Glutton - Part 1

Genesis

It seems reasonable that looking back to where all my weight issues began could be helpful. When it comes to weight loss, I have always been a cliché.  Tried everything, succeeded seldom, failed often.  And no matter how hard I try I cannot remember ever being satisfied.  Which, I believe is the key to my whole affliction.

I was always chubby as a child.  Not ‘Maury Povich guest’ chubby but overweight nonetheless.  I can’t remember an age when I didn’t think about my weight.  I’m sure there was a time but it is beyond the reach of my memory.

When I was a sophomore in high school, my mother was in a pretty bad car accident.  Throughout that year, she suffered through many surgeries and a very difficult recovery.  She began to sink into clinical depression and sought the help of a psychiatrist.  That doctor told her that she was depressed because she was fat.  No, really.

My mother had never had a weight problem.  She is one of those people who fascinates me.  She eats until she is full and then stops…even if she likes what she is eating.  She had, in fact, gained weight after her accident due mostly to the massive doses of steroid medicines that she had been taking.  The psychiatrist prescribed Slimfast.  This happened in the late eighties.  Slimfast was a fairly new product.  My mom dutifully drank her shake for breakfast, shake for lunch and then ate a sensible dinner.  She lost weight.  In hindsight I realize she probably would have lost the weight naturally after the steroids were out of her system.  Nevertheless, her doctor pronounced her cured. 

The ramification of this period in our life was huge though.  It was the time when I discovered THE DIET.  I don't mean any specific plan or product.  I mean the actual concept of restricting food in some way.  Up until that point, I really had no idea what people did to lose weight.  Weight loss was not yet the big business that it is today.  The media was not saturated with diet pills, plans and scams the same way it is now. 

By the last month of the school year, I began sneaking my mother’s SlimFast shakes.  I was the first one up each morning.  I would make a shake and guzzle it down before catching the school bus.  I went through the school day subsisting on nothing but Diet Coke.  I skipped lunch and then devoured another shake as soon as I got home in the afternoon.  I meticulously cleaned the blender after each use so no one would know what I was doing.  Why did I feel the need to hide?  After all these years, I still do not know.

At the beginning of the summer, my mom found out my secret.  She wasn’t mad.  To my astonishment, she  seemed thrilled.  She bought me several different flavors of SlimFast powder and a Lean Cuisine meal of my choosing for every day of the week. 

My first diet.  Two shakes a day plus a frozen diet meal for dinner.  700 calories a day.  Virtually no fat.  Just as a point of reference, during the holocaust, Jews in concentration camps were given around 800 calories a day. 

The only thing I remember about that summer is being hungry…all the time.  I lost 30 pounds in three months.  I was getting positive attention from everyone including (finally) boys.  I learned that hunger (starving) created positive results.  It was a lesson that would cause ridiculous amounts of damage to me for the next 25 years.