How My GreenBowl Life Began!

HOW MY GREENBOWL LIFE BEGAN
I've been dieting since I was age 12. By the time I was 35, I gave up! Diets work but you can't stay on them forever. After my 2nd child, I ballooned up to 250# ( I was 5'2") and stayed there for almost 20 years- eating pretty much whatever I wanted although over the years I'd managed to cut out a lot of the sugar, all of the trans fats and never ate fast food or drank pop (which is a killer for most people). I didn't weigh myself regularly either. If you're fat and not going to diet why bother??? Any way one day before Thanksgiving 2009 I stepped on the scale just for grins, expecting to see my usual 250 and almost had a heart attack when I saw 275 in gigantic digital numbers between my feet!! DO YOU KNOW HOW CLOSE THAT IS TO 300 POUNDS????????!!!!!!
So I knew I had to do something but what?? Nothing in the past had ever worked permanently. I didn't know what to do. So I as I lay in bed one night thinking about my dieting dilemma, I decided to visualize getting thin. I saw the fat melting off my body layer by layer. That felt pretty good! Then I found a book I had stashed somewhere called "Think Yourself Thin". I must be on the right track... It all starts in your mind, right? So I read and visualized every night. Then I found another book called "The Writing Diet". I can think and I like to write so maybe I'll find the solution somewhere other than in my kitchen or on my plate! I kept reading and visualizing. Then right after Thanksgiving 2009 I was goofing around on Facebook and in the right hand column of ads which I usually ignored I saw an ad for a free PDF of a book called" Eat to Live" by Dr. Joel Fuhrman. Now you know how many dieting ads and weight loss gimmicks and just plain nonsense there is out there and I know that dieting doesn't work but in desperation I made that "click". Downloaded the PDF and started reading. I tell you I got excited. This guy was on to something. His plan took everything I knew about nutrition (did I mention I was a Home Ec. major and studied nutrition) and real life dieting and my personal relationship with food (I kinda hate that phrase but it is what it is--maybe I hated it because I felt food was the Alpha dog in our relationship!!) and put it together in a way that gave me hope that it could/would work. So on December 28th 2009 I started my Eat to Live journey.
I made the huge commitment of staying on Fuhrman's 6 week plan for 2 weeks then I would evaluate how I felt and decide how to proceed. I was hedging, of course, because I still had doubts that it would really work and that I could make it my lifestyle for the next 50 or so years (I'm going to live to be 100+). I mean giving up MEAT (are you kidding??? I'm a farmer girl) and DAIRY (forever?? how will I ever get enough calcium??? My grandfather ran a dairy, both my parents had jobs as young adults in the dairy business!! I was raised on raw whole milk for Pete's Sake!!). But I plunged ahead. I knew I wasn't going to make it to a healthy 100 weighing 275 lbs with nowhere to go but up! So I was committed to making the 2 wk trial with total integrity no matter how hard it was! Much to my surprise and delight by the end on the first week I'd lost eight pounds and was feeling p-r-e-t-t-y good! That was plenty of motivation and inspiration to stick with it for week two! Easy Peasy! End of week two another 7 pounds gone and I was feeling so good and had so much energy I couldn't sit still. I felt just downright ornery! After that I never looked back. I stayed on the 6 week plan for 52 weeks and lost a total of 92 pounds. I will be writing more about my experiences in the weeks ahead so stay tuned!!!

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Monday- Food

I'm pretty boring about breakfast. In winter it's 1/2 cup of steel cut oats or 10 grain cereal with a few raisins, half a banana and a tablespoon for ground flax seed with a splash of soy, almond or coconut milk. In summer a green smoothie with whatever fruit we have available and a couple big handfuls of spinach and/or kale and the tablespoon of ground flax seed. Boring I know but it is just one less thing to think about in the morning.
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2 comments:

  1. CatMerJanuary 4, 2012 at 8:43 PM

    hi joyce! i do the same, routine breakfasts, because i'm always late in the morning... i don't feel in a rut, i like it. when i feel it's time for a change, i change, but usually, i stick to any of these three: oats, with various prep, cereals or smoothies.

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  2. ManyhatsJanuary 5, 2012 at 6:10 PM

    Hi Joyce - I also do a big stock of steel cut oats on Sunday - for the week. This week, I also made homemade applesauce to through in with it each day. Yummm. I love your blog! You look great - and definitely inspirational (:

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