Dieter's resume

1979-1993
Fat kid/ compulsive overeater: being alone and lonely gives you plenty reason and opportunity to eat.

1993-1997
high school - vegetarian. for the most part surviving on snickers bars, nestea ice tea; booze and cigarettes on the weekends. still fat.

1997-2001
College life: quickly gave up on the vegetarianism due to being lazy. ate garbage but burned calories running to class and chasing busses. Chubby but cute

2001-2002
Emotional eating. Rewarded myself every morning in NYC with something chocolate and/ or baked. Many a Caramel Macchiato. Then frappucinos and milkyways waiting for the path train back home. watched my dad be devoured by cancer. scared, frightened, sad, hated my job, hated everything, hated life. felt sorry for myself and tried to bury it with food. got way fat.

2002
Gluten free. Quack nyc doc said i was allergic to everything. Tried to avoid sugar, gluten, yeast, dairy, etc. Impossible. went back to eating garbage.

2003
Weight watchers. lost 20 lbs, got stuck at 200. could not understand how i could possibly eat fewer points without going crazy from hunger.

2003 - 2005
Atkins. did supergood, not the "cheeseburgers and bacon" version that people think is atkins. Got down to 170s and kept it there. Started running. It was awesome.

2006-2007
Standard slacking diet: got hurt and stopped running. kept eating though. not anything obviously terrible, but apparently me and carbs don't get along when I'm not exercising. regained some weight, but stayed under 200.

2008
Uber junk food: Talk about not caring anymore. I ate super poorly for over a year -- dieter's backlash I suppose. Then got diabetes. The best thing was getting diagnosed and sent to a nutritionist, who makes me keep a food journal. I'd be embarrassed to write down how I ate before.

2009
Diabetic Exchange: slow and steady, weight started coming off. Limiting yourself to 1600 calories a day will do that. Now limiting myself to 1500, and trying to reduce carbs. 150 g/day seems like a lot for diabetes.

SCD - too much work for not enough improvement (though I suspect I am just too impatient)

Low-residue: naturally gravitated toward this approach and bloated up to 230. Trying again in a conscious and careful manner to still lose weight. Maybe now that i'm less fat, things like pasta and rice will have less of an effect on my blood sugar. even a exchange-friendly portion was too much back in december. if i get spikey again, i'll just do low carb and low residue and eat whatever is left, which i think will be chicken, carrots, and maybe cardboard.

I wonder how many other things I could have accomplished with all the time I spend thinking about food and making decisions about what to eat. When is iams going to come out with "people chow" that I can just scoop into a bowl and eat twice a day? I won't even need the cool hairball formula like my cats get.