Better Health/Weight Loss

I actually wrote this last year - around New Year's. I had started losing weight right after Thanksgiving, and lost 11 pounds "through the holiday season" which was a miracle to me! (I actually lost most of that in the first few weeks, and then maintained my weight loss through Christmas and New Year's, picking back up in January with losses).

You know - they say the true test of weight loss is TIME. Well, I am happy to report that it has been over one year since I started this - and I am still consistantly 25-30 pounds lighter! I have had moments where I"ve been a full 30 pounds lighter, but I tend to stay right around the 131-132 lb mark "easily" now. (Keeping in mind that #'s are relative to bone mass, height, etc) I will grant - that I do run regularly now, and am curently training for some races in the spring......but I did not start running until AFTER I reached my goal weight. In fact, I did not use exercise at all. I just focused on my nutrition, and permantly changing my eating habits (breaking my sugar cravings, etc). I do think that my running has drastically improved my overall health (my body is mainly lean body mass, muscle - rather than soft and flabby; my blood pressure is optimal; my immune system is strong; I sleep very well now; I no longer require naps nor do I feel sluggish during the day, etc). I firmly believe nutrition and an active lifestyle go hand in hand, but I did not exercise "to lose" my weight.

I'm posting my plan for anyone interested. At the time I wrote this, I was at an 11lb loss. Today, I am firmly 27 lbs lighter, and have not yo-yo'd whatsoever. I reached this weight near the beginning of April 07, so I have maintained for a full 9 months now, with very little "effort".

Here's what I wrote January '07:

I have not really had a weight problem up until when I started having children. However, my mother always struggled with her weight, sluggish metabolism, hypothyroid etc. (My dad on the other hand, if he didn't eat 3 meals a day minimum, he would LOSE weight! So not fair.... my baby sis got HIS genes.... good for her, not so for me. ) Once I started having children, my metabolism became that like my mom's. I put on an enormous amount of weight with each pregnancy, and for me, nursing did NOT take it off. When I weaned my kids a year later or so, I was facing needing to lost quite a bit of weight. With the first 2, I was able to get it off, but I had to work at it. One year, I went "vegetarian" for a full year..... I lost weight, but I was eating a lot of highly processed soy (in the form of "fake meats"), and while I still enjoy some meatless dishes, can't/won't ever go back to that again. I also did WW in 2 different bouts, and like Margaret, while it "worked", I was always thinking/planning for food. If I was hungry, I had to do a math problem to figure out what I could eat, and make sure it didn't mess up my "points" for dinner. I have never been able to do WW w/o being hungry very often and most of my energy is to simply distract myself from my hunger. I have also done Atkins, after ds2. While I lost a ton of weight, and looked great - it was simply TOO restrictive. What did me in, was the weekend when I was at a scrapbooking deal, and had been at my goal weight so long...that I thought it would be "safe" to eat "any" food.... well, I had a Strawberry Yoplait yogurt (the regular full sugar kind!) and it tasted like a rich cheesecake to me! I still remember the emotional high of eating that yogurt! Then I ate a croissant.... then it was over. I gained 20 lbs back in no time flat!

We moved to Michigan, and I had done really well, until I got pregnant for dd. History repeated itself, and I gained well over 40lbs. However, this time, being my 3rd, and being older, I have had a very hard time letting the weight go. One summer, I was VERY fit, but it was the summer dh was unemployed, so he was home, and I was WALKING (read: speed walking to relieve the stress, with my mp3 player blasting praise music so I could keep trusting the Lord!) 4-6 miles A DAY. Once I quit walking, the weight crept back up.

I have been trying to eliminate junk food, processed food, sugar, etc and do "all things in moderation" but I seem to have "settled" at a weight about 25lbs above what I really should be..... and the number kept creeping up. Every couple months, it would be a pound or so MORE. I had a closet full of jeans that I could no longer wear. I was going to thrift stores to buy sizes one and two up from what I had hanging in my closet!

Earlier, in the fall, we had put in the cd's that were taken of our camping trip with our friends at Cran-Hill, and as I looked at the photos here and there of ME, I was dismayed! The "picture" of what I looked like "in my head" was way thinner than what I saw. I saw my mom, and I knew that if I didn't get this under control, in another decade, I would be right where she is at.... sooner or later, a good 80+ pounds overweight, and with all sorts of health issues.

So, for whatever reason, driving home from Thanksgiving this year from Missouri (14 hours in the car!), I determined to finally deal with this. Looking back, I knew that I had the best "success" (albeit temporary) with Atkins, but I didn't want to do anything that drastic. Besides - Atkins only deals with what NOT to eat (no carbs), they don't deal with nutrition and HOW to eat. I've learned a ton about nutrition since then. When I was doing atkins, I wasn't eating "carbs" but I was eating a bunch of junk -hightly processed "low carb" convenience foods that were not nourishing my body (i.e. those little meal replacement bars with all sorts of manufactured ingredients rather than whole foods in their natural state.)

I also subscribe to the "Nourishing Traditions" way of eating, so I took the South Beach Diet book, and "Nourishing Traditionalized" it..... and it really didn't resemble much the SBD anymore, but that's okay - it was my "own plan".

I also am a big reader on the Mercola.com website. While Dr. Mercola has some "evolutional foundations", his science is good, I believe. I have a friend at chuch who is a medical doctor, who said the same thing..... you have to wade through some of his "rational", but his science is spot-on for permanent good health. So, I checked out his book from the library "The Total Health Makeover" by Dr. Joseph Mercola (www.mercola.com) and realized that what I had "devised" was EXACTLY what he prescribed.

In a nutshell, here's how I'm eating now:

Eliminate sugar, and sugar substitutes - ALL of it. The stuff I know about sugar, I would say it's nearly singly-handledly responsible for all of our degenerative disease, and weight gain. The average american consumes 63 GALLONS of high fructose corn syrup per year - AVERAGE!!!! (However, once I'm at my goal weight, I will use real maple syrup and raw honey in very low moderation).

Drastically reduce grains - all of them. All grains you purchase at the stores are processed and highly refined, I don't care what the package says. All refined grains will cause disease and weight gain. When I get to my goal weight, I will use real WHOLE grains in very low moderation (I am a "mixed type" according to mercola, which means I can tolerate about 10% of my calories from real WHOLE grains if I choose, which sounds about right by how my body has responded from this new way of eating.)

Consume all dairy in raw form, or atleast whole fat yogurt with no sugar (or subs) added.

Consume grass-fed beef (beef is a common source of CORN because most beef is corn-fed in this country... fortunately, the farm I go to I can get organic 100% grass fed beef, even finished on grass), and organic, pastured poultry and eggs

Eat lots of deep sea fish (salmon, tilapia, paddock, etc ideally that has been tested for mercury etc. farm raised fish is full of contaminants from run off water. I just go for the "wild caught")

50% of my calories come from vegetables - lots of vegetables, and a very wide variety. Organic when I can, but vegetables none the less.

Cook with butter and coconut oil only, extra virgin - cold pressed olive oil is fine as well, since olive oil is an omega-9 and won't disrupt the balance of omega 6:omega3 ratio I'm striving for (a 1:1, whereas the average american consuming soy and vegetable oils is a 50:1 ration - very damaging to your health, according to mercola and nourishing traditions)

Any "sweets" are consumed as fruits, mainy berries, and some of the lower sugar fruits.

Nuts and seeds are fine, in small amounts here and there, just have to be careful to keep my omega 6 and omega 3 ratio in check.

Cod liver oil, vitamin K are my only supplements. I don't take probiotics because I routinely consume raw whole milk yogurt and keifer when I can.

Here's how that translates in a typical day for me:

Bfast: soft set eggs, canadian bacon or regular bacon, or ham, coffee with raw real cream

snack: baby bel gouda, string cheese, or raw milk cheeses and handful of nuts

Lunch: turkey/swiss roll ups in boston lettuce, garlic-cilantro mayo as condiment (my FAVE!) with handful of grape tomatoes, sugar peas and half an avacado sliced up on the side

snack: celery and natural pb

Dinner: Chicken baked in homeade alfredo sauce, baked acorn squash with butter and little bit of maple syrup drizzled on it, roasted asperagus or broiled rosemary zucchini.

snack/dessert: decaf Stash vanilla-nut-creme black tea (with just milk, no sugar)

My diet is far more varied that it ever has been, and I feel CLEAN, full of energy, and I've lost 11 pounds in a month. I am losing about 2-3 a week now. When I do eat something with white flour or white sugar in it, I feel "sick". Sweets taste "sickenly sweet" to me, as this plan has completely eliminated my sugar cravings. Now, I eat something like a piece of fruit, and it tastes like heaven! I hadn't realized how all that sugar consumption was altering my natural tastes for REAL, WHOLE foods. (I was even "watching" my sugar - but I didn't realize how MUCH I really WAS eating!)

The other thing, is that I am basically only eliminating sugar and refined grains - it's not "low carb", as my diet is probably 50% carb calories - but they're mainly from VEGETABLES, rather than sugar and grains. So, it's not nearly as restrictive as Atkins, and it's a way that I CAN eat for life (especially feeling as good as I do, I hope I never go back to my old ways!), it has just helped me to FINALLY cut that umbilical cord to refined grains and sugars FOR GOOD.


Shauna