JUST DOING IT: My Weight Management (AND FAILURE) Story

It was the year I was to turn 50 that I looked in the mirror and suddenly saw a fat, old woman. Never mind the shock of stepping on the scale to find I was weighing in at 192 pounds. Never mind the realization that if I kept eating the way I was I would just keep getting bigger. Now I was in pain: It was the searing irritation of the rash where my thighs squished together in the crotch of my pantyhose that finally led me to scream, "Enough!" I had been battling fat all my life. It was time to win the war.

Growing up, I was pretty much a normal-size kid, with hereditary chubbiness. My mom was a great cook, and I enjoyed big helpings of mashed potatoes and gravy, pot roast, and lemon pie. I ate peanut butter on a spoon for a snack, and we kids learned to make icing with melted butter and powdered sugar to spread between graham crackers. My mom, who had been a fat kid, and was heavy most of her adult life, seemed to go in and out of periods where she worked on weight loss. I remember that she once used Metrecal, one of the pioneer liquid diets. But she never complained about my weight, or made me feel bad about myself in any way. Adolescence brought me new curves in the right places, and my comparatively small waist looked good in the gathered skirts and cinch belts of the day.

My weight took a substantial turn for the worse between my junior and senior years of high school. I won an American Field Service scholarship as an exchange student to New Zealand. Cheerfully, I set sail for an eight-month stay halfway around the world. As excellent as the situation with my temporary family turned out to be, in those days there was no easy communication over that distance, and I was unable to connect with my home in any way other than snail mail. That and the challenge of being a "nice person" 24/7 and trying to fit in turned out to be quite stressful.

The menu was different from what I was used to - and rich. I ate fatty meat products from the ranches of New Zealand several times a week, and plenty of fresh butter and cream. As an honored guest wherever I went, it was important to appreciate the constant hospitality, which usually included tea with milk and mountains of delicious home-baked sweets. Nobody had heard of cortisol back then, but the combination of stress and calories added more than a pound a week to my 5'3" body. By the end of my stay, I'd blown up like a blimp. I weighed 155 when I got home, and my horrified mother took me straight to the doctor. I can't remember what steps I took to reduce that weight, but I'm quite sure that simply returning to my former habits helped a lot. Unfortunately, I believe I added a fluffy layer of permanent new fat cells starving to be filled.

College involved no weight management issues that I remember. During my early career days, I lived for a time with my sister. The two of us decided to try the all-protein diet (maybe Stillman?) and lived on eggs and hamburgers for a few weeks. Effective, but yucky. Definitely not a diet for the long term.

Later, when marriage added the inevitable twenty pounds, I joined Weight Watchers. In those days, WW involved lots of specialized recipes, like "apple pie" made with bread crumbs molded with gelatin into a crust, filled with artificially sweetened apples--and more gelatin. I measured my food, and met with the weekly WW group for weigh-ins. It was a lot of trouble, but I was a compliant WW member, and achieved "lifetime" membership at my goal weight of 126. Unfortunately, the extreme discipline and strange cuisine of WW (at that time) did not last a lifetime. And cooking two different menus, his and hers, was inconvenient to say the least.

At the age of 33, I took up running. I ran 3-5 miles most days, and entered many 10K races. Ultimately, I decided to try the first Kansas City Marathon, and trained steadily for a year. In 1979, I ran my one and only marathon, finishing in four hours, seventeen minutes. Speaking of unforgettable achievements! While running 35-50 miles a week, I ate anything I wanted, and hit my lowest adult weight of 122. After that, my interest in intense running waned, although I continued to engage in various fitness activities, including a fitness center membership with aerobics classes, until it shut down. My interest in eating did not wane.

When my husband retired at a young-ish age, he enthusiastically took up the cooking role. He's good at it, too. His love for me expressed itself in calories and I was consuming way too much of a good thing. And THAT is how I ended up hauling around almost 200 lbs. of me. Quite a lovin' armful!

And that's the way I arrived at my 50th birthday year.

Since it was 1996, low-fat was the prevailing method for weight loss (although Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution in its original edition was already finding popular success and fierce criticism). So naturally - with the encouragement of my doctor -I chose the low-fat route and using the primitive tool of a daily diary, I began my weight loss work again. By my 50th birthday in September, I had lost nearly all of the 50 lbs. I aimed for.

Along with dieting, I began exercising at home, using aerobic video workouts for up to an hour six days a week. My video collection and exercise devotion grew into a hobby and a habit I continue to this day. I highly recommend the catalog of http://www.collagevideo.com/ and the supportive community of http://www.videofitness.com/. These resources helped me sustain this important part of my weight management life. (Today my workouts include weight training, yoga, rebounding, ice skating, and running. I'm participating in local road races of 5K or 10K again.)

With the combination of strenuous calorie-counting, a low-fat routine, and consistent exercise, I maintained my weight loss for three years. A writer friend pitched my success story to several magazines, and ended up writing a "how I did it" article about me—complete with before and after pictures—that was published in FITNESS magazine. I joined the National Weight Loss Registry, a long-term study aimed at tracking the habits of people who sustain a substantial weight loss over time.

And then?

The next two or three years of casual noshing at the office, a couple of overfed vacations, and general boredom with the ordeal of weight watching brought about what sometimes seems inevitable to us eternal yo-yos: weight creep. The pounds piled on. Once again letting my weight climb above 160, I felt hopeless and resigned. But even worse than hopelessness was the likelihood that, without intervention, my weight would never stop going up and up and up. I HAD TO DO SOMETHING.

Again.

In 2002, Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution was achieving visibility—and this time, much approval—in the media. Why not give the low-carb thing a spin? So in January 2003, I bought myself a boatload of pork rinds, and got going on the latest diet.

These days, as I read the "newbies" section of the LowCarbEating.com forum, I see versions of my own induction story. The fears, the frustration, the endless questions and choices! Thank goodness for a place where experience and advice are shared in such a generous and encouraging way! The one common feature of all my successful weight management endeavors? A community of people working on the same problems.

I carried Dr. Atkins' book around like a bible, and checked out other low-carb resource books. I kept track of eating and workouts and goals in Fitday. I visited the Forum constantly, poring over success stories and menu suggestions. Gradually the pounds came off.

Two and one-half years into my low-carb journey, with all its side-trips, backslides, and stumbling around, I now describe myself as low-carb for life. I'm at a healthy weight of 135 (give or take). My blood chemistry is incredibly good. And best of all, I never feel hopeless.

I've found many ways to adapt my preferences to the low-carb life. I enjoy being able to eat regular salad dressings, and my husband can cook many of our old favorites, complete with butter and cream sauce. We can even do a Jack Sprat thing occasionally—he eats the inside of the potato, I eat the outside.

From my story, you can probably tell that I'm a fairly disciplined person. I've never been a compulsive eater, a snacker, or a carboholic. Not eating sugar or bread or pasta or pizza or popcorn (what is it about those P foods?) doesn't haunt me. After all, I've practiced not eating almost everything at one time or another. So in some ways, I have an easier time of it than many others. Yet I know that successful weight management is not about discipline and denial. It must be about positivity and pleasure.

And I have found my way at last.

Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution, New and Revised Edition author: Robert C. Atkins asin: B000C4T48I