I’ve been dieting for pretty much my whole life. I’ve had a weight problem for as far back as I can remember. No one else in my family had a weight problem – except an aunt and brother who tend to gain in their old age.
When I was 8 the doctor put me on what were fondly called black beauties. A half a black beauty a day in a spoonful of applesauce. Yuck. I sped thru the morning, happy as a clam, then came lunch, and BAM! I crashed. I became a completely different person – we even have one of my old report cards where a teacher notes this. I also lost 60 pounds: enough so that my dad didn’t recognize me one day when he picked me up from school. (Of course, in retrospect, he coulda been drunk which added to the non-recognition, hee hee)
I gained back 80 lbs once I got off the speeders.
I’ve also been on every diet known to man, I think. Primary diets I can remember in my old age:
Atkins – when it first came out – I did lose but gained it back
Air Force Diet – lost weight, gained it back
Overeaters Anonymous – (strangely enough OA didn’t help me lose one pound, altho AA was what helped me quit drinking)
Weight Watchers – I have one of Jean Nidetchs original books, lost weight, kept it off longer than the others.
A bunch of others. I remember my dad coming home with diets some guy on his crew was on. The thing to remember is with all of these diets, they didn’t have the diet food they have now. TV dinners, desserts and such.
Then, in 1990, a cousin of mine came across the choose to lose diet/book, and met the author. She got a signed copy for me and sent it to me. I sat down and read it, mainly the recipes but I didn’t start on a diet. I stuck the book in with my other cookbooks.
One fine morning, I woke up, looking for something to read with my coffee. I got the Choose to Lose book and started reading it from the beginning.
It dawned on me that it didn’t sound as hard as I was making it out to be. I went grocery shopping that day, and started the diet that day.