How to be a very thin and unhealthy teenager

I was thinking back to my teen years, as I often seem to do these days and remembering how incredibly skinny I was back then.

In fact, I was skinny my whole life until I hit my mid twenties and went vegetarian. But that's a whole other story.

As a kid I can remember vividly what my daily lunches were. Peanut butter and jam sandwich, piece of fruit (apple, orange or banana) small packet of raisins, juice box (or in the early 80's they were these little plastic bottles with tin foil covers) and sometimes there would be cake (lemon loaf, banana bread or occasionally cake with icing). I was hardly ever hungry for lunch, so I used to throw the sandwich away. Sometimes I would have a few bites of it, rarely would I eat the whole thing. I would drink the juice, usually eat the raisins and cake, and rarely eat the fruit. Gosh, the pounds of good food that got thrown away day after day, year after year.

I seem to remember eating more of my lunch in the later years of elementary school, like grade five and six. My mom started changing it up a bit and sometimes I had cheese sandwiches, or ham. No butter or any fillings of any sort. Just a slice of ham or processed cheese - never together!

For the first 3 years of high school I was really lucky, I lived within walking distance to school so I used to go home for lunch every day. My mom would usually make soup and crackers. It would either be chicken noodle, or vegetable (from cans). Sometimes I would have a grilled cheese sandwich. I can't remember if I ever had the soup with the grilled cheese though. I always ate all my lunch.

Breakfast when I was young was toast, jam and butter. That was how I said it when I was young. Usually strawberry jam, store bought. From about age 9 I started to like cereal. Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Fruit Loops, and all the other usual sugary childrens cereals.

Supper was a big challenge. I wasn't ever hungry enough to eat it. I was a very fussy eater, and there was very little that I liked. I didn't like vegetables or meat. I liked spaghetti (my mom made a home made sauce, which was very tasty) and that was about it. Each night there was meat, potatoes and vegetables and I would just pick at it. I would rearrange the food on my plate to make it look like I had eaten more than I had.

There wasn't a lot of junk food in the house growing up. No potato chips , chocolate bars or ice cream. My sister would buy her own cookies and give me some, but there was hell to pay if I ate the last cookie!!!

For some weird reason, when I was 11 I liked to come home and eat white bread with butter. It was the best! I can't imagine, I would never snack on that now!

The last two years of high school were the worst, in terms of how badly I ate. My mom stopped packing me a lunch because half of the time I would forget it at home! She should have given me lunch money in that case, because I was far too lazy to pack my own lunch! I had money from baby sitting, and maybe she figured I'd use that to buy lunch. I actually used every last cent of mine to buy pot. Whatever was left was used for cigarettes, other drugs and alcohol. Therefore, I did not eat lunch!

I also didn't eat breakfast! For some reason, in my teen years I would wake up feeling nauseous. I could manage a cup of coffee, but that's it. Even brushing my teeth was difficult, as I would often gag. Therefore, food in the morning was definitely not on.

So I would go to school after having had only a coffee. Then I would sometimes buy a cookie from the cafeteria at recess, or an ice cream sandwich. Then at lunch I would score some weed with my friends, and spend the lunch hour being stoned. My other friends who didn't smoke pot would often ask me where my lunch was, as we would all sit together and everyone was eating except me. I usually wasn't bothered, just wanted to get out there and smoke. Though admittedly sometimes I was hungry, but was too lazy to do anything about it. I hated going into the cafeteria, where all the other people were. I have always been a bit of a people phobe. So sometimes one of my friends would take pity on me and give me 35 cents and tell me to go and buy a bun from the cafeteria. Sometimes I would refuse, and she'd go and buy one for me! What a sweetie!

I ate most of my supper as a teenager. Meat, potatoes and vegetables. I also used my money to sometimes go to McDonald's on the weekends. So when I was 16 and 17 I basically lived off of one meal a day.

It's just weird, because now as a woman in my 30's I really enjoy food. A lot. Too much. I don't really smoke weed anymore, and it's been 9 years since my last cigarette. I use food to calm me when I'm stressed or depressed or need a lift. I'm a good cook, and that can be dangerous because I know how to make all the stuff that's unhealthy and fattening! Like cakes, cookies, brownies, fried food etc. I'm also not as poor as I was as a teenager, therefore I can afford to go out and eat too. I have a very healthy appetite. I pretty much always eat 3 meals a day, and have snacks too.

I tend to indulge in all the things that I felt I was deprived of growing up. My mother was very good about only having healthy stuff in the house. But whenever I'd go over to friends houses, they had chips, coke and cookies. I liked those things. So now I find that I have an extensive pantry full of ingredients to bake things. There are usually chips in the cupboard. No coke, and I don't like store made cookies. I have bought a lot of store made muffins though. I also eat unhealthy cereal in the morning, like Cheerios (which is loaded with sugar) and Special K with strawberries (just a chemical soup full of pesticides and sugar). As a vegetarian I obviously don't have meat vegetables and potatoes anymore. Many dinners involve frying things and or involve cheese. I find it very difficult to cook things that taste good and are also healthy.