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!!!

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Thursday: Challenges

On Thursday's I'm going to think/write about challenges!  My first challenge of the new year is to  change up a habit that I've gotten into during 2011.  Grazing a bit after dinner!  Only Eat to Live food of course but
not what I want to be doing to kick start my weight loss again in 2012.  So I have I'm making the commitment to not eat after dinner.  It will take some awareness and integrity at first but I know I can do it.  Also because of my early morning dog walking and an impatient dog I don't have time to weigh in first thing in the morning so I'm going to switch that up and weigh in before I go to bed. I'll keep you posted

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