The Self-Love Diet

For years, I obsessed over my weight. It was when I stopped worrying that I started losing

- Mary Lou Carney

“Let’s get your weight first,” the nurse said at my six-month cardiology checkup. I slipped off my shoes, stepped on the scale, listened to the metallic counterweights sliding back and forth. No need to look. I already knew what I weighed—too much. For several years, my cholesterol had been borderline, but I was already on two blood pressure medications and didn’t want to add another pill for cholesterol. So I convinced myself I could get my numbers down with diet and exercise. Whenever I would lose some pounds, for a class reunion or a beach trip—usually with some quick-fix fad diet—the weight always came back.

My cardiologist sat down in front of me, flipping through my chart. “Well, you’re the only patient today who has lost weight. Three pounds,” he said. “It’s a start.”

Right. Losing 10 times that amount still wouldn’t put me at my “ideal weight,” the dreaded number that had stared at me accusingly from charts in waiting rooms for years.

I couldn’t remember the first time I went on a diet. I had always been chubby. “Pleasingly plump,” my grandma would say. I was aware, even at a young age, that other girls were smaller than I was. I noticed it in pictures, when my middle was wider than my friends’. I noticed it when we dressed for gym and my thighs were not sleek beneath my shorts.

“Do you think you could lose five more pounds?” my cardiologist asked. “Most people don’t realize what an impact extra weight has on their overall health.”