I Went on My First Diet at Age 13

Have you ever been so normalized to your strange reality that it takes a fresh set of eyes to help you see things more clearly? I’ve been having this experience a lot over the last year. The one I‘d like to expand on is a reflection on my first diet. The time I lost 60 lbs, at age 13.

I was an athletic kid. I played football, hockey, soccer and even baseball for one season. I was also a slender kid until the summer going into grade 3. My memory is a bit hazy about it, but I remember spending that summer developing my love affair with plain Lay’s potato chips. I will never forgive Mark Messier for his damn effective marketing strategy during that period. He instigated me during all of my favourite show’s commerical breaks. “Betcha can’t eat just one!”

He was right. I couldn’t and to be honest, I didn’t even want to. This was the first time I began to lean on food for comfort.

I was an outwardly happy child. I was also an inwardly lonely and outwardly neglected child. I wasn’t aware of this obviously, but I was aware of one thing- Lay’s potato chips were fucking delicious, and I felt objectively happy while I ate them.

So began a cycle. This cycle progressed for about 7 years. I gradually gained more weight each year and had no clue why. My mother always told me that I was “due for a growth spurt”, which I wilfully clung to. I had no understanding of the human body, the laws of thermodynamics or what “healthy” eating even looked like.

If you’ve read my first blog on here, you may remember that a standard dinner in my household was along the lines of a hungry man dinner, a couple pizza pockets or 3–4 granola bars that I could scarf down quickly as to not interfere with me going back outside to play.

My weight peaked at 180lbs at 5'1 when I was in Grade 8. So, like any “normal” 13 year old boy, I decided to go on a diet. This took more than one try, but I eventually succeeded. My parents did not know how to eat properly which made them unequipped to teach us either.

My mom was supportive in my pursuit of weight loss as I would often communicate my frustration about my weight to her. So she helped in the only way she really knew how — she bought me some “all natural” diet pills. Of course they didn’t work, because I didn’t change my eating at all. All I knew was this magical growth spurt was tardy to the party and I was fed up with being the fat kid.

When the pills didn’t work, I felt defeated. The solution I created to my problems was simple, and one that I’d repeat in cyclical fashion throughout my late teens into my twenties. I had my first “cheat day” and promised myself I would start fresh next week.

It was halloween and I was upset about the fact that I hadn’t lost any weight. So I binged my face off and ate as much halloween candy as possibly I could. I told myself that I wasn’t going to eat any of it starting tomorrow, so I may as well live it up now.

This is something that anyone who has ever struggled with binge eating can relate to. It actually gives me a visceral reaction to realize that this was the first time I ever did this.

If only I knew the cycle I had started. If only I knew all the pain, misery and self loathing that this cycle would bring me in the future. Would anything have changed if I were more aware? I mean probably not. At the end of the day, I had already begun using food to cope for five years at that point.

This was just my introduction to diet culture and the restrict/binge cycle that plagues a lot of us today.

After my first failed attempt at dieting, I gave up for half a year, until one peculiar moment. My father, sister and I went to see a mundane movie on an uneventful Saturday night. The movie was called “Smart People” and I guess you could say that it changed my life. The plot of the movie is irrelevant, but it inspired me in an ineffeble way that I find kind of hilarious.

So the next day, I went on back on my diet. This time was different though. I decided I was going to eat better foods and start exercising. This change happened immediately. The next day I remember having a shrimp stir-fry that even had broccoli in it — which was revolutionary to me. I wanted the broccoli. I had no idea how to eat healthy but I assumed that if it was green and not gorge-worthy, then it was probably good for me.

I started to actually lose weight this time. I was making wiser choices with food and it was paying off. I asked my mother to help me pack better lunches and she did. All was going according to plan.

My mother then did what she thought would help and bought me a weight-loss supplement plan. I found out later that it was just another one of those bullshit multi-level marketing companies (pyramid scheme) generic protein powder with some bland and chalky mini wafers called “snacks!”

I replaced my meals with this protein smoothie for breakfast and lunch. I was allowed to eat a normal dinner, as long as it was 400–600 calories according to the Isagenix pamphlet that is still glued into my pysche. If I needed a snack, I could have 1–2 (up to 6 a day) of those little mini wafers that were 10 calories each. It was my new routine and god damn if it didn’t work. I paired this with a compulsively obsessive style of training and voila— I went from 180lbs to 120 lbs in 5 months.

This story always seemed so normal to me. In my last blog I referenced my “rose-coloured glasses” and how they were once surgically branded onto my eyes. When I was wearing those shades, I reflected back on this time drastically differently. I referred to it as the time I changed my life and lost 60 pounds by eating better and exercising. When I take them off, the image is starkly more grim. I was a 13 year old kid who was on his second crash diet, second weight loss supplement program, who was already setting up “cheat days” and would count calories just to try and burn them off later.

Literally. I had a treadmill in my basement and would try to match the calories burned on the treadmill to the calories I’d just snacked on. I had developed an at home workout that I would do four times per day. Yes — four times per day. It was an assortment of chin ups, sit ups, push ups and light dumbbell presses. I had no idea how to train but I was obsessed with weight loss, so I figured more was better. Which it technically was in the short term.

The only cost was my relationship with food, training and body image. I actually remember always trying to get my friends to play manhunt (which is a version of hide and go seek tag) so that I could get more cardio in. I would intentionally get seen so that I would be chased. Being chased meant I had to run. Running meant cardio and cardio meant weight loss. The ultimate result of weight loss meant validation, meeting our society’s impossible beauty standards, and being worthy in my adolescent mind.

I share this experience to reflect on the impact of being raised in a diet culture. How it shaped me and how it snowballed as I entered adulthood. The irony now, is that I actually help people lose weight. It’s a murky body of water to navigate.

I think that a large part of my passion here is to help protect people from making the same mistakes I have. To save them from the pain of wading through the confusing world of fitness alone. To save them from ignorantly diving head first into a crash diet that begins a long cycle of YOYO dieting. To educate people about what dieting is and how it can be appropriately applied. To let them know that diets aren’t for everyone. Especially not for children.

If someone had educated my parents, things might have been different. Perhaps my mother wouldn’t have unknowingly helped me develop a toxic relationship with food from crash dieting with weight loss smoothies from a pyramid scheme based company at the age of 13.

Maybe I wouldn't have spent my 14th birthday telling myself that it was a cheat day and I would make up for all of the pizza and cake tomorrow. Maybe I would have just enjoyed my birthday like a normal kid.

In that world, I like to imagine that I didn't spend over a decade restricting myself from Monday-Thursday just to binge every weekend. I like to imagine that I learned how to call a friend and lean on them when I was sad instead of blacking out the curtains and eating a large box of pizza. These are all hypotheticals, but I like to imagine them. I do intend to protect people from that reality though.

I can’t undo the struggles that I faced but I can help people feel more supported through their own. Who knows, maybe one of the clients who I’ve worked with in the past will be better equipped than my parents were if their child is struggling with their weight and wanted to diet an an inappropriately young age. I can only hope.

So I aim to educate that diets can work — but they can also lead to eating disorders. They can be inclusive and improve one’s health, but they can also be overly restrictive and detrimental to one’s physical and mental health. They are not by nature “good” or “bad”, they are simply a tool. They are a tool that can be used to make one’s relationship with food and their body better or worse. It all depends on you as an individual and how you go about any diet. So yes, I do think diets have their place and can be used appropriately. That place is just not appropriate for any 13 year old child.