Struggling with your weight? Do you gain, lose, gain, lose with frightening regularity? I did for 10 years. I felt ugly, untouchable and totally out of control. Everything conspired to keep my self esteem low and my weight in its destructive cycle. Look at all the ultra thin woman of page and screen...Calista, Jennifer, Naomi...need I say more? Thin is good,fat is bad. Just ask the diet industry, from doctors like McDougall and Ornish to the girlies, like Carrie Wyatt and Marilu Henner.To paraphrase:
  Eat a no fat, no dairy, practically all carb diet.Follow it and you will thin. The reason you can not keep the weight off is that you lack self control. My diet is scientific and correct and you, well, you are just plain wrong. 
  And that is the general consenus: fat people self indulge; fat people have no control; fat people are gluttons and gluttony is a Sin. So, is there any way a fat woman in America can feel good about herself??? If even Oprah suffers, the answer is a resounding "No!"

  Until I was almost 40, I was "the thinnest of the thin" as an old family friend called me, the Calista Flockhart of my milieu. I had to be reminded to eat. I had a baby at 36 and a few years after that, I started to diet just to drop a few pounds. I weighed 125. But this time, my pantry was well stocked with kid food, foods I hadn't bought when I was single: breakfast cereal, cookies, crackers, chips, pretzels, wy too many snack foods. So when I was hungry, they were what I ate. I started with  mouthfuls, but months later was eating whole bags and boxes.  I dieted again: no fat, no dairy, grains, fruits and veggies diets. I lost weight, but after a couple of months, gave into almost unbearable cravings for fatty carbs,  cravings as strong , if not stronger than my cravings for cigarettes were all those years ago.Then a new diet and  then a new failure after initial success. And this was repeated year after year.

  By November of 1999 I was my heaviest, 180 lbs. I had just failed at another low fat diet, gained all my weight back and more.  I thought about food all the time, and was always starving, never satisfied, and deeply unhappy. Heaven was a huge can of potato sticks and a salami, tomato and cream cheese sandwich. Well, 2 salami sandwiches, slathered with the forbidden cream cheese and healthless salami, and then the entire pound package of Oreo cookies.Daily I craved all the forbidden foods- real, high fat cheeses,  ,fried chicken livers, Kentucky fried chicken, eggs, bread and butter,banan cream pie, raspberry cheesecake,etc.Now the holiday parties approached and I was even fatter than last year. Even though I have a cousin who looks exactly like the Pillsbury Doughboy and a few others who yo-yo just like I do, I was ashamed to to sit at the thanksgiving table and to celebrate Christmas fat. Its embarrassing to eat pumpkin pie with whipped cream on top at 180 lbs, as most of you know. In America fat people are a "free" target. You are allowed to sneer at them and openingly make fun of them. If friends and family saw me obese, they would talk behind their hands and after the party,say oh,dear,you have such a pretty face,their voices oily with phony sympathy:
  Poor Artcat! So heavy! And with such a pretty face! She used to be so thin, used to dress to kill ! Did you see her in that outfit? She looked like Barney,ha ,ha,ha! Did you see her at the store? Looked exactly like a lemon! She just let herself go! I feel so sorry for her...
  So depressing. And so true. I seemed unable to control myself. But I knew something was wrong. I had controlled myself. I stopped drinking 8 years before; I quit a 25 year smoking habit, 14 years previously. What was wrong with me???Why couldn't I control my cravings? Am I weak??? Lazy? Crazy? Evil??? I was so desperate. I even considered suicide.

  Then one afternoon, I watched the Doctors Heller on the Oprah Winfrey show, discussing carbohydrate addiction. They listed the symptoms...and suddenly I knew, they  were talking about  me! This explained why I was always hungry, always drowsy after eating, and unable to control my cravings. It was physical, not mental, just like nicotine addiction! There was indeed a specific, physical enemy: carbohydrates. Hope, at last! I started on the diet the next morning. I kept it strictly for 1 week. I ate exactly the things the Hellers recommended.I gave up coffee. I lost 7 lbs. And best of all, all of my cravings for chips, cookies,mashed
potatoes,etc.disappeared. 
   After the first week, I loosened up. I ate an extrememly small amount of carbs with most meals, like 3 grapes, or 2 potato chips. I needed morning coffee with "cream" and sugar that I had everyday  since I  was 15. As an old hippie, I don't like the idea of sweeteners, artificial, refined, of often unknown ingredients. So I drank  coffee, cutting the sugar from 1 teaspoon to 1/2 teaspoon and using half and half instead of fat free non dairy coffee creamer. I never used sweeteeners or any substitutes for carbohydrates in recipes. If I wanted chocolate, I ate the best chocolate I could buy. But since my cravings were gone, it was always a normal portion of candy, only 1 or 2 cookies, or half a piece of pie. I ate  whatever I wanted for one meal, usually dinner (but not always, even though the Hellers say it should always be the same meal) - carbs, dessert , whatever, trying to balance the carbs with protein. I do this still. 
  I forgot about fat. 
  I did not count calories. 
  I forgot all the rules I learned so well from the governments food pyramid to  Doctor Dean. 
  Slowly, I relaxed around food. Even though many object to this diet, I ignored them and ate on, because I felt intuitively that the theory was true , and would work for me. And it did! I became a happy eater again. 
  I stopped daydreaming about food. 
  I only thought about the dishes I had to prepare for my family . 
  When I was hungry, I ate the lovely meals of normal portions that satisfied me. 
  I was no longer obsessed with food! Often, I forgot to eat as my work became my focus instead of eating. Only writing this article reminded that I, just a few monthss ago, was utterly possessed  by weight issues. Now I am eating the way I used to eat, and the things I  used to eat, when I earned the title" thinnest of the thin."
  Of course, I needed new clothes. Imagine the joy when I  bought a fitted blouse, a medium, that actually buttoned all the way down over my once huge hips. Again, I could dress to hide  figure flaws and enhance some positives,  not dress in constant coverups that covered nothing.

  The "experts" repeatedly stated that this diet would not work, but they were wrong, and  I am FREE, no longer a slave to food!  Suddenly, I realized I felt good about myself again. I had kept the weight off months longer than I had on any high carb diet. Now all my meals are low carb, high protein.  In 10 months I have lost 35 lbs. And in the winter, when I walk more as I like cold weather, I will lose more.This diet is totally effortless. I am steadily eating less and less without even noticing. Now, I am not defined by my size but by my soul, my heart and my actions. I am normal, again, my true self.
 

UPDATEMarch 2003  I have kept the weight off,and lost more,weighing 128 ,sometimes a little more,sometimes less.I had to replace my clothes again,as I am down to a size 8 .My cholesteriol is under 200. Now I eat whatever I want, I just eat mostly protein foods. But I eat cake,chips,crackers bread, whatever,just not too much. What can I say? High Protein Diets saved my life. 
 

  Please take the Carbohydrates Addicts test. See if you are like me. The Carbohydrate Addicts diet defies conventional wisdom, defies logic, but is not as extreme as it first sounds and as I eat plenty of low carb vegetables everyday, and way less food, I believe it is healthy. I certainly feel better than I did out of control and 180 pounds.This diet is not for everyone, but if you struggled like I have, and are at rock bottom, this diet may help you, too!