My Weight Loss Story

In yesterday's post I promised more about my weight loss. One of my sisters, known in our family as The Tactless One, said to me at Xmas, "What have you lost? Like 60 pounds?" I don't know because I didn't weigh myself. I think it's about 40 or 50 pounds, but I hadn't been on a scale so I don't know what my start weight was and it's prolly more. I just went on pant size. So I started from the stretchy-XL's (size 18-ish, I think) and v. gradually moved down to size 10.

Here are the components to returning my body to balance:

MOVEMENT:
When I was younger I took ballet, aerobics, etc. Then I became v. ill with debilitating migraines for a few years. It was a long road back to health and wellness. Thanks to getting Brimhalled, along with acupuncture from my husband, I am back among the living. However, during that time, I had stopped all activity because it was just exhausting. I walked my labyrinth, which was the extent of my exercise.

Lack of movement + hormonal imbalance + yummy cheesecake + STRESS = weight gain.

I was never a gym rat and even tho I had memberships, I never went. Yeah, I was one of those. Now you couldn't pay me to go to a gym: the noise, the bright lights, the sweaty people, the smells...Eeewww! But as Bruce Lipton says, Movement is life. So it was a matter of finding my kind of movement. And then I discovered YOGA. Like Columbus discovered America, but still. THANK GOD.

Have you ever met Yoga People? People used to assume I was into yoga years before I was because I meditate. But I never got the Yoga Thing--those people with their yoga mats on vacation. They get that LOOK when they talk about yoga--you know, the Yoga Trance.

And THEN I went to Yoga East. And I got it. I'm one of those people now! What I appreciate about yoga is that it goes beyond physical exercise and works on all levels of the body-mind-spirit. MY kinda exercise! I'm more flexible than I ever was even when I was dancing, I'm stronger and have more stamina. Yoga helped not just with the physical exercise part, but it REALLY helped with all the stress I was under at the time. I remember Sharon Cameron was leading a particular pose and as I was holding it, I was thinking, I love you SO MUCH. Um, except that I said it out loud. Oops. But it was so true. If you're ever on Kent Island in Maryland, GO! You will be WELCOMED with open arms by everyone there.

MIND/BODY/HYPNOSIS
I continued listening to my CD every night with the intention of being conscious of what my body wants to eat, and how it wants to exercise. I focused on being healthy, vital, and energetic.

FOOD,NUTRITION, ETC.
Whenever anyone asks about "diet," Dr. Brimhall recommends The Schwarzbein Principle. My chiro-friend Catherine does as well for helping balancing hormones, people with diabetes, and women going through menopause. Dr. Schwarzbein helps patients reverse their diabetes and they also lose weight in the process. So it's a great resource and it was one of my influences.

I have a rule for myself that I won't eat anything I don't love. I never ate fast food to begin with and I don't drink sodas. It's not real food to me and it warps the taste buds. However, my weakness was pasta and pizza and donuts and cheesecake and ice cream. We have Celiac's disease in my family. It's the inability to digest gluten (found in wheat, barley, rye). While I tested negative for it (YAY, me!) the doctor said I have an extreme allergy to wheat. So if I get a stray bread crumb, I'll be OK (unlike a Celiac). But often with food allergies, you crave the very thing you're allergic to. If I cared enough, I could get it Brimhalled with their allergy elimination technique (which I would definitely do if it were life-threatening). But I thought I'd try wheat-elimination for a month and see if I noticed any difference. I felt so much more energetic and I wasn't so bloated and I dropped a pant size. Plus, I didn't have cravings. And I noticed that once I stopped eating wheat, I also stopped eating sugar (as in donuts, ice cream, etc).

Another thing I gave up (and this is a running joke in my family) : coffee. Are you drinking coffee, not drinking coffee, what? is the standard question I get when anyone's brewing. I drink tea, with a bit of honey, and organic milk.

Here's what I do eat:

• lots of vegetables, and raw for the most part in the warmer months.
• Beans. I like to sprout them and then they go in a salad, soup, stirfry. V. yummy. I've got some mystery beans from an Indian grocery that are AWESOME! But you can sprout any kind: lentils, black beans, etc.
• Hummus--great with veggies, on salad, with rice.
• I'm not a strict vegetarian, I'll eat Alaskan salmon (NOT farm-raised) & sardines for those essential fatty acids we all need.
• Nuts. I make my own trail mix with nuts, gogi berries, etc. from The Apple Cottage.
• For carbs: sweet potatoes, rice and plantains (SO yummy)!
• Oils: I use mostly olive oil and coconut oil (especially for cooking). There's some misinformation about coconut oil, but you can read more info on the benefits here. I also use it on steamed veggies.
• Total Green is an AWESOME green drink that Dr. Brimhall created. You have to get it through a Brimhall doc or someone who uses Nutriwest neutriceuticals. Packed with vitamins, minerals, protein, etc., it can be used as a meal replacement. I don't like breakfast, so I make a shake. In the summer time I make a smoothie with frozen fruit. I also buy rip bananas and cut them into pieces and freeze them. They give an ice-cream consistency to it and make it v. yummy. In the wintertime, I don't like cold things, so I just mix it with water. Yes, it's that good--to me, at least! I always travel with it so that if there's nothing to eat at a restaurant, at least I have trail mix and Total Green. And especially if I'm at a Brimhall seminar with Dr. Doesn't-Give-Breaks, I can keep my blood sugar stable.
• For sweets: trail mix, fresh fruit, bananas, and I LOVE plantains. I boil them and mash them like potatoes and add a bit of cocunut butter.
• In the winter time I like warm foods and hot tea and I LOVE soup. So I make lentil soup & pumpkin soup & veggie soup, etc. I've also done a bit of GF baking. When it first got cold, I started eating oatmeal (a no-no for Celiacs, but I seemed to be OK with it) except that I went up a pant size in a month. So I stopped eating it. For hot cereal I eat cream of rice occasionally. YUM. But mostly I just have Total Green in the a.m.
• In addition to food, I take my Nutriwest supplements as prescribed by the docs. These have been part of what gave me my life back when I was so ill, and I continue to take enzymes, probiotics, and a multi-vitamin.

So that's basically what I did to lose the weight and how I maintain it. It took about a year. I will look for some good chubby-before and now-after photos for another post. One last note: There are all sorts of reasons we gain weight, and I was not limited to one. There was a huge emotional component that I dealt with and that I am sparing you from. Suffice to say, one of the reasons we crave sweets is when we are missing other sweet things in our lives. In addition, I am hard-pressed to think of many women I know who don't have some sort of body-image issue. It is not limited to weight-gain, either. One of the keys is to stop the battle with yourself and accept where and who you are right now. And give up the idea that there is a perfect size or shape or age. Cut yourself some slack. To paraphrase a song: If you can't have the body you'd love, then love the one you're in. Right now. LTS: Life's too short to struggle. And if you want some help with that, go check out John Morgan's I Love My Body. Ah, because now, at the age of 43, I really do.