Diet

I swear to Allah, I’ve been on a diet since I was 12 years old. When I was 12 years old I started to lose my baby-fat in places like my face but gain it in places like my tits. My body was preparing for a role that my brain didn’t know what to do with yet so I just stopped eating. Well, I kept eating but I stopped digesting the food I was eating. That was a rather unremarkable few years – you’ve all read the boo-hoo blogs and books by teenage bulemics.

It’s pretty straight-forward; girl feels inadequate, society reinforces that feeling, girl doesn’t look like women in magazines, girl starts barfing, it works, people start noticing, girl gets attention, girl continues behavior that brings her attention, people begin to demonize behavior, girl becomes addicted to behavior, girl eventually stops. I skipped a bunch of steps in there, obviously, but you get the idea. Many girls learn how to take care of themselves only after being demonized for not knowing how yet. That’s how I learned, after many many years of dieting, not to diet.

After all the barfing started to show itself on my face, teeth, and skin, I realized I needed a new diet plan. Plus, I wanted to keep my nails long and just couldn’t with that lifestyle.

Low-carb was all the rage, so I did low-carb for a few years. One of the biggest side effects of a low carbohydrate diet is feelings of starvation, hunger, fatigue and muscle cramping. Why people consider this a fair trade-off is beyond me, even having participated in it for so long, but I experienced all of those side effects. Plus, diarrhea, low energy resulting in an inability to exercise, halitosis (bad breath) from all the “Fat burning” and finally, heart palpitations from the added stress on my body to constantly have to break down complex proteins and fats. Plus, every so often I would look at my life from the outside and see myself eating microwaved cheese and bacon as a midnight snack and just feel zero self worth. I would look at bagels like they were the most sinful torrid indulgence on the goddamn planet!

I tried the Paleolithic (caveman) diet for about a year and found myself constantly frustrated by my dietary limitations and downright restrictions. Now this diet is all about returning our digestive abilities to those of the Paleolithic humans who lived on veggies, nuts, fruits, roots, meats etc while avoiding heavily processed foods like sugars, legumes, dairy products, and coffee. That’s pretty much when I bailed on that diet – a life without coffee was not cool with me. They also discouraged smoking cigarettes, which I since have, but at that time I needed coffee and cigarettes (almost exclusively).  Plus I began to realized that humanity evolved DELIBERATELY, we didn’t become able to process more complex foods as an accident. Cavemen would have fucking LOVED a brownie sundae once in a while!

The cocaine diet was more of a very fun addiction than a diet plan, but it worked!! If it hadn’t ruined my skin, bank account and ability to complete simple tasks, I would have stuck with that one indefinitely!

I was a vegetarian for six years and vegan for two of them. This was actually a very sustainable diet that made me feel great and healthy, I loved the cultural implications of maintaining respect for mammals, and I was never hungry, tired or constipated (solely as a result of my dietary choices). My time as a vegetarian came to an end one night around 2:30 am, leaving a bar with some girlfriends, we stopped by a Pizza by the Slice shop and I caved. Not only did I cave in requiring a slice of pizza, but when they only had Meat Lovers left, I went with it. My body responded so well to this delicious delicious slice that I just couldn’t diet anymore. Not only couldn’t I be vegetarian anymore, but I needed a life that allowed me to eat a fucking slice of pizza anytime I wanted.

No more dieting. This led me down the exercise path!