As a thin child and teenager for most of my life the word diet wasn’t even in my
vocabulary I could eat whatever I wanted and however
much I wanted of it. Then I hit the age of nineteen/twenty and my body decided seemingly overnight to
begin putting on weight. For the first time in my life I had to watch what I
ate and exercise to avoid gaining too many kilos and as it was something I
wasn’t use to my weight went up and down over the years. Because I’d been a
skinny girl for most of my life I felt pressure to remain lean and putting on
weight would not only make me feel bad about the way I looked but also made me
angry and disappointed in myself and depressed that I found it so hard to lose
weight and keep it off. The cycle continued for years; I’d work out and diet
which meant I’d lose weight then it didn’t take long once I was at a good
weight for me to gain it all back again, sometimes even a few kilos extra.
When I got pregnant with my son he was breach and
ultimately I had to have an emergency caesarean which meant six months of
little to no exercise, then one year later I was pregnant with my daughter who
also ended up being an emergency caesarean which of course meant another six
months of recovery. During the next twelve months I also had two other
surgeries to repair umbilical hernias I’d formed during my pregnancies and the
second surgery meant yet another six months of no exercise. After having my two
beautiful children and both surgeries my husband and I decided that we weren’t
going to have any more babies, for me this meant it was time to get my weight
under control in an effort to live a happy healthy life with my kids and be a
good role model for them as well.
Over the years I tried calorie counting which ended up being
too much work, shake diets that although I was hungry a lot of the time worked until I went back to a food diet and
diet pills, some of which made me very irritable and grumpy. After my recovery
from my operation I still struggled on my own but after visiting a doctor for my
ongoing sinus troubles and refusing to have surgery or take anymore drugs I was
finally pointed towards the help I needed when he suggested in frustration that
I visit a Naturopath.
For the past five months, with the help of the Naturopath, I
have changed my eating habits dramatically which has
meant ditching flour, pasta, rice and potatoes and due to my allergies cow’s milk and
some cheeses as well. It also meant avoiding sugar. If you had asked me if I ate a fairly healthy diet before
I visited the Naturopath I would have said yes as I didn’t realise I consumed so
much of these foods in my day to day life and the effect they were having on my body.
The only thing I had already been avoiding was dairy as allergy testing a
number of years ago had revealed that dairy products were something that brought on
my sinus problems.
Talking to the Naturopath revealed to me that for the amount
of activity I was doing a day, even if I was doing some exercise most days, I
was eating too many carbs compared to the amount I was actually burning. It
also made sense to me that our bodies weren’t made to eat and digest the
processed foods we have in our pantries today especially the amount of sugar in
our day to day foods. Our bodies preferred a ‘caveman’ type diet which
consisted mainly of salad, vegetables, nuts, eggs and meat. The Naturopath
asked me to cut the high carb foods out of my diet along with sugar and
although initially it wasn’t easy, after the first two weeks my “carb and sugar cravings”
subsided and I was ready to see food in a new light.
For me, eating had become more than just 'fuelling up',
getting enough to stay healthy and making it through the day. Food was a way to
socialise with friends, lift me up when I wasn’t happy and to break my boredom.
Not only did I have to change my diet but I needed to completely change the way
I looked at food and assess the relationship I had with it. Before my new
eating plan I saw food as something I was entitled too, it was there to eat so
why shouldn’t I eat it? Enjoy it? Everyone else eats the same, some people eat worse
than me and I need to eat to live. I thought that I enjoyed high carb foods and
take away and had a million excuses in my head which kicked in any time I had
tried to change my diet in the past. Dieting made me feel as though I was being
deprived of food, when in reality I was depriving my body of what it really
needed which was enough fuel and nutrients to simply stay healthy.
By removing those high carb foods and sugar from my diet and
increasing my intake of protein not only have I lost weight but I’ve lost the unhealthy
visceral fat from around my organs that can potentially contribute to a lot of
health problems. Apart from my weight loss other issues I have noticed have disappeared
are; cravings (I rarely crave any type of 'bad' food or high carb food), bloating
after meals or having a “fat” day and of course my
sinus problems have almost disappeared. Before visiting the Naturopath I was
taking a sinus tablet almost every day but now it is rare for me to need one
and the ones I am taking are all natural.
All of these changes made me alter the way I view and
consume food and it is a way of living I can’t imagine changing because of how
healthy it has made me and how great I feel because of it. Sometimes it is
difficult especially when you just want something quick and easy and there
aren’t many fast meals that don’t include the foods I’m not supposed to be
eating, but it has also forced me to plan ahead, be more adventurous and try
new things. The unhealthy foods that I use to consume everyday simply don’t appeal to me
anymore. Eating something that has too much sugar in it will give me headaches
and high carb foods now make me feel ill and bloated which has helped me decide
to leave those foods behind and proves to me they can’t be very good for my
body.
Over the course of the last five months I have visited the
Naturopath regularly so she could ensure I wasn’t having any issues and that I
was on the right track and losing weight in a healthy way. She would also weigh
me along with measuring my body fat, visceral fat, hydration, muscle and bone
mass and keep track of my metabolic age. My first visit was a huge eye opener
with a metabolic age of over forty and unhealthy levels of visceral fat but
just last week when I had my appointment I finally hit my health goal. My
visceral fat was well within the healthy range as was the rest of my
measurements. My muscle mass was high which was good for me as it was low for a lot of my weight loss journey and my metabolic age was
twenty eight which is my actual age. The sense of achievement was amazing and I
feel so proud of myself for getting to this point. The thought of maintaining
my health doesn’t scare me at all as I feel comfortable in my new lifestyle.
For me the key to weight loss appears to have been viewing
food in a different light, to educate myself on what I was actually eating and
realising that eating healthy doesn’t have to be complicated. If I can do this
anyone can, losing weight isn’t a battle with food ultimately it’s a mind shift.
Check out this video link on the
obesity epidemic and suggestions as to why it is happening:
