I found dietingsomething Id been doingsince I was 15 years oldthrilling and consuming.
I loved the challenge.
When I could restrict my eating, I felt powerful.
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My body, equipped with the primordial fear of starvation, was a formidable foe.
My mouth would be wet with saliva.
The other problem: Dieting didnt really work for me.
And yet my weight never shifted more than a few pounds.
And so, more than a decade after my first teenaged Weight Watchers meeting, Id had enough.
I hadnt always felt this way.
Id been a child full of potential, starting college at 15 and winning various awards for writing.
My professors told me that I had a true chance at a writing career.
Then I graduated into the recession.
At first, I would get up early to write before work, and then on my lunch break.
Then sometimes on the weekend.
Tomorrow, Id tell myself, Ill do better tomorrow.
Ill stay within my calorie goal tomorrow.
I was just as unhappy.
We did many exercises in that group.
We wrote down the meanest thing wed ever said to ourselves and then read it aloud.
During a meeting a few months in, the dietician handed us each a piece of paper.
Spending the entire lunch obsessing about the decision.
How large were my thighs?
Then going home to make dinner and log my calories for the day.
Vowing that tomorrow I would do better.
I came up with three hours a day.
Now tally that, the dietician said.
She told us to imagine we had that time back.
What would we do with all that mental energy and focus?
I would write a book.
The words came into my mind immediately.
I stopped dieting that night.
I was better off focusing on my writing.
That way, I rationalized, I might never be thin, but at least Id have a book.
Adult womenworry more about their appearancethan they do about finances, health, relationships, or professional success.
Millennial women are reportedly seven times more likely to worry about their weight than their careers.
Dieting is the most potent political sedative in womens history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.
), and I started writing.
I found a few short stories I had written in college and edited them.
Sent them out to literary journals.
I became friends with the writers at that bar.
And finally, finally, I wrote a book.
Get my kids to bed on time?
But I spend two hours writing each morning.
The tiny bit of attention and discipline I have, I use it to write.
It was making me small.
The life I wanted so much?
I got it: the friends, the parties, the book deal, the joy.
Emma Pattee is a climate journalist and fiction writer.
Her debut novel,Tilt,is available now from Marysue Rucci Books/Simon & Schuster.
