Michelle's Story

Excerpt from Am I Hungry? What to Do When Diets Don't Work

Michelle was chubby from an early age. Red hair, lots of freckles - and chubby. There were starving children in Africa so her plate had to be cleaned. She had an athletic, skinny younger brother who could, and would, eat anything not nailed down - so she had to make sure to get her share first. Soon after her parents divorced, a girl at her new dance school teased her about being fat, so she quit taking lessons.

Since she was the "smart one" not the "athletic one", she spent most of her free time just hanging around with her friends. They snacked to chase away boredom and she gained more weight. She also discovered that food was great for relieving stress, at least for a little while. In the long run though, it became a major source of stress for her. Subtle and not-so-subtle comments and embarrassing shopping trips to find clothes made it clear that she had to do something. The stage was set.

For the next twenty-five years, Michelle was off and on one diet after the next. She had her favorite - the one that worked for her as long as she stuck to it. She also discovered that exercise helped too - as long as she stuck to it. But it was hard to stick to any of it for very long. She developed features of an eating disorder that helped her cope with her painful relationship with food.

Ironically, despite the fact that she couldn't stick to a diet forever, she had little trouble getting through college, medical school, and residency, and eventually found herself in the position of advising her patients to lose weight. Most of them didn't seem to fare any better than she had. That was little consolation.

She felt discouraged and ashamed. How do you help someone do something you haven't been able to do yourself? She knew it was time to try again but it didn't seem fair - her husband and children never dieted and they never struggled with their weight. In fact, they ate whatever they wanted, but they rarely ate more than they needed.

Did they just have a better metabolism? That was probably part of it. She knew hers was a mess after years of overeating and dieting. Did they have more willpower? No; it seemed unlikely that they would have been able to follow a diet for very long either. But there was something else, something fundamentally different about the way they thought about food. In fact, they didn't really think about food at all - unless they were hungry.

Could the answer really be that obvious? Could she learn to listen to hunger again to guide her eating? Her little voice said, "I really don't want to go on another diet. Let's try it their way this time."

It was surprisingly simple, but it was not always easy. After years of trying to follow other people's rules about food, ignoring hunger, and eating for all sorts of other reasons, it was difficult to trust her body and her instincts. But she forged a new path for herself and developed a system to manage her weight that really worked.

And something else completely unexpected happened along the way. She discovered parts of herself she had lost, or did not even know existed. She found health, happiness, and wholeness. She also discovered a purpose for her life and a passion for helping others find their path to wholeness too.

This excerpt is from Am I Hungry? What to Do When Diets Don't Work by Michelle May, M.D.