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When I was 16, I decided that losing weight might be quite nice. After my usual Easter binge that year, I promised myself I’d never eat chocolate or crisps again. It was somewhat similar to that hazy moment when victims of hangovers vow never to touch a drop of alcohol. However, I actually stuck to my word. I haven’t eaten either for four years.
When you tell people you don’t eat chocolate, you tend to get one of two responses. People either think you’re joking or they think you must have some sort of medical condition which callously forbids you from eating it. Most people tend to then list possible exceptions; advent calendars, Easter eggs, Twix sandwiches (Admittedly, the last in that list isn’t often mentioned but it is what I miss most).
When I first began dieting, I hated telling people. I was a teenage boy. I didn’t know any other teenage boys who were on diets. Dieting was something my mum’s friends and the women in Special K adverts did. It was something I had to hide. What if I told people I wanted to lose weight but then couldn’t actually do it? As such, I tended not to mention it to anyone until I’d lost enough for people to mention it to me.
Not eating chocolate has paid off though. Over the past four years, I’ve lost around eight stone. There are obvious benefits. I sweat less, I can wear skinny jeans and my relatives no longer have to think of kind euphemisms for ‘fat’ when describing me. I think I heard the words ‘husky’ and ‘well-built’ more than any person should.
There are downsides to weight loss too. It turns out that losing weight doesn’t automatically instil you with the confidence you never managed to gain as a chubby awkward teenager. I’m not too sure why I thought it would. Maybe I saw too many adverts in which miserably fat people where transformed into smily happy people due to a miraculous new WeightWatchers diet; as if the extra flab on their face formerly weighed down their lips and made smiling an impossibility. Maybe I thought the film Just Friends was a documentary and that I’d turn into Ryan Reynolds if I dropped a few stone. That never happened. I’m still as anxious and shy now as I was in my teens. The difference is that back then, I could at least blame the fat. I’ve sacrificed my scapegoat.
Something I find more annoying about weight loss is that, despite learning that losing weight doesn’t make you confident or happy, I still worry about putting weight back on. Eating doesn’t have the same pleasure as it once did. Each time I eat, I experience a pavlovian response of guilt. I get annoyed at myself for constantly having a running inner-monologue of how many calories I’ve consumed that day. But I fear that the day I no longer have that running monologue, I might return to obesity. But then I dislike myself for still thinking that being heavy is necessarily a negative thing. I’m stuck between not wanting to put on weight and not wanting to care about my weight. I’m not saying that losing weight is a bad thing, it’s just that you have to spend a lot of time worrying about food to do it and that’s a habit that’s difficult to stop.
Weight loss is not a shortcut to confidence and it seriously distorted your relationship with food. This is a weight loss story from a male teenage boy; it is my story, narcissism and all.
I agree with you about the food relationship aspect - anyone's who had to diet and lose a significant amount of weight knows that it takes a long while to adjust your thinking when you reach your goal. I think it's especially hard for you because you have completely outruled specific foods, making them almost forbidden fruit, and I think that might make it harder for you.
The best advice I ever heard from someone who used to have an eating disorder was that those people who say they 'eat what they want' have it right - by eliminating taboos from food, eating anything you want BUT only eating until you feel *satisfied* (i.e. not going as far as to be bloated or feel like you can't breathe) it trains your body and your mind to know when you've had enough, and you don't have to stress about putting weight back on. Just keep reminding yourself that if you could lose that much weight, if you even gain 5 or 10 pounds again, it's easy to lose it and you haven't 'fallen off the wagon'. And don't lose perspective that the whole aim of losing weight is to reach a *healthy* weight - as long as you're healthy, nothing else matters.
Is it bad that pavlovian response made me think of meringue and then giggle. Probably.
Seriously though, losing 8 stone is a massive achievement. Maybe you should be confident not because you're now thin but because you had the courage and determination to go through such a huge transformation process. You've obviously got enough inner strength to succeed where so many other people fail. That seems like a much better reason to feel confident about yourself than what you look like on the outside, fat or thin.
I can quite see that weight loss in itself does not magically lead to social confidence and inner happiness. But I think you are a frickin' HERO and I applaud you. For a teenage boy to have the self-will and discipline to lose that amount of weight, when dieting is often seen as the preserve of girls, and to be able to wear nice clothes and feel more comfortable in your body (the anxiety of regaining weight notwithstanding) is a serious achievement that very many could not pull off. Could you let your weight fluctuate a little, 6 or 7 pounds each way, if needs be, in order to relax a bit about food? I don't at all suffer from shyness but I really value and appreciate shy people. I urge you not to regard your shyness as a default handicap. I'm not at all sure the world thinks negatively about shy or quiet people in the way that they worry it does. And if you hate being shy, well...you have shown how powerfully you can make changes to your life, and you could maybe see that as another mission or challenge? You already know you are more than up to the task.
And thank God this is from a boy. It's about time we woke up to the fact that body image and social and media pressure is something that is beginning to affect a great number of young males too. I'm not being PC here...I massively agree with people attempting to be healthy and look attractive. I just think boys worry much more than we let on or are given credit for.
Go you on the 8 stone! And it's refreshing to see an article of this type from a lad too 
I don't think losing weight necessarily distorts one's relationship with food. Sure, the running commentary thing is quite irritating, but the only way to both keep the weight off and stop feeling like you're punishing yourself by doing so is to change your perspective and palate regarding what consititues 'food'. If you transform your idea of regular food to things like hefty portions of vegetable and salad, minimal fizzy drinks, etc, then you can eat all the food you want; you won't need to worry. Your will is admirable and you've done an amazing job! But I'm just saying, it sounds like what you need now is not more willpower, but a change of perspective that can allow you to kick back and gain that relaxed attitude towards food which you wish for.
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