the goal weight finally. without being on a diet. without putting much effort in.

Living a wonderful, busy, FULL life and this just happened.

Of course it was a good feeling. It felt like a sign from God. A reward for the tough times of diet breakup. A reward for doing all the counseling and therapy and the tough internal deep stuff.

but after the initial shock and glee, it actually wasn't that big of a deal. My self identity was no longer so intertwined with my weight.

There were bigger and better things going on in life, I didn't care so much on what a scale had to say. And now as I write this I am 4 kids deep, I again don't know if I'll get to that place again, but it isn't the main goal anymore.

Sometimes I look back at pictures, and I am smiling, but there's a double chin and my eyes are full of sadness. I remember the pain, the shame, the embarrassment. I wonder why this was my lot in life to frizzle away so much time in this hampster wheel of shame and starvation.

But I believe that if it wouldn't have been this, it would have been another form of anxiety. I learned a lot from my 10 years in the diet world, but in recovery I realized everyone has struggles. The point of them is to learn and to grow and become a more well rounded human.

While in the land of dieting, I KNEW that my life would be so great once I hit my number. I would have normal eating behaviors, look better, feel better, have shinier hair, etc etc.

I was mostly right, except I had the order of operations wrong.

FIRST I had to look better, feel better, be happier and have normal eating behaviors, and THEN I would lose the weight and my body would regulate itself.

To wrap it up in a nice analogy, its like if you were hiking a mountain and got stuck on this muddy trail. You climb up, then slide down, and get a glimpse of a view. Eventually you realize there is another trail, unfamilar and grown over.

But you like your comfort spot, yes its muddy, but there's a view sometimes and you know what to expect. IF you go on the new trail, you don't know where it leads. But then you do it. And the whole time you are going the new route you are worried about bears and getting lost and maybe you should go back to the mudpit. But finally, you get to the top of the mountain and it is so glorious, it is so much better than the view from the mudpit. You can just sit and enjoy the view instead of slipping in the mud.

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind

2 Timothy 1:7