My name is Karla Parsons and I have been on every diet on earth.
My average size when I was a teenager was an 8 or a 9, but it kind of kept creeping up after I got married at age 20.
I used to eat whatever and never cared to count calories, because I thought no matter what I would always be somewhat overweight.
My highest non-pregnant weight ever was 165.
That was the beginning of dieting for me when I realized my size 10 pants had rolls doubling over the side!
I have been on detox flings, Atkins, South Beach, GI diet, Suzanne Sommer's diet plan(food combining..did not work AT ALL!!I actually gained on that diet without cheating!),Slimfast, very low calorie diet(read: semi-starvation!), Potatoes not Prozac diet(no sugar other than fruit! ever! and very little of that),grapefruit diet and Special K diet.
Any very restrictive diet eventually backfired, sending me into the world of hardcore dieting-binging cycle.
Honestly, no diet has "cured" me of my compulsive eating, although I have lost 30 pounds.
I am still tracking what I am eating, but am trying a non-diet approach. It is going to be a long journey to get away from the dieting minset. I am now doing what is known as Intuitive Eating. It is superscary because I am so used to having hard and fast rules. But I want complete freedom form my bingey eating and deit insanity. I want to be a size two, but is it worth my whole life? I think not. That being said, I can't completely quit dieting cold turkey. I am still going to weight regularly nad track calories.
But I am working on being non-judgemental about my decisons about food. Food is not a moral issue. Food is Food. It is not inherently bad or good.
This is going to be a long process to recover from years of dieting, but I pray I will make it through on the other side and finally be free from both food and body anxieties. Any support is welcome and appreciated.