My Grandmother’s Weight Loss
by reddit user talkinginbed
I’ve read so many weight loss horror stories on here, most of them tales of tape worms. However I have one that my grandmother told me. She is 92 years old and has lived through quite a lot.
I used to love her stories when I was younger, but as I got older her stories got more and more depressing and sometimes downright terrifying. This is one of them. To make things easier, I’m writing it from her perspective and how she has told me the story.
I was never happy with my body. I was a chubby little girl and grew up to be a chubby teenager. Boys didn’t like me, girls made fun of me, even my own mother would try to slim me down by doing things like cutting out desserts from my diet or not allowing me to have seconds. It hurt, having your own mother so openly insult you. I just wanted to be skinny and pretty. But then things changed.
We moved, first of all. That’s when my weight loss began. I spent most of my time with my mother. I continued not eating desserts and I definitely did not get seconds. I was put on a very low calorie restrictive diet. Mainly soup. It was broth and sometimes I’d get some meat in it, but mostly it was just vegetables. That was for dinner. In the morning I would drink one cup of coffee and toast - sometimes with butter, sometimes without. No lunch and no snacks. That was my daily food.
I lost weight so quickly I could barely believe it. At first I felt good about it. All I ever wanted was to be skinny, right? My ribs started poking out without me sucking in my stomach. I could walk without feeling my leg fat jiggle with each step. But then I kept losing weight. My ribs that poked out? I could count them. I was dizzy and weak. I was exhausted when I fell into bed every night. I stopped getting my period. My skin was rough and dry, like I hadn’t moisturized it in years. I felt and looked like a skeleton. Nobody could stop me from losing weight, though. My mother cried when she saw me naked. There was nothing she could do - I was beyond her help.
This went on for years, this restricted calorie diet of mine. My severe weight loss almost caused my death. However I was saved. I left Auschwitz and for the first time in my life, I was grateful to gain weight.
