You can probably recall that one moment from your childhood that humiliated you to your core. A moment that forever changed you in a way so profound that you only realized its significance after years of reflection.
My adolescent moment of life-changing shame came in fourth grade. It was weigh-in day. Each class member had to get on the scale while our teacher, Mrs. Tide (not her real name), recorded everyone’s weight on a notepad. As each student came to the scale, Mrs. Tide was busy talking about her past life as a cop and an ex-wife. These stories were usually fun, and sometimes drowsily repetitive.
I recall the moment Mrs. Tide had my weight in hand. She abruptly ended her rant about “…bluebirds in a snow storm…” and then shouted to the class, “95 pounds! You weight 95 pounds!” Everyone in the class immediately stopped daydreaming or gazing out the window to the playground and stared at me. Until that point, I had no idea that weighing 95 pounds in fourth grade was fat. Yet, everyday after that dehumanizing moment, I had to asked myself, “Am I fat?”
So at age nine, I started dieting. I of course had no clue what a diet was, or how I could safely lose weight. All I had was a label, “fat”, that I needed to somehow change to “skinny.” For the next two years, my diet consisted largely of reprimanding myself around food, because I was “fat.” I somehow believed that fat people did not deserve to eat.
Eventually, I discovered kooky dieting methods such as water fasts, or eating only fruits or salads. With these diets, I would lose five pounds and then gain 10 pounds later. I had yo-yo dieting down to a science. The logic was, if I hate myself, diet. If I feel guilty, eat more, and promise myself to start a new diet on Monday.
Even while I lived on this nutritional disaster, I had visions of competing in a figure competition after seeing images of figure competitors like Monica Brant, Jenny Lynn and Laura Mak in Muscle and Fitness Hers magazine. Figure competitions are events where women aim to sculpt their bodies with round muscles and have a small percentage of body fat, maybe 6-10%, for the competition day. The goal is not to look bulky, but to simply accentuate feminine curves with a little muscle.
After years of toying around with weights in the gym and gaining my nutritional education from popular women’s magazines, I was finally determined to lose weight and keep it off. I would compete in a figure competition.
I worked with some local trainers who said they could help me get in shape for a figure competition. One thousand dollars and no results to show for it later, I met a short, Italian version of the Incredible Hulk named Louie. Louie had competed in natural body building events, and he knew what it took– emotionally, nutritionally and physically to change your body.
When I told him about my goals of competing in a figure competition, he said, “Do yah really wanna do this? Cause if yah do, I can tell yah what you need to do. But you gotta do it, not me, not anybody else but you.”
With Louie’s guidance, for the next 79 days, I measured my food, worked out religiously and kept an eating diary while working to attain one of my life’s goals. I even changed my sleeping habits and went to bed by 11pm, when normally I’d hit the pillow around two or three in the morning. Finally, when the day for the competition came, I was ready, at least for a novice. I was a tanned and muscled 129 pounds at 5’8” and smugly fit for my first figure competition. I harbored fleeting images of how fabulous my life would now be as a slender Naweko.
Dieting for the figure competition was nutritionally monotonous, and every day I’d dream about eating hamburgers and a candy bar. I could not wait for that diet to end.
All the same, I did not want to let all of my hard work to go to waste and blow up like a pig after the competition. So while training, I was adamant about finding sensible ways to keep my weight down. I told myself, “I don’t want to feel in any way restrained on my new diet, especially since these last few days of training have approached nutritional sadism.”
After the figure competition, I thought that I would never have to go through yo-yo dieting or weight-loss struggles again. I could not have been more wrong.
“You fat heifer, how can you gain 35 pounds in just three months? What are you, insane?” In three dreamy months, my dieting glory ended. I knew what to do. I knew exactly what foods I should and should not eat. I knew exactly how much exercise my body required to maintain my ideal physique.
I had all the information I needed to be a dieting sensation. But the glue that held my fitness and nutrition regime together was gone. I no longer had the pressure of appearing half-naked on stage beside women who had trained for years to shape their bodies into muscle-laden and curve-driven sculptures.
“I’ll stay around 140 pounds after the figure competition,” I promised myself. This was sensible and doable. But somehow I lost the willpower and motivation to hold my diet and exercise program together.
I decided that conscious eating, or “anti-dieting,” would be my method for sustaining a sensible weight. I was so wrong. After consciously eating for three months, I blew up to 165 pounds. That provided sufficient proof that I needed another method to keep my weight under control.
Next, I asked professional fitness models and figure competitors how they maintained their ideal weight. I did not ask what exercises they did, or what they ate, because this information is ubiquitous. Instead, I asked how they maintained the drive and discipline to stay fit. This was the illusive paste I needed to hold a sensible diet and fitness program together.
With that, Skinny Fat Chicks is not a dieting book. Skinny Fat Chicks asks these questions: “Why do women sabotage their sensible diets? Why do women regain weight after successfully dieting? And what steps can women take to prevent these dieting mistakes?”