My History with Diets

I never tried any official "diet" or organized plan of any sort until I started working full-time in 1997 after I graduated from college. I went through various phases of trying to eat less or exercise more, or drink diet pop, etc. etc. but none of these really had any plan or goal, and of course I never really stuck to them. Besides the junior year of college when I somehow dipped down to 185, I had hovered around 200 most of my post-7th grade life (to 215 in May of 1997).

Two things changed when I started working and living on my own - I had a LOT more free time all of a sudden (all I had to do was work, which was WAY less than all the stuff I had going on at school) and I had total control of what I was eating now - I bought my own groceries, made my own meals, and ate out when I wanted to.

So in the fall of 1997, after I got settled into my job, I found a diet book I had gotten awhile back called "The Clinic 30 Program". This diet was based on the "conventional" diet thinking we've all had pounded into our heads since elementary school health class - low-fat, high-carb, high-protein, eat less calories (the food pyramid we all remember!). All "modern" medical science at that time was in agreement (or so I thought anyway) about that, so I figured it must be right! This particular program was set up so that you could have a specific number of servings of each of the food groups - 4 bread/cereal, 7 meat/protein, 2 vegetable, 2 dairy, 3 fruit, and 1 fat. A "serving" is about what you'd expect - a slice of bread, an ounce of meat, a piece of fruit, a vegetable, an 8 oz glass of milk, and fat was like a pat of butter. So this was an extremely low-fat diet. Basically, if you eat all your servings every day, that's about 1300-1400 calories a day.

I actually have all of the paper charts I used to keep track of what I ate every day, and my progress. I started at 210 lbs on 9/22/1997. I followed the program (there were 3 phases) seriously for over a year, and then off-and-on for another year and a half after that (when I started marathon training in 1999 I stopped - remember that point for later :)

I got down to 170 on 6/29/1998 (actually got down to 167 two days later, but that was because of the stomach flu, so it doesn't really count). I also completely trashed my body and lost almost all of my muscle mass. For the first several weeks of the diet I felt like I was starving all the time (and now I know that I was starving my body!) The diet did not emphasize making healthier food choices, only counting calories and servings, and I still wasn't in the habit of eating vegetables and fruit, so most of my days I really only ate my bread/cereal, meat, and fat servings (I did eat more fruit as I went on because I was so hungry). I was probably fortunate that by the time I got to my "goal" weight I had started running, and also joined the Rochester Athletic Club and had started lifting weights regularly, because it sort of forced me to eat more and kept my muscle from completely disappearing. Looking back, I think that the abuse and stress I was putting on my body with that diet caused me to get sick a lot more - I had a lot of stomach flus and other "tummy" issues.

I ran a lot in 1998 and did a full marathon in 1999. You don't gain weight doing marathon training, no matter what you eat :) After I was done with the marathon in Oct 1999 though, I stopped doing all the running I was doing, but I kept eating like I was doing all that running. So, by March 2000, I was back to 200 again.

Between 2000 and 2003, because of the amount of physical activity I was doing, I stayed between 190 and 200. But I slowly crept up to 215 again by the beginning of 2004, and I decided I needed to figure out something better...

Next post...why I now understand and believe that carbohydrates hold the key to our weight (and maybe a lot of our health)