Atkins was supposed to be a miracle. I wasn’t much of a sweets kid anyway, I liked cheeseburgers and pizza. Losing the bun didn’t feel like the end of the world. My mom had been making me lettuce-wrapped burgers long before the fast-food chains started selling them to us.
One time she stuffed a thick slab of bologna and swiss into half a head of iceberg and crammed it into a ziplock bag. It didn’t feel as bad as the week I brought cabbage soup in a thermos. Or the time I ate only pineapple. It wasn’t as glamorous as the diet I really wanted to be on at ten: a bottle of Chablis and two boiled eggs. But by size and shape, it still passed for a sandwich. So I could live with it.
Bread was out, but so were potatoes, rice, pasta, and sugar. Fine. Atkins was the silver bullet, and I was told it wasn’t forever. Someday, bread would begin to slowly return, served open-faced, the way a fancy restaurant might plate it. I could live with that.
And I did, for a while.
The promise was simple: avoid the forbidden foods, and paradise awaited. But paradise never showed. No finish line, no cheering crowd, no sudden transformation into someone new. As a kid I waited for this thing called “weight loss,” but even when it came, it wasn’t enough. I was no happier, no more confident. I still wore a T-shirt in the pool, still felt eyes linger on me in public.
Years later, I tried another silver bullet: cycling. This time I wasn’t detached. This was mine. The first year I rode seriously, I entered the Malibu Triathlon as part of a relay. Celebrities picked whichever segment they liked best, some ran, some rode, I doubt many swam. I did the ride, and I did well. The finish line came with cheers and fanfare.
A year to the day later, I found myself back at the triathlon by chance, forty miles into my own ride. I blew past competitors while midway through a hundred-mile day. I was under 14% body fat and fast as hell.
And yet: I still wore a T-shirt to the beach. People on Twitter still called me fat. I wasn’t fulfilled. But I could ride my bike.
My silver bullets never hit the target.
If GLP-1s had been widespread a decade ago, I’m sure that’s how I would’ve lost weight. And I’m just as sure I would’ve been dissatisfied with it too.
Whenever the scale went down, I felt like I was succeeding, moving in the “right” direction. But that direction never led anywhere. It was like driving a vaguely familiar route, recognizing landmarks, certain you’ll arrive soon, only to wind up back home, unsure if the destination ever existed.
The truth was, my perspective was pointed in the wrong direction. I thought losing weight would make me morally better, maybe even happy. That some inner chime would go off, confirming I’d arrived. But it never came. Even at my leanest, I didn’t like what I saw. I missed my strength. And the whole way there, I still felt fat.
The real work wasn’t trying to shoot with silver bullets. It was learning how to eat in a way that left me feeling good, without stomach aches, without crashes. It was recognizing the difference between feeling bad because I’d overeaten and feeling bad because I’d assigned arbitrary moral values to food and then punished myself with guilt. It was physically moving more, but not so much that the rest of my life collapsed into exhaustion. It was realizing there is no finish line, only a way of living that helps me keep going.
The real work was strengthening every part of my life, taking the time to build a foundation instead of chasing shortcuts. I can see the so-called magic bullets now as tools, useful if applied with care, but you can’t build a house with only a hammer.
Man, that hits. Every generation had its version of the ‘miracle fix’, Atkins, cabbage soup, grapefruit, SlimFast cans rattling in lunchboxes, even my Mom eating a weight loss candy called “Ayds”. All different flavors of punishment disguised as health. I remember choking down my own version of iceberg ‘sandwiches’ and wondering why the hell food had to feel like contraband. Funny how the diets change, but the hustle to shrink ourselves stays the same. Glad people like you are pulling the curtain back on the absurdity.