My success story.
Posted: Sun Jul 15, 2012 11:24 amHello Everyone,
I've been reading the boards here for over a year and a half now but this is my first post. I decided to post here because recently I posted a picture of myself on facebook after changing to this way of eating for this past year and a half and judging by the reaction I got from my friends and family (most who don't see me all that often) I decided that I indeed have been successful and wanted to share it with all of you. My story is fairly lengthy but I feel the details are needed to fully understand how I got to where I am.
This first picture below is me in 2001 moving into my apartment 2 months after having graduated college. At this point in time I don't remember exactly what I weighed but I'm thinking it was around 210+ lbs. Needless to say, I had gone from being being a trim 8th grader (130 lbs) to this in a span of 9 years.
After that my weight kept going up until around 2007 I was at my all time high of 240+ lbs. The second picture below is is me at thanksgiving around to 230-240 lb mark.
In 2007 I managed to lose 40 lbs. in about a year doing nothing but cutting back portions. It worked for a time but I was starving all the time and when the stresses of my work came back I quickly regained almost everything I lost to where in 2009 I was back up to 235 lbs.
So how did I end up here on McDougalls website? Believe it or not it all started out with finances. For many years I had constant anxiety about my financial situation (although in retrospect it wasn't as bad as I made it out to be.) when in 2008 I stumbled across a guy on the radio talking about finances. The advice he gave was making sense to me and so I looked into it some more. After reading his book, listening to him on the radio, and taking some of his classes I was deeply inspired and worked my way out of debt, put aside money for emergencies and began budgeting on a monthly basis. I was making great progress on my fiances and this was making me extremely happy and motivated. So much so that my motivation for losing weight and getting healthy came from a quote the guy had in one of his books...
This quote kept running through my head over and over and over and over while I was working on my fiances and after I time I began to think about my health. I started to think about the skinny people I know and was wondering if any of them could inspire me to be skinnier. The more I thought about it though the more I realized that the skinny people I know weren't my idea of healthy nor did I think they could help me. Why? Because they all ate the same junk I ate just less of it. I had already proven to myself that eating less of junk food doesn't really work long term. That's when I realized it's not about finding skinny people and doing what they do. It's about finding HEALTHY people and doing what they do. Problem was, I didn't know anyone that screamed HEALTH to me. So I thought what typical people think...it's all about diet and exercise. I decided to concentrate first on learning the truth about nutrition. I was determined that know matter what, even if I had to read college level text books that I was going to understand what truly is healthy based on science. I didn't want to know how to eat nothing but cookies for 30 days and lose weight. I wanted to know how to become a beacon of health and it had to be based on solid science. So my search began by trying to find books for my Nook (like the Amazon Kindle) on health and nutrition. I downloaded several samples that sounded interesting and began to read. The first two samples I read didn't catch my attention. But the third one did. It was a book called The Spectrum by Dr. Dean Ornish. I read the sample and was hooked so I bought the entire book. After reading the entire book in one evening I was just amazed. Here was a guy that had shown that you can reverse heart disease. Like many other people I had always believed that this was impossible. I changed my diet the very next day and after 6 months I had lost 20 lbs. But I was having trouble coming up with recipes to eat so I search on Amazon for vegan cookbooks and it just so happened at that exact time Happy Herbivore by Lindsay Nixson had just come out so I ordered that. While I was waiting for the cookbook to arrive I checked out her website and found an interesting blog post about not consuming oil. I was intrigued...why no oil? Dr Ornish allowed some oil, low fat dairy, and egg whites after all. In her blog post she had a link to a video on the VegSource.Com website of Jeff Novicks talk on oils. I was hooked so I went looking some more and ended up here on Dr. McDougalls website where his starch solution video was posted and I watched that. Now I was convinced to follow this way of eating and thus I modified my diet slightly from Dr. Ornish and starting following Dr. McDougalls and Jeff's advice. After a year and a half I'm now down to 167 lbs. The picture below is me at this weight. Not only have I lost almost 70 lbs. But I am healthier than I ever been in my life. Before changing my diet my blood pressure was getting to the hypertensive stage. High 130s / 80+. My cholesterol was 192 (Tri = 192, HDL = 39, LDL = 114) but that was taken 3 or 4 years before my worst weight so my guess is it was even worse. As of June 2012 my blood presume is right around 110/70 and my cholesterol is 90 (Tri = 97, HDL = 27, and LDL = 44). Needless to say I am thrilled and I feel great. At 5'6" I still have 12 lbs to lose until I can be considered in the 'ideal' range for weight but even if I don't ever shed another lb I know I will enjoy great health continuing this way of eating. I want to give thanks to Dr. McDougall, Jeff Novick, Dr Campbell, Dr. Esselstyn, Dr. Ornish, Dr. Bernard, everyone who shares their inspiring stories here on the boards, and all of the other great people for teaching me to truth about nutrition and health. They are the winners I was looking for to be examples in my health journey!
Thanks,
-Josh
I've been reading the boards here for over a year and a half now but this is my first post. I decided to post here because recently I posted a picture of myself on facebook after changing to this way of eating for this past year and a half and judging by the reaction I got from my friends and family (most who don't see me all that often) I decided that I indeed have been successful and wanted to share it with all of you. My story is fairly lengthy but I feel the details are needed to fully understand how I got to where I am.
This first picture below is me in 2001 moving into my apartment 2 months after having graduated college. At this point in time I don't remember exactly what I weighed but I'm thinking it was around 210+ lbs. Needless to say, I had gone from being being a trim 8th grader (130 lbs) to this in a span of 9 years.
After that my weight kept going up until around 2007 I was at my all time high of 240+ lbs. The second picture below is is me at thanksgiving around to 230-240 lb mark.
In 2007 I managed to lose 40 lbs. in about a year doing nothing but cutting back portions. It worked for a time but I was starving all the time and when the stresses of my work came back I quickly regained almost everything I lost to where in 2009 I was back up to 235 lbs.
So how did I end up here on McDougalls website? Believe it or not it all started out with finances. For many years I had constant anxiety about my financial situation (although in retrospect it wasn't as bad as I made it out to be.) when in 2008 I stumbled across a guy on the radio talking about finances. The advice he gave was making sense to me and so I looked into it some more. After reading his book, listening to him on the radio, and taking some of his classes I was deeply inspired and worked my way out of debt, put aside money for emergencies and began budgeting on a monthly basis. I was making great progress on my fiances and this was making me extremely happy and motivated. So much so that my motivation for losing weight and getting healthy came from a quote the guy had in one of his books...
"If you want to be Rich do what Rich people do. If you want to be skinny, You're not going to eat what fat people are eating...If you want a good marriage don't go to some guy that's been married 16 times and wrote a book. Find some old couple walking down the street that's been married 62 years and she's holding him up. Find out how he did that. Take that guy to lunch. He's got some wisdom. Find winners and mimic what they're doing to win."
This quote kept running through my head over and over and over and over while I was working on my fiances and after I time I began to think about my health. I started to think about the skinny people I know and was wondering if any of them could inspire me to be skinnier. The more I thought about it though the more I realized that the skinny people I know weren't my idea of healthy nor did I think they could help me. Why? Because they all ate the same junk I ate just less of it. I had already proven to myself that eating less of junk food doesn't really work long term. That's when I realized it's not about finding skinny people and doing what they do. It's about finding HEALTHY people and doing what they do. Problem was, I didn't know anyone that screamed HEALTH to me. So I thought what typical people think...it's all about diet and exercise. I decided to concentrate first on learning the truth about nutrition. I was determined that know matter what, even if I had to read college level text books that I was going to understand what truly is healthy based on science. I didn't want to know how to eat nothing but cookies for 30 days and lose weight. I wanted to know how to become a beacon of health and it had to be based on solid science. So my search began by trying to find books for my Nook (like the Amazon Kindle) on health and nutrition. I downloaded several samples that sounded interesting and began to read. The first two samples I read didn't catch my attention. But the third one did. It was a book called The Spectrum by Dr. Dean Ornish. I read the sample and was hooked so I bought the entire book. After reading the entire book in one evening I was just amazed. Here was a guy that had shown that you can reverse heart disease. Like many other people I had always believed that this was impossible. I changed my diet the very next day and after 6 months I had lost 20 lbs. But I was having trouble coming up with recipes to eat so I search on Amazon for vegan cookbooks and it just so happened at that exact time Happy Herbivore by Lindsay Nixson had just come out so I ordered that. While I was waiting for the cookbook to arrive I checked out her website and found an interesting blog post about not consuming oil. I was intrigued...why no oil? Dr Ornish allowed some oil, low fat dairy, and egg whites after all. In her blog post she had a link to a video on the VegSource.Com website of Jeff Novicks talk on oils. I was hooked so I went looking some more and ended up here on Dr. McDougalls website where his starch solution video was posted and I watched that. Now I was convinced to follow this way of eating and thus I modified my diet slightly from Dr. Ornish and starting following Dr. McDougalls and Jeff's advice. After a year and a half I'm now down to 167 lbs. The picture below is me at this weight. Not only have I lost almost 70 lbs. But I am healthier than I ever been in my life. Before changing my diet my blood pressure was getting to the hypertensive stage. High 130s / 80+. My cholesterol was 192 (Tri = 192, HDL = 39, LDL = 114) but that was taken 3 or 4 years before my worst weight so my guess is it was even worse. As of June 2012 my blood presume is right around 110/70 and my cholesterol is 90 (Tri = 97, HDL = 27, and LDL = 44). Needless to say I am thrilled and I feel great. At 5'6" I still have 12 lbs to lose until I can be considered in the 'ideal' range for weight but even if I don't ever shed another lb I know I will enjoy great health continuing this way of eating. I want to give thanks to Dr. McDougall, Jeff Novick, Dr Campbell, Dr. Esselstyn, Dr. Ornish, Dr. Bernard, everyone who shares their inspiring stories here on the boards, and all of the other great people for teaching me to truth about nutrition and health. They are the winners I was looking for to be examples in my health journey!
Thanks,
-Josh
Thanks for sharing your success! 
