How old were you when you starting counting calories/went on your first diet?

I was reading a few articles online:

One in five eleven year olds asked diet, one third of the 11 year olds said they were 'too fat' and one in three also said they hated their tummy.

It just got me thinking; i went on my first diet when i was 9 with my best friend. I was 4'8 and 65lbs, i don't know how i remember that i just do. We had a list of good and bad foods, the good food consisted of mainly things like fruit, veggies, chicken etc and we weren't allowed any soda, candy or 'bad carbs'. I think i lost a couple of lbs then got bored with it and went back to playing outside.

By the age of 16 i could tell you the calories in most every day foods.

Weirdly though neither of my parents have ever been on a diet or spoke about dieting. I had to borrow her weighing scale as we didn't even own one, i don't know where i learnt all of it.

When did you attempt your first diet?

When I was around 13, when I wasn't even NEAR fat I started becoming more and more aware of "good" food and "bad" food. I started to starve myself for like a day or two at a time but then always gave up on it and ended up eating whatever, a lot, and eventually gained weight. I went on a "diet" when I was 14, but didn't realize how terrible I was being to myself! And yeah, by the time I was 16 I knew the calorie content of like every single food 

I haven't started dieting until recently. When I was younger I KNEW I was overweight and I always said, "alright, I'm GOING on a diet! I NEED TO." But never had much motivation to do so. Even at age 9 I contemplated dieting. I'm glad I never had the motivation, because before CC I thought dieting was starving yourself for a month. Seriously, I was ignorant when I was younger. Nothing really changed in my life that made me wanna lose weight (except the fact that I was 204 lbs when I jumped on the scale at a doctor's office) but I stumbled upon CC and signed up. Suddenly, I was filled with all the motivation I needed, and have been "dieting" since then.

I know all the calorie content of most foods now, too. Haha.

I remember doing it when I was like 12 or 13... I kept a food diary and logged the calories of everything I ate.  As in writing it down because we didn't have much for computers back then, let alone the internet!  I don't know where I got the calorie info from - must've been a book or magazine, I don't remember. 

I don't know why I did it because I was always ridiculously skinny - like weighed 65 lbs in the 6th grade, etc.  I never gained weight till after high school.  Those were the days...

37

Never till last year, 23.

I went on two diets in the past, of three weeks each, at ages 23 and 24. I started counting calories and watching what I ate at 30. I also have some vague recollection of making cabbage soup in my teens, for a week or so.

Not much of a dieter. It's better that way. Less obsessive.

i was like 13 or 12 when i first started to diet and exercise. I was 5'3" and about 153 pounds.

Wow, I am luckier than most people. I started at age 22. I wasn`t even overweight, but I had been gaining rapidly for a year, and my physical fitness level had become excruciatingly low.

as far back as i can remember i've always thought that i was "fat". looking back - it's absolutely ridiculous, pathetic, and sad. i can remember as young as kindergarten going to swimming lessons and pinching my tummy and thinking how gross it was that i had any excess skin at all.

i attempted my first "diet" that i consciously remember in about the 6th grade. although that was mostly a deprivation/starvation/restriction thing. consisted of lying to my parents about what i was(n't) eating, constanly berating myself for being "fat". i also think i've been suffering with life-long clinical depression and have finally come to terms with that recently.

i've always had a mental screw loose i guess. the mental, physical, behavioral state i find myself in today was sort of inevitable, i suppose, and has all kind of come to a head. at least i'm finally getting some help, i guess.

Probably 6th grade. I would lie to my parents about eating breakfast and lunch, and eat as little dinner as possible. Basically it was starving myself because that is what I thought a diet was. I did this on and off for years and eventually became bulimic :-/ I wish I had realized I was normal and never got caught up in the whole stick thin=pretty phenomenon. 

i was 19 and it was for a college course, and ever since then i haven't stopped. I think sometimes ignorance is bliss. really if you're making good food choices, and we all know what healthy and unhealthy foods are in a general sense, then you don't need to count. you can trust your body to count for you. it's just when we eat processed garbage and don't get full or satisfied on the calories that we are consuming that it becomes a problem. I wish i could go back to the days when i didn't care to flip over a package or to read the label on anything, i just ate, i was a healthy weight, and i was HAPPY! i'm not saying that counting inevitably makes you unhappy but simply that sometimes it can be a burden and detract from the things in life that are truly important!! that has been my experience but i feel that i can never go back now.

It wasn't a "diet" persay, but I started cutting out foods when I was 9ish, and became anorexic. It was due to OCD and anxiety though. I refused to eat because I thought I would get sick or get food poisoning if I did. I got back to a healthy weight eventually, but I remember all throughout middle school I would compulsively exercise, and in 8th grade I relapsed, which lasted through freshman year and actually started counting calories and what not, and I also was bulimic during this period.

I was okay until last summer(more orthorexia than anything, but was at a healthy weight), when I started counting calories again and my weight dropped drastically low and now I am a freaking walking food dictionary.

I thought I was fat in middle school, but I just tried to exercise it away, which didn't do anything because I wasn't fat to begin with, it was just that awkward baby chub fat face thing.  I started dieting at 25.  It was really frustrating until I found CC, then it was easier.

32, and so glad I found cc! It was my first time... cc was gentle with me.

*puts out hand for endorsement fee*

I was 18 and it was after highschool ended. Then I was able to move out of the parents house and live as I wanted. I didn't really track calories that much at first, more of just eating less and different foods.

There is a lot to learn... but just sticking to sites like this probably isnt the best (there are some strange popular ideas about weightloss, such as never going under the magic 1200 for women and 1500 for men ...thats just completely false. Its more of a "guideline rule" which so many have adopted as law). In the end, it just comes down to trial and error and figuring out how to live with your body (along with learning about what is happening / why, so you can use that to your advantage). 

I never asked to go on a diet even though I knew I was a bit bigger than the other kids. I'd say about 8 or 9 years old was when I was first put on a diet by my mother and that continued until I was 12- nothing worked (because I was sneaking junk food.) We went to this weird diet clinic and I had to take "shots" of this foul-tasting clear liquid, still didn't work. Now, dieting on my own accord- 23 and doing cc... I likes.

Original Post by loriklorik:

but just sticking to sites like this probably isnt the best (there are some strange popular ideas about weightloss, such as never going under the magic 1200 for women and 1500 for men ...thats just completely false. Its more of a "guideline rule" which so many have adopted as law). In the end, it just comes down to trial and error and figuring out how to live with your body (along with learning about what is happening / why, so you can use that to your advantage). 

 Yes, I agree! After being on this site for a while, I too cannot understand where the 1200 came from and some people (mainly women/girls) are soo steadfast in believing that 1200 is healthy for them even with exercise. So sad.