‘What a life of yo-yo dieting has taught me about my weight’

Living life on lettuce leaf! Sounds alliterative. I wonder how many of you can relate to this story … During our teenage years, long ago, we were haunted by advertisements that sounded like this: “Are you too fat, too fat, too fat?”

An enduring impression was formed in the brains of young girls and women, the fear of fat. Quite phobic. Throughout our lives, women our age have been fed body image stereotypes of models in family magazines, where everyone appears with a plastic smile and a perfect figure, even mothers of very young babies.

We dieted, and lived life on salad and lettuce leaves, or so it seemed. My sisters and I took after our late father and his parents, not very tall, a bit on the chubby side. Plus we all loved our food. Nothing wrong with that, eating is sort of, well, necessary for maintaining physical and mental functioning.

Thus, we all battled to fulfil someone’s phobia of fat, to become what society or the advertising industry considered beautiful. But we are what we are, not what anyone wants us to be.

Personally, I turned to cigarettes to overcome the flab. I would have a cup of coffee and two cigarettes for breakfast and morning tea, unhealthy. I had an apple for lunch, more coffee and cigarettes. Mind you, this was in my days as a schoolteacher, when the staffroom was constantly a fog of cigarette smoke. Smoking for teachers might have been considered as a coping mechanism, to handle everyone else’s kids. Effective, but politically incorrect, of course. I was slim though.

Indeed, at one stage in my career as a foodie, I became anorexic. Weird, but it was related to some life experiences at that time. My beloved father passed away, and I divorced my husband. Grief for what might have been is its own land. Then I consumed only a few grapes per day, and one bar of chocolate per week. Daily, I checked my display of ribs, and still felt fat. Horrors! Despite this, a good friend cooked me a meal, to share good company. This encouraged me to resume eating.

Then I became hooked on food again, to feel like a blimp, no one’s role model figure. No bikinis! Gymnasiums started appearing in suburbia, including for women. I dutifully paid over for a membership and exercised on a treadmill.

Joy! Weight Watchers arrived! This was to be my salvation, supposedly. I signed over my fees. There I met like-minded people, struggling with their expectations. We had to please our consultants, with public weigh-ins, and sit in lectures about eating correct foods to obtain correct bodies. I realised the inequities of having a meeting on Monday evenings. We had to starve all weekend prior, instead of the traditional habit of kicking back with take away food. Yes, I was living life on a lettuce leaf.

After the weekly Weight Watchers’ meeting, I would arrive home with a packet of fresh crumpets. Yum. Then I would have to exercise them off again, before the next embarrassment on Monday. It was like group therapy for masochists.

I did drop off in my attendance. Guess what? I put on weight. Even worse, I joined Jenny Craig. Here I had to purchase their designated diet foods, and not any anything else. There was a weekly weigh-in. I knew I was on a hiding to nothing, when my weight-loss consultant first greeted me. For some reason, she was like the side of a bus. Lard butt and wobbling, jiggling flab, with prize ham arms. She was a lovely person, but did not teach me much.

I stopped eating special food, and the kilograms rolled on. It was yo-yo dieting, trying to change my body metabolism, to please something. One day, I woke up to think, “I am too old to care!” I considered myself a failure of the weight loss industry.

Strangely, at the age of 60, I was diagnosed with gluten and lactose intolerance. I radically changed my eating habits. Now my body weight is the same as when I was 18 years old, reasonably trim.

Slightly rearranged, as gravity afflicts all of us as we age. I control my own food intake, am healthy and not bloated. I even enjoy leafy greens now. Living life on a lettuce leaf.

Today, I still note these images of ‘perfect’ women in magazines. Maybe young girls are not as naive and gullible as we were. We should raise women to be proud of their body, no matter what shape or size.

“Are you too fat, too fat, too fat?” Living life on a lettuce leaf!

Were you involved in any weight loss groups or did you diet during your youth? What’s your attitude towards body image today?

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