It has been a year and a half since I've lost the 25-30 pounds I have been caring around for the last thirty five years. The only thing I counted along the way was the weight as it came off slowly but surely over approximately a nine month period. I did not count calories, fat grams, points or fiber on my journey toward the body I had not seen since high school. I went for a walk when inspiration hit me and I ate when I was hungry until I was satisfied and that is what I continue to do to this very day.
No, I did not wake up in a parallel universe on the first morning of my weight loss journey nor did I spend the last two years in a dream. It took a semi-traumatic event to instinctively propel me toward physical and emotional health I had been searching for for years. The details of the impetus are irrelevant but the consequence made me realize that I had to do something at a very basic level to change the way I felt.
People have been asking along the way how I went about loosing the weight. I reply tentatively and carefully aware of the fact that what I did came naturally to me and maybe is just what happened to work for me. However, in light of everything I have been hearing and reading lately related to nutrition and the problem of obesity in our society, it has occurred to me that maybe I have hit on something worth sharing.
There are not too many things more basic than feeding our bodies. We do it from the time we are born to the day we die and we do it from the time we are awake to the time we call it a night. Culture, habit, economics, likes and dislikes propel us to make our daily food choices. We know in theory what we should be eating but in reality we fall short and defer to our APPETITES. And this is the crux of the problem as I see it.
I'm not entirely sure how I came about the rules I set for myself when I woke up that morning in late December of 2007. All I knew was that I had to figure out a way to keep my body functioning at an even keel. It was probably the accumulation of life experience, listening to and reading material written by experts in the field that percolated down to the few tenets that I saw as indisputable truth.
The things I felt sure about:
1. Caffeine makes me jittery and makes my heart race especially when taken on it's own.
2. I need to eat regularly, every three to four hours or I feel unwell.
3. A high protein diet (Adkins, etc.) keeps me feeling satisfied for longer periods of time but leaves me feeling low in energy.
4. A high carbohydrate diet, even good carbs, makes me feel energetic but makes me crave more carbohydrates.
5. When I crave food I often crave more carbohydrates,ie.the wrong food.
6. Cravings, especially cravings for carbs/sweets are the result of low blood sugar.
7. I need to keep my blood sugar constant to prevent food cravings thus poor food choices thus mood swings.
With this new awareness I proceeded to look at the food I put into my mouth in a different way. I now saw foods as delicious but powerful chemical components that produced predictable and controllable results in the way I felt both physically and emotionally. Now I was playing a food game and I was in control, not the other way around!
That seems to be enough for an introduction. If you still interested, the details are to follow.