My weight problem and how I solved it (Part III)
In the previous two weeks’ articles I told the first part of the story of my problem with weight and how it started with a fast I decided to go on when I was 16 years old. The fast lasted two weeks, but the repercussions of it lasted the rest of my life. It started a cycle of dieting and gorging that left me 40 pounds heavier than when I started, and with a weight problem I had no idea how to solve. One of my attempts was a diet drug.
The Diet Drug
I was in my mid-20’s when I first heard about diet doctors. The time was the late 1950s. There were drugs that they prescribed that curbed the appetite and made dieting effortless. They were called amphetamines, aka speed. I went to such a practitioner. He took my pulse. He took my blood pressure. He gave me a prescription for Dexedrine.
It was all it was said to be. I had hardly any appetite at all. Almost as little as when I went on my starvation diet. And I lost weight almost as rapidly. In a matter of two or three months, I went from 160 pounds to 115 pounds. And then I decided I was thin enough. Audrey Hepburn, the pin-thin actress I aspired to emulate, was 115 pounds. So I stopped taking the pills.
And all hell broke loose.
My appetite, which had been nonexistent for two months, was now a monster beyond my control, etc., etc, etc. Everything that had happened to me after stopping the fast was happening to me again after stopping the diet drug. Within a few months, I had gained back all the weight I had lost and 10 more pounds for good measure. I was desperate. I did not want to believe that I was dependent upon a pill, but evidently I was. No matter how hard I tried, I could not stop eating.
My weight was 170 pounds and rising! I was terrified. I ran back to the diet doctor as fast as my fat legs would carry me. But horror of horrors! This time the pills didn’t work. They made me shaky; they made nervous; they kept me awake at night; but they did not make me stop eating. I was stuck at 170 pounds. I stopped taking the pills. My weight gradually stabilized between 165 and 160 pounds, and I continued to try to diet. What else was there to do? This reminds me of a definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome each time.
Malnutrition
Sometime thereafter, in my late 20s, I developed a case of malnutrition for some unknown reason. It was discovered by my dentist. I had developed gum disease. I had never been concerned with nutrition before. My only concern had been weight loss. I now became interested in nutrition because I had developed other symptoms of malnutrition of which gum disease was only one manifestation. I had developed acne, which I had never had before; low blood pressure; dry, brittle hair; dry, itchy skin; I was anemic; always cold; always tired.
Survival began to take precedence over weight in my priorities. I was still concerned with weight but as a component of good health, not as an end in itself. And I never dieted again – not in the sense of going hungry, eating food I didn’t like or depriving myself. I would as soon go on a diet again as put a bullet through my head. And I remained 30 or 40 pounds overweight throughout my adult life until about eight years ago. I felt I had only two choices: to go hungry and be thin or to enjoy food and be fat. And like Scarlett O’Hara I vowed never to go hungry again. But I believed there had to be another waya way to enjoy food and still be thin. And I believed that other way could be found in an understanding of nutrition. The study of nutrition became a hobby, an avocation, a passion. Finally, I did find that other way – a way to enjoy food and not be fat.
That other way will be the subject of next week’s article.
Mary Lou Williams, M. Ed., is a lecturer and writer in the field of nutrition. She welcomes inquiries. She can be reached at 267-6480.