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.