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

Wednesday - Inspiration

Before

After
I don't know if this is inspirational for you but it certainly is for me! I never want to get anywhere near the weight I was before!
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Tuesday - Exercise

Zonda Car goes from 0-124 mph in 6 seconds
Zonda -cute little puppy
Zonda the big brindle dog at 6 months and not done growing yet.
She moves pretty fast and can probably leap over a Zonda Car in a single bound!


I'm not really in love with exercise and I lost my 92 lbs in 2010 without really lifting a finger except for a little "mall walking" with my co-workers and maybe 6 weeks of yoga classes about 6 months in. Then in August 2011 my daughter got a puppy (supposedly part Lab and part German Shepherd but I think its Lab and Great Dane!) Anyway said puppy (who got the lovely name of Zonda) is a morning dog and said daughter is,wll, not! So I volunteered to get up each morning before work (5:30 a.m.) and take little Zonda for a mile walk to release some of that early morning puppy energy. Now at 6 months later Zonda is reaching the lummox stage and we take that mile at a pretty good clip with a lot of erratic starts, stops, jerks and leaps. Aside from the great aerobic workout I'm getting pretty strong shoulders and upper arms. But I haven't lost any weight from this exercise but I love how deeply I can breathe now and I haven't had a cold since the weather turned cold. So I am getting some benefits. My goal is to get back to my yoga mat here at home before the end of the month.
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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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Sunday, January 1, 2012

Happy New Year!

Hope you had a great start to your 2012! I've made a list of things that I can share with you as I make my Green Bowl Journey this year. And of course you can ask me questions in the comments. My resources for Living the Green Bowl Life are:
Eat to Live by Dr. Joel Furhman
The Writing Diet by Julia Cameron
Think Yourself Thin by Debbie Johnson
My Yoga Mat
Our dog, Zonda, my morning walking companion
Chef Jillian, my daughter who keeps eating fresh and interesting
and our website
www.thegreenbowlproject.weebly.com
My Yahoo "support group" at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Eat-2-Live/

I'm sure I'll add some more as we journey on.
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