When was the first time you dieted?

When was the first time you dieted?

For me, the game began early. I remember a stupid, scrawny boy who shall remain namelss (MATT!) calling me a cow in the fourth grade, and soon thereafter, trying multiple single-foot diets (only lettuce! only bacon!) Those lasted about a day each. When I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism in fifth grade - a slow metabolism - I was put on medicine, which I take to this day, and wound up shooting up about a foot but staying essentially the same weight. But my junior high years were filled with feelings of being chubby and oversized (I was bigger than all the boys. Bigger and taller. Like a miniature Bea Arthur, I imagined). In eighth grade, I vividly remember wearing a size 13/14 dress from Casual Corners to a school dance (white, shirred, ruffles, fitted, blech) and all my friends were, like, Size XXS.

Well, fitsugar.com recently asked the question to readers: When was the first time you dieted? The answers are eye-opening - check 'em out and then tell me here: when was your first time?

Unless you've never been a dieter in which case, my hat's off to you. :-)

Comments

It was fourth grade for me, too. I was a fairly active kid, but unfortunately, I had an outsized appetite that resulted in serious chubbiness by around age 8. My mom, who didn't understand how a child of hers could be fat, told me (in public!) that I ate so much I embarrassed her, which of course made a lasting impression. She put me on the old-school (=yuck) Weight Watchers diet when I was in fifth grade, and my disordered eating started soon after.

Twenty years later, I can say that I have a mostly normal relationship with food and exercise (and a very healthy weight), but it didn't happen overnight.

Sorry for the long post!

Like both you and Peach-e, Leslie, I too began my dieting in the fourth grade. Unlike you, however, my pediatrician decided that since I didn't have a thyroid problem I was just an overeater despite the protests of both my parents and myself. Amazingly it was my dermatologist who realized that I did have a non-thyroid related hormone condition called PCOS when I was eighteen. Ten years of a very critical pediatrician though left some very deep scars. Even though I was finally diagnosed with a problem, it wasn't until ten years later that medical science made enough headway with PCOS to tell me why eight years of Weight Watchers wasn't working. Thanks to that, I'm now able to lose weight on a high protein, lower carb diet and be the size I've always wanted to be but could never achieve.

really one time i tried not to eat anything so i could lose weight

Not until I quit swimming in high school for a while. That was more establishing new eating habits as I no longer needed over 3000 cals a day!

I was pretty chubby in middle school and remember on one particular doctor's visit I was told to lose some weight. This didn't seem to phase me UNTIL some guy in my gym class called me a hippo. I was an extremely lazy little girl and used my asthma as an excuse to get out of gym class whenever I could but after that comment I got upset enough to really do something about it.

I started my diet after a day of binging. I also started doing tae bo (soooo 90s haha). I remember being on vaca in disney world with my family and doing it in our hotel room (I had written down each move from the tape with # of reps and everything cause the tv there had no tape player).

So I was about 13 when I started a real "diet". It wasn't long after that that I just adopted a healthy lifestyle in general, took up running and...yeah, the rest is history =D

I did not go on my first diet until I got to college and put on the proverbial freshmen fifteen. I freaked out and started to workout obsessively and monitored everything I ate, which was not healthy either.

I love to eat and don't really love to work out, so it has been a constant battle. Now I'm just trying to avoid extremes and establish sustainable exercise/eating habits.

I was 9 - it was doctor ordered. Long story short, after years of poverty we moved to own and began to eat normal sized meals, weight gain ensued. I gained weight 'too fast' for my pediatrician, although I was probably about 100lbs and had reached my full height by that time.

Oh, forgot to add that as a mixed race kid in an all white area, I'd been called 'fat from 3rd grade on. It was easier than calling me the 'n' word (although I got called that, too). And, to be honest, I was a chubby kid. I had been a thin but normal kid, but once the regular food went away, so did the thinness.

I remember being in 3rd grade and going to my doctor and asking about how I could lose weight. A few years later, I developed anorexia which soon became bulimia. It's been a roller coaster ever since.

I was always unhappy with how I looked, but never truly dieted until the end of my senior year in high school -- I wanted to start over in college, not be the chubby kid anymore. Then I went to college, started drinking, gained back the 15 pounds I'd lost plus 5 more in the first semester, and then lost 40 pounds in the second semester and following summer. My weight's been stable since, but my body/metabolism hate me and I don't have a healthy relationship with food. But c'est la vie for us girls, right? I eat healthily, just.... I count it. All. Compulsively. Like, weighing my apples and stuff, but then getting super hungry and devouring 3 cookies, then realizing how many apples 3 cookies counted as and going to the gym for an hour to compensate.