"No solids after 6 p.m."
"No liquids after 7 p.m."
"No rice or noodles."
"No fried foods."
"No dairy."
"No soda."

Apparently, "no" is a key theme at the weight loss spa my mother and I frequent.

At 6 a.m., half-awake, I hobble to the kitchen to scarf down my breakfast: a tiny bowl of granola and leftover fruit.

For lunch, I wolf down half a ham sandwich, in which a bit of meat is dwarfed by a forest of leafy greens. No mayo; no mustard; no dressing. I chase it down with a shot of orange juice.

Dinner is whatever I can squeeze in before 6. Usually, I get sauteed vegetables that have been drenched in boiling water so as to strip them of all sauce, grease and goodness.

At age 18, when my primary goal was to become as beautiful as I could be, I followed this regimen for 90 days. Going far beyond food, the regimen also included cleansing, meditation and pep talks about how a new svelte body would match my beautiful face.

The weight-loss spa in Taipei, Taiwan, was a world where I could “fix” myself, namely by transforming my appearance to match my inner beauty. Once my body is perfect, improving the rest of me will be cake, I thought, optimistically shelving my old fear that I'd never be a size six. The truth, as I would realize much later, is that no quick-fix diet could change me, inside or outside. But in that moment, I doggedly pushed forward.

I climb into bed exhausted and hungry. My stomach growls. I can only dream about my next meal.

In the spa, I wear a beige frock and choke down a green powder that will supposedly cleanse my system and make me thin. I try to wash it down with water, but this only makes the powder lumpy and difficult to swallow. My tired gaze meets that of another young woman. We both look quickly away.

Moments later, I am lying on a table in a dark room. Strange male hands press my stomach, massaging the flesh as if it were dough. I grind my jaw together as more force is exerted, but I endure the pain. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, as my parents have always said. Silently, I wonder if I’m kidding myself. No diet has worked before; why should it work this time? Still, I retain an inkling of hope.

The next day, the spa’s weight machine reports that I have lost four pounds. I feel watchful eyes scrutinize me and hear congratulatory words. Later in the dressing room, I smile as I stroke my bruised, flabby stomach, tracing my fingers up and down the light indigo marks. The magic has worked. I steel myself for the next treatment.

I remember the moment when the wonder started, when my mother and I sat in the office of a mama-san type who described the treatments that would change my life. My mother, who had been a size zero as a young adult, listened intently. She was thrilled by the notion that her oldest daughter, who had inherited her wit and her ethics, might look more like the women on Chinese variety shows and hence build a stronger sense of self-worth.

For three months, she’d sacrifice her credit card to this cause. And I’d follow along, if only because I no longer wanted to look “big-boned,” as my mother described me (or “healthy,” as my aunts and uncles politely framed it).

As a child, my parents had never fretted about my weight — they cared only that I stayed well and active. But by age 8, I was quite aware that I was bigger than most kids on the playground. And I have memories from seventh grade of wondering why it was a struggle to pull my knee-high socks over my oversized calves while my friends’ socks fell loosely about their ankles. I remember a cute boy I liked calling me “thunder thighs” during a dodgeball game.

Over the years, I became tired of not fitting into jeans the way most of my peers did. In fact, for a long time I didn’t wear jeans — it was too painful to confront the fact that I was a size 10, not a size six like the small and dainty girls I thought I should look like.

A month into the program, my weight loss has begun to plateau. I am wiped down in ginger essence, embalmed in plastic wrap and thrown into a sauna. My skin burns everywhere. I try to shut out the pain by visualizing extra water expelled from my body.

A day later, I am hooked up to an electric machine designed to shock my muscles into burning calories. I cringe as the dial is turned up and briefly worry about brain damage, but my fear dissipates when I am told that 30 minutes on this machine is like working out for two hours.

For 30 more days, I continued to starve and sweat my body into submission. I wanted to be thin, beautiful — everything that everyone covets. I wanted to make my mother happy.

In the end, I shed 20 pounds. My mother was ecstatic; I was even happier. To maintain my sleek new image (and to shed more pounds), I continued to eat next to nothing, popped diet pills and avoided going out with friends so I wouldn’t have to explain my food choices. When asked why I ate so little, I typically lied and said that I had already eaten. My friends became suspicious, and once they even attempted an intervention. But I laughed and told them they were crazy to think I had issues with food. I was in deep denial.

My newly improved self and its corresponding lifestyle didn’t last long. After three months, my diet pills ran out and I began gorging on brownies. I regained the weight I had lost — and more. I began to suffer insomnia. My new look involved wearing a long-sleeved shirt layered beneath another loose T-shirt to hide my bulges.

Only now, years later, am I finally able to come clean with the scariness of it all.

I see now that I was chasing a dream that wasn’t mine or even my parents’. When playfully blaming boyfriends for making us women feel this way, they have retorted that no one is forcing us at gunpoint to be skinny. Insensitive, I know, but accurate. I don’t know who to blame for creating this illusion, and naming a scapegoat wouldn’t serve much purpose. All I know is that at one point, this dream became everything I wanted.

I pursued a thin image that was supposed to exude confidence, control and ultimately beauty. For many years, I was ashamed of my inability to embody this image. Now my shame stems from knowing that this desire to be skinny conflicts with the person I want to be — a woman who wants to demonstrate that inner beauty is more important than outer beauty.

And yet, despite knowing this, I look at photos of me from that time and can't help wishing for a split second, or maybe longer, that I could look like that now — for the compliments, for the envious and admiring glances, and perhaps for the superfluous feeling that I appear to have it all.

Lisa Lee is Hyphen’s publisher. Do you have a story to tell? Submit a First Person.