Where to start when you don't know where to go.

5. THE X DIET

Self-bullying, lies, and protective bubbles. The emotional dependence we have on certain things and why.

At the age of seven, I used to look like a ¨little chubby soccer ball¨: the "Miss Curvy," meaning the Ms. Rounded girl. At sixteen, I had already gone through numerous diets, and I would even consider myself a nutritionist for having studied so much about it. However, my body would remain the same. I participated in the "I-had-to" diet group, and the recipe was good for all areas of life. And what was that diet like?

It was very simple: "I had" to go through the diet, "I had" to do physical exercises, "I had" to study, "I had" to wear nice clothes, "I had" to be well-mannered, "I had" to behave like a little lady. Right following the "I-had-to" came along the "don't." I couldn't say any ugly words; I couldn't tell lies, I couldn't do this, I couldn't do that, no, no, and no ...

I had gone through some crazy diets and suffered from hunger, just feeling like the most malnourished human being on the face of the earth. The peaks of obsession lasted 24 hours, and they were very sacrificing, as the ego and self-condemnation hurt more than the belly did. The feeling of failure increased at every attempt since, without consistency, the results did not show up.

Do you remember Xuxa's diet (Xuxa, Brazilian TV presenter for kids, famous on the 80's and 90's.)? It consisted of a day in the week when it was allowed to eat everything we wanted. Well, I always started the day before the "all-is-allowed" day so I could eat everything the next day. It was glorious!

Since I was a little kid, I suffered in silence with the ¨chubby¨ tag stuck in my mind. At home, in clothing stores, cafeterias, and especially at school. Telling dull jokes, the classmates would call me a whale and a fluffy cake. I would feel too embarrassed to say something or something to someone so that I would take in all this bullying, lonely and quietly.

My classmate friend, the blondie guy, was the man of my life - he also laughed at me, and it was like a knife being stabbed in the middle of my chest. We would be happy forever if he knew how thinner and more disciplined, I would be if he paid attention to me.

When my parents divorced, part of my upbringing stayed under my grandparents' responsibility, my mother, and Aunt/Nanny Sô (the house secretary). There would always be the airplane game with the spoon at mealtime; it was my duty to eat everything else, you must have already seen it, right?

That same story goes from generation to generation. You have to eat to stay healthy; you have to eat because people are starving; you have to eat because it's not nice to leave food on the plate; you have to eat because blah, blah, blah. So many real and unreal reasons on the planet, and I didn't have the choice of saying "no" to that food, as past generations insisted on saying that every fat person was fluffy, strong, and healthy.

"Eat, eat, eat, eat is the best way to grow strong ..." according to the song made for kids. And from so much eating, I would eat until I finally realized why I ate so much, after so many years. Hunger was more emotional than physiological, which caused me to be far from being part of society's beauty standards.

I had learned to eat in order to feel complete; I had learned to eat until I felt so stuffed that I couldn't even breathe properly. I learned to eat without any control because the food hugged me, filled me, understood my problems, and comforted me. Unconsciously I felt that food was the only one that did not fight with me and would be with me in the good and bad times a perfect marriage.

It was a binge eating problem, and even though I was practicing many sports, I was unable to lose weight. I took ballet, jazz, aerobics, swimming, played tennis, danced hip hop, street dance, martial arts, MMA, boxing, and invented thousands of other things. Still, they did nothing but increase my neural connections, help develop my creativity, expand my distractions, lack of focus, and passion for diversity.