One change at a time..

Making changes slowly means you take a long, long time to make a whole lifestyle change - I'm still on the journey 4 years later. Frankly, I'm running out of changes to make - not that I'm any where near perfection - but I am living the healthy lifestyle I once thought was impossible for me to adopt and the niggling changes left to make don't seem as critical.

So - changes were made: no french fries started it all. The next week - I gave up ice cream. Well, that was easy - I'm not a huge fan. Then, I added a daily serving of fresh fruit. Took away white bread and added whole wheat - then took that away and added multigrain - a year later I eliminated bread altogether. Added mini carrots - and cherry tomatoes. Added oatbran to my baking and cooked with Splenda - 18 months later - gave up baking then dessert. Switched to new potatoes - baked or boiled. Gave up sugar - that took a long, long time - started by eliminating store bought baked goods and later shifted to 85% cocoa chocolate bars, then avoided all candy - and stabilized my blood sugar. As the need for sugar faded away - I truly ditched it - gave up adding sweetners to anything - including breakfast porridge. And breakfast - I started by eating it! Toast and peanut butter, eggs and bacon, leftover pizza - at least it was breakfast - moved on to cereal - Mini Wheats or Cheerios but settled finally on All Bran - added almonds, skim milk - no sugar - no more pizza. Cheese was really hard - can't give it up altogether - but gradually stopped eating any kind of processed cheese - no more Cheez Whiz, Kraft singles, cream cheese - focussed on flavour - small bits of Manchego, 6 year old cheddar, gutsy chevres, gorgeous Rocheforte... and so on and so on.

None of this could have been done overnight - my body would have figured out that I was dieting and, my body already knew that diets don't work.

I also added exercise - one day - I decided to take up yoga as a way to get more movement into my life. I bought Suzanne Deason's Yoga Conditioning for Weight Loss (Gaiam). About 6 months later, I opened it and shoved it into the dvd player. I didn't say every change was immediate - just that once I make it, I stick with it. I started on the fully modified version and cursed the rolls of fat pinched beneath my ribs as I bent into a version of triangle pose. And I worked up a sweat and I tried hard. I was proud of myself but, more importantly, I concentrated so hard during yoga that I managed to turn off my nasty little inner voice and find a core of peace I didn't know existed inside of me! I got addicted to getting to that voice - truly a spirit quest and my yoga improved. Yoga stayed - I still work out to the same dvd but the moves I'm making now look and feel unrelated to my first attempts - plus - no rolls get in my way. And the peace - still there but much more accessible thanks to other things I added along the way - topics for another post.

This all took 3 years - this adding and subtracting and changing was a slow process - somehow, I managed to trick my body into not noticing that it was losing weight (albeit very slowly) or that it was missing anything. And things were working so well - my decades long fight with Irritable Bowel Syndrome was fading away, headaches were less frequent and less severe, I had more patience and more acceptance and I was feeling younger. I lost weight - almost 40 lbs - and hit a plateau. And that's another story for another post.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog - I hope those who stumble upon it find a little inspiration for their journeys but its main purpose is to help me, a fat chick with a lifetime of experience with obesity currently living in a thin body, to manage my own personal journey!

I've lost weight before and sometimes maintained it for years - but this time, my motivation was different. Rushing towards 50 with more speed than grace, I decided 4 years ago that my health was paramount and my actual weight and appearance secondary. So, this has been a journey towards health, not away from weight.

At 45, I weighed a lifetime high of 221 lbs. I was fit, sorta - able to haul backpacks up the sides of mountains and committed to nightly ambles down to the park with the dogs, I thought I was unfairly penalized by a familial weak metabolism and told my doctor so when I posted a 5 lb gain over the previous year's weight! Even as I was whining about my obese heritage, I knew I was kidding myself and that my extra weight was only hurting me and borrowing at high interest against my future self.

But diets don't work. I've been on diets and, seriously, they don't work. Asking a 45 year old woman who could polish off a 200g bag of crinkle chips with an entire tub onion dip before dinner to switch cold turkey to carrot sticks just isn't going to work for anyone for very long. Nope - diets don't work.

You have to make a "lifestyle change" - well - yes, I've heard that before! But, frankly, most lifestyle changes look an awful lot like diets!

So - how do you make a lifestyle change in a sustainable way? It takes time - lots and lots of time! And a commitment to moving forward. I decided to make one change at a time, live with that change for awhile then add another. I vowed that unless the change was harming me in someway, I would not go back to the old habit under any circumstance.

The first week - I gave up french fries. Those deep fried, delicious sticks of potatoey goodness - I love french fries. So, I stopped eating them. Still ate everything else - just stopped eating french fries. Within a few weeks, I stopped thinking about french fries and decided to move on to the next change.

In my next post, I'll remember some of the best changes I've made - hope you'll enjoy them too!