I guess the best place to begin is at the beginning. As a wee little girl I never over ate, that is until one day when my Mom gave me a large bowl of soup as apposed to the small bowl I usually got. Now I remember looking at this bowl of soup and thinking just how BIG it was and how I wasn't sure if I could eat it all but that I didn't want to waste it. By the end of that soup I was more uncomfortable then I had ever been. My stomach stretched beyond full, and filled with a new realization about just how much my stomach could hold.
Now you may think that I would have learned not to over eat ever again after an experience like that but in reality that is when my troubles started. You mean I can eat more food if it's tasty? My stomach can handle it? Awesome! Slowly over the years I began to develop a little belly, I didn't think much about it until I reached grade 5 or 6. Then the other kids started making fun of me as they do and I grew self conscious. As I was a kid and didn't know how to deal with this issue I asked an adult for some advice and was told to suck in my stomach... I did. The other kids were wowed at my weight loss and thinking this was the way to do it I continued... to this day I suck in my stomach. Which is something I will blog about another day as I can't think of a more unhealthy way for people to deal with their body image. But I digress.
Around the age of 12 I gave up meat. There was no real reason I just grew tired of it and favored vegetables, so as I grew into a teenager I began to slim down, always a few pounds over weight, but nothing drastic, just a little chubby. After my first real relationship ended at the age of 20 I went vegan. At that time I met this health freak who was so drastically different from my first boyfriend (mainly into yoga and vegetarianism) that we started dating. And so my year of whole foods and nothing but whole foods began. I have to say that I did love it, to a point. For one year I ate no processed foods of any kind, no gluten, no dairy just vegetables and grains lots of grains. I was so strict that eating a rice cake was me going on a bing. I lost weight a lot of weight in fact I have never been so thin in my life maybe I was a size 4, but all through this my boyfriend and his mother would say well you still have some weight to lose, your not that thin yet! I was so self conscious and would shy away from photos that showed my stomach. In reality I just needed to tone up, get some muscle. The yoga wasn't enough. But I couldn't see it then. We ended up doing a 4 month trip to Europe, I hadn't known him to well in the beginning but by the end I was losing it. Now I can't explain to you just how crazy this guy I was dating was... Every week he was allergic to some different food, one week corn the next celery and corn was fine. He took about a million vitamins and was obsessed with being healthy. I can tell you that I have never met a healthier person in my life, he drove me crazy. I wish I could say that I stuck to my guns and stayed on my diet but by the end of the first month I was back to eating dairy and pastries.... A few months after we returned home I finally broke it off with him, and I rebelled. I ate and ate all the bad, no good foods that he had hated. All the flour, and sugar and processed foods. My weight started coming back.
It took some years, I went back to being chubby and by the time I reached 26 I was a good 25-30 pounds over weight. Then it happened my big life changing moment. I was thrown over a car and smashed to the pavement. Miraculously got away without broken bones, although I was sprained and injured from head to toe with bruises and soft tissue damage and a pretty bad concussion. It took me a good 1.5 years to start somewhat getting back to life again. I can tell you my memory of that time is blurry but I ate comfort foods and barley exercised. My weight grew and grew.
And so the years passed and i tried to get myself on track going on a diet or a cleanse. Doing a lot of yoga and biking and even running. But the weight kept on piling on. I found out this year that my thyroid was low and after a bout on thyroid meds I found this alternative doc that got me taking iodine instead. My thyroid is basically level now but my weight hasn't changed. So now at 30 years of age I am almost 200 pounds and only 5'4. I eat healthy foods and exercise but get nowhere. I'm tired of being the fat girl, of not fitting into clothes, and at being judged as unhealthy. I'm taking action. On Jan. 5th of 2011 I will start the Dr. Bernstein Diet. A lot of people I know would think this kind of diet is drastic and unhealthy but you know what being overweight is unhealthy and it is making me depressed.
So that's my story, and here I will track my next chapter. I plan to attack this diet by the healthiest possible means. About 6 months ago I started eating seafoods and eggs, so these foods will be a big part of this new diet experience. Along with not eating carbs which after years of eating carbs (so many grains and breads) I can tell you I am excited to get off of them for awhile. I am addicted to them, I love carbs! But they are so not healthy all the time! I can't wait until I have shed this unwanted weight and I get to live my life. My hope is to really learn how many much food is best for my body and what foods are best for me. I feel that in most ways I will go back to eating a simpler diet, a whole food diet and leave the multitude of carbs and refined sugars alone. But until then it will be no carbs, no sugar, just fruits, vegetables, beans and fish. Here I go, it's all going to start now.
J
