First of all, there is more to losing weight than exercising and counting calories! There are three major components to healthy and effective weight loss, in my opinion, and my own experience:
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Learning About Real Nutrition, Not Just Counting Calories,
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And Putting Real Nutrition in Your Diet
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Learning About Fake Food, and Keeping as Much
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Fake Food Out of Your Diet as Possible
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Stress, Emotional Triggers, and Dealing With Trauma
I talk about this a lot. Sometimes I think I’ve told this story too much, only to find out that others are still struggling so much, and still could benefit from it. So I decided doing this post was a good way to try to organize my story here. Please note in the pictures above, that the first row is a transformation that occurred in only 2.5 months! And, this transformation did NOT include regular visits to the gym! It was entirely about changing my diet (keeping junk OUT) and properly supplementing my diet (putting more good, pure nutrition IN).
My Weight Loss Started With My Daughter’s Diagnosis
The pictures above only tell half the story. It all started with my daughter being diagnosed with PCOS. That’s the subject of another blog post, which I’ll write soon… But the short version is that in my efforts to help HER get healthier and lose weight, I ended up getting healthier and losing weight, too! I also reversed Rheumatoid Arthritis and have been pain-free since 2011. It’s June of 2018 right now. That’s PAIN FREE FOR SEVEN YEARS so far. Not only that, I got rid of “brain fog” and was sharper than I had been since college. And, I kept looking younger! Bonus!!! You can see for yourself in the pictures below. I think I look younger in 2018 than I did in 2011. I certainly look BETTER and healthier.
I also think it is important to point out, what I wasn’t willing to do for MYSELF, which was changing my eating habits and getting healthier I WAS WILLING TO DO FOR MY CHILD. Isn’t that typical? I was not motivated to take care of myself at all at that time. I had been through some tough stuff. Again, a topic for another blog article at another time. However, at the time that the Aug 2011 pic was taken, I had been through a house fire and a miserable, toxic 11-year marriage that ended in divorce. I was self-employed, working 80+ hrs a week, and was homeschooling my little girl. Simply put, taking care of myself came dead last on my priority list. I was in survival mode, pure and simple. Have you ever been there?
Love fueled the changes in my diet. Not love for myself, love for my daughter. Then I got to feeling SO MUCH BETTER, and looking so much better, that I decided I had to keep this new lifestyle up, just to be able to keep up with life!
However, as you can see in 2021-2024, I gained a lot of weight back, due to heartbreak. Although I was newly married in February of 2016 and very happy initially, my father was declining rapidly with Parkinson’s and I lost him in August of 2016. My marriage also started to unravel around that time. Also, my only daughter decided in July of that year, that she’d rather live with her father than with me and my new husband. Ugh!!! I was not just sad, I was DEVASTATED. I was also stressed, exhausted, depressed, broken-hearted, disappointed, grieving, etc, etc You name it, I was feeling it. I talk about trauma and heartbreak and what that has to do with weight more here. Perhaps you can relate. I don’t think people understand how important this is to a healthy weight and a healthy mental state. I honestly believe that all the knowledge of healthy eating and other good habits can be undone, in an INSTANT, either by a new trauma, an event, or a trigger in your current situation that triggers an old heartbreak.
So, that being said, I leave it to you to do some investigating about how to heal past trauma. If you google that topic, I suspect you will find tons of information on that. Both in Christian and secular circles, they are all saying the same thing. Heal the trauma, heal your life. Heal the trauma, deal with the rejection, the abandonment, the disappointment, or whatever it is from your childhood, and replace that, I believe, with the TRUTH of God’s word, the TRUTH of God’s love for you, with the FORGIVENESS of others and yourself, and the pieces begin to fall into place. Then attaining a healthier LIFE in general, and a happier, more peaceful life starts to emerge from the ashes. You simply have to LOVE YOURSELF HEALTHIER, or thinner, or more successful.
I Have Only Recently Begun
I maintained my weight with just the first two items I spoke about at the beginning of this article for about five years: Putting good stuff IN and keeping bad stuff OUT. Then a recent heartbreak me out of the left field and for the first time in my life, my heart was so broken I began to LOSE weight. That was first. The anxiety attacks that rocked me after this recent heartbreak DROVE me to find relief, to find healing, and that’s how I began to learn more about this whole heart issue and how it’s tied to EVERYTHING.
Guess what? If you’re overweight, it has a lot to do with what you’re eating, but even more so, it has to do with the state of your heart. You may just be self-medicating.
If you’re broke, you need to learn a few basic financial principles, but even more so, it has to do with the state of your heart. Keep making bad choices in boyfriends and husbands? It has a lot to do with the state of your heart and what you believe about yourself and your worth. I call this a “broken spiritual GPS”. You keep doing what you think is the right thing, you’re following the map you’ve got, but there’s something wrong with that map and although you are making all the turns that appear to be correct, you’re still ending up at the painful destination. Overweight, brokenhearted, and possibly addicted or broke. Remember, you can be addicted to sugar as easily as cocaine or heroin. You can be addicted to the praise of man!
So, I planned for this article to be more about nutrition. I guess I will start another post about that. It IS a very important subject. So let’s go there next!