This is the Weight and Healthcare newsletter! If you appreciate the content here, please consider supporting the newsletter by subscribing and/or sharing! This is part of a three-part end of the year series that will discuss the past, present, and future of diet culture.
I turned 15 years old in 1980. I had become bulimic 3 years earlier at the age of 12. I was fully immersed in diet culture and would remain so until I was 45 years old. I well remember the low-fat craze. I remember feeling guilty about eating guacamole, of all things. I also remember that while I was on an extreme low-fat diet, my hair turned brittle and started falling out, my skin became flaky, and I gained 25 pounds, which is the opposite of what was supposed to happen on the miraculous low-fat diet.
I was five foot six and weighed around 120 pounds. I was always trying to lose ten pounds so I could be at the low end of what the BMI said someone my height should weigh. Not one single doctor spoke to me about the fact that I had an eating disorder. They were all fully on board with my extreme dieting and didn't care a whit about my extreme self-loathing, except to try and prescribe me antidepressants.
I turned 15 years old in 1980. I had become bulimic 3 years earlier at the age of 12. I was fully immersed in diet culture and would remain so until I was 45 years old. I well remember the low-fat craze. I remember feeling guilty about eating guacamole, of all things. I also remember that while I was on an extreme low-fat diet, my hair turned brittle and started falling out, my skin became flaky, and I gained 25 pounds, which is the opposite of what was supposed to happen on the miraculous low-fat diet.
I was five foot six and weighed around 120 pounds. I was always trying to lose ten pounds so I could be at the low end of what the BMI said someone my height should weigh. Not one single doctor spoke to me about the fact that I had an eating disorder. They were all fully on board with my extreme dieting and didn't care a whit about my extreme self-loathing, except to try and prescribe me antidepressants.