Sometime after I earned my first Master's degree in Education, I had a thought. Here I was achieving a graduate degree that only about 8 percent of the US population have done. My thought was I could achive this, so why can't I be thin? After all there only about an 8% chance of losing weight and keeping it off, why should it be harder than getting a master's degree?
My first Masters had been difficult. I twice thought about dropping out. I got two low grades, I had second thoughts about going into teaching and later it turned out the thesis adviser was barely letting anyone graduate (She was eventually replaced and I finally finished.) Writing the thesis itself took all my free time and I lived in the library.
But all I thought about after this incredible accomplishment is why I couldn't get thin.
The first degree was a nightmare. I ended up never using it. I really didn't like teaching and I had trouble finding work.
So I got another Master's degree this time in Library Science. Getting was much smoother than the first one. When it was time to do my thesis, I was ready. I found two partners who wanted to finish in one semester. We all worked full time. So every single weekend and some weekday nights the three of us would hole up in a study room at the library and work on our research for hours. Imagine that, having the discipline to give up weekends (at the time I was recently married) to finish this paper.
During this degree, I was a "successful" dieter. I had being doing a low carb diet for almost a year, I had lost 40 pounds and kept it off. Eventually I stopped losing and started gaining. But for a while I thought I had it all: the education, the husband, and the weight loss.
Recently a visiting NYU professor tweeted: Dear obese PhD applicants: If you don't have the willpower to stop eating carbs, you won't have the willpower to do a dissertation.
The tweet was taken down quickly but the damage was done. The "professor" had to quickly backtrack his words, probably fearful of losing his job.
It's funny of all the unwarranted dieting advice he signalled out that fat people cannot stop eating carbs. Earlier tweets indicated he is a fan of the paleo diet fad (I can write an entire blog post about how incorrect it is and how our Paleo ancestors ate mostly vegetarian.)
I have previously written that when I gave up carbs completely, I got very ill. Even in the earlier low carb diets I did where the carb count was higher, I had heart palpitations, reflux disease, constant thoughts of food, dreams about cheating. I became pre-occupied with food, always thinking about the next meal. It turned out that low carb dieting is yet another low calorie diet.
I have to wonder how I managed to find the strength and discipline after all this dieting to finish two masters degrees.
And if you want to see more fabulous fat people with advanced degrees, click here.
Comments