Rebecca shares her experiences with dieting.

For a lot of girls, prom revolves around one thing- how you look on that night. Perfect hair, makeup and a fabulous fitting dress can require a lot of time and money. Some girls go on the infamous “prom diet” or exercise routine to look their best for that night. I can safely say I will be going on no such diet in preparation for that night. That may be my decision now, but it definitely didn’t start that way.

When I was a freshman, I was not overweight at all. Looking back, I actually would consider myself skinny. Yet something external, blame it on my peers or the media or society or whatever, told me otherwise. I saw myself as fat. Not that bad, though, I thought maybe if I just lose 10 pounds I will be good to go. And what have I been taught to do when I need to lose weight? Diet, of course. It was the only logical solution presented to every American from the earliest of ages. Our parents and grandparents go on diets, celebrities go on diets, even characters on TV shows go on diets. Dieting will make you lose weight, dieting will make your dreams come true. Little did I know, going on that first seemingly harmless diet freshman year would start a vicious, evil cycle full of despair, guilt, stress and, oh yeah, weight gain.

I remember I started out with something small – calorie counting. No gimmicks or weird shakes, just counting the calories of every single thing I ate throughout the day. Fast forward to now, I have tried (and failed) 14 different diets in about four years. I thought this every new diet I tried could be the one, “Why didn’t I try this diet sooner?” They all had different rules, different systems, different containers, nutritional ideals, portion sizes and structures. But none of that mattered because they all ended the same way – utter failure.

You see, there were many things no one informed me of before I started dieting. So I’m going to write this in hopes that somebody out there considering dieting reads this. These come from my experiences, so take them as you will. I wish someone would have told me these things before I started dieting.

You will absolutely destroy your relationship with food.
Humans have to eat food to survive. When I started dieting, the role of food in my life changed drastically. Food was no longer just used for sustenance; it became my enemy, my friend, my punishment, my reward. Eating a “bad” food could be a source of intense guilt for me or emotional torment if I didn’t eat it. Cheating, normally a moral issue, now existed in the world of food.

You will absolutely destroy your relationship with yourself.
I have never felt so worthless in my life than when I was dieting, or more specifically not having success with a diet. I have cried so many tears and built up so much hate for myself. Whenever I failed or binged or didn’t lose weight for that week, I felt like a total failure. I constantly wore baggy shirts and sweats and no makeup because I felt like a walking garbage can. My confidence diminished and my sense of style was mostly gone because I did not feel thin enough to wear cute clothes regularly.

You will start a vicious cycle.
I found that restriction and rules of the diets I tried often controlled me and made me obsessed. The more restricted I was, the more I binged when I messed up. This binge would typically leave me feeling terrible and I would want to restart the diet the next day or change to a new, even stricter diet. This pattern continued throughout the four years I dieted. Diet, restrict, binge and start over. I never truly lost weight, all I did was gain it. I certainly never improved my health.

My transition into the world of normal eating has been rough. It has been a couple months and I still find myself adding calories in my head sometimes. The temptation to diet to lose weight before things like prom, senior pictures and graduation still remains. I am not perfect, but I am learning to listen to my body and eat when I am physically hungry and stop when I feel full. I want to eat healthy foods to nourish my body and because it feels better than stuffing my face with processed junk food, not because I want to look good in a picture. It does not revolve around being perfect anymore. Instead, it revolves around making small sustainable changes in my lifestyle over time. The weight will come off, but it could take a year or more and I am ok with that.

Above all, please do not diet to lose weight. Weight loss does not matter as much as health, so eat to nourish your body. Love your body so much you want to feed it good things.