I vividly remember the first time I made the connection between the way our bodies look and the food we eat. I was probably in 4th or 5th grade and my mom was in the kitchen throwing out some food. When I asked her what she was doing, she told me she was going on a diet.

Looking back, I now understand she was starting a very popular weight-loss program. In a nutshell, this particular program assigns “points” to certain foods. Essentially, the more calorically dense a food is, the more points it has. Depending on your goals, you are only allotted a certain amount of points each day.

That was the day I started to differentiate between “good foods” and “bad foods“.

I looked at a list to find a food with virtually zero points. Aha! Cucumber! I ate cucumbers dipped in Italian dressing for a couple of weeks. I noticed my shorts fitting a little differently.

I could only eat cucumbers for so long. Eventually I went back to my regular ways and my weight dipped up and down throughout middle school, high school and college (I’ll write more about that in future posts).

Below are a few pictures throughout the years. I won’t post pictures like this very often, as I don’t want to perpetuate “body shaming” of any kind (even my own). I’m sharing these pictures to illustrate part of my journey. A journey that started with an innocent diet.

1985

1995

2003

2011

2014

My “take-home message” is this: If you’re a parent, a teacher, an aunt (anyone that spends any significant amount of time around young girls) PLEASE be mindful of your words. Little girls are so impressionable and they are always listening. Always.

XoXo

Katie