Teenager’s Guide To The Starvation Diet
I starved myself for weight loss in high school.
I have a startling transformation in our family photo albums from fourteen to sixteen years old. While looking back on them during this recent Christmas holiday, I was reminded of the terrible desperation that I felt at seventeen to lose weight — fast.
I started starving myself.
I was young and dumb, so I just stopped putting things in my mouth. The food cravings became unbearable after twenty-four hours but I reminded myself of why I was doing it by viciously berating the person in the mirror. I even wrote down a guideline that I put into the top drawer of my dresser that I had hoped no one would find. If anyone had, then I’m sure I would have been taken to a psychiatrist for evaluation:
1: Do Not Eat.
2: Do Not Drink.
3: No One Likes You.
4: Remember How Fat You Are.
5: If You Eat You’ll Die.
The last guideline disturbs me to recall, but I was always emotional and dramatic.
I started seeing physical differences within a few days. That was the most exciting part about it. It gave me a superficially charged confidence that I used to start attending some of the classes that I had been skipping and spending time outside, at the mall, and at friends’ houses. It felt good for a while. I didn’t weigh myself or track my progress. I just tried to not eat. Every time that I failed at that, I punished myself with unspeakable insults.
To intensify my weight loss, I tried doing some cardio work-outs, but that didn’t last. After a minute or two, I was out of breath, listless, and dizzy, and had to lie down for a nap.
Dangerously and most foolishly, I stopped drinking water too.
I don’t know how many days I had gone without food or water because I gave in to a drink a few times, but, one night, I woke up in a daze and shuffled to the bathroom. My legs felt like iron bars and my head was spinning. By the time I was done peeing, I couldn’t stand up anymore and sat down on the toilet. I could hardly move or think, but I knew that I felt empty. I felt like the last bit of moisture in my body had just been sapped away. It took a while, but I managed to turn on the faucet and drank out of it for a minute straight. I sat back down for a while, got more water, then shuffled back to bed. I thought about getting something to eat — that maybe my body needed fuel — but I remembered that I was fat and that no one liked me, so I went to sleep.
My mother eventually noticed that something was wrong and started monitoring what I was doing. I told her that I was trying to stay skinny. She explained that starvation diets were dangerous and not sustainable but that, if I was going to be foolhardy, then I had to at least drink lots of water. She did not recommend that I keep doing it though because I wasn’t overweight anymore but she was not going to force me in either direction. At seventeen, I was in the complete and autonomous control of my day-to-day operations (which probably gave me the gall to make that drastic dietary decision in the first place).
Why it had never occurred to me to just eat less and exercise, I may never know.
Because I felt that I was starting to look a little strange, I started eating again. Within a few weeks, I had gained some of the weight back. Within a year, I was worst off than when I started. That confusing period of starvation, emotional climax, and social reward really scarred me and helped me to develop a terribly unhealthy love/hate relationship with food. I went down a spiraling cycle of debauchery, punishment, and reward for years before I was able to understand and control my diet. From a kind of energy vampirism where I would watch extravagant mukbang videos hoping that whatever vicarious thrill I could siphon off of them would sustain me, to eating nothing more than a hand-full of dry nuts and berries twice a day like I was a rabbit in the forest — I was a mess.
I’ve tried it all: pescatarian, vegetarian, vegan, raw, gluten-free, keto, OMAD — you name it and I’ve spent months in it. Sometimes years. All in pursuit of a great body. Health was always secondary.
Starving myself gave me temporary abatement from my feelings of inadequacy and inferiority to my peers but resulted in a decades-long psychological war with myself and my cravings that has only recently ended.
I’ve discovered that what works best for me is consistent exercise and alternate-day fasting. It almost felt like cheating when I first started, but I realize now that it’s just what my body prefers. Different things work for different people. I may have discovered that sooner had I not been made so neurotic.
If I could go back to those difficult high school days, I would sneak into my dresser drawer and discretely replace those self-destructive scribbles with something a bit more encouraging.
To every teenager (and misguided adult) out there that is considering starving themselves to lose weight, I offer you these simple guidelines:
1: Eat To Live.
2: Drink To Thrive.
3: People Like You.
4: Remember How Beautiful You Are.
You’ll be alright if you stick with those. Just pay careful attention to number 1 and let its meaning expand in your mind.
Total starvation for weight loss is self-destructive, unsustainable, and can lead to psychological traumas that manifest in the form of complicated and unhealthy relationships with food. I do not recommend it.
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