I never had a weight problem as a child. I was always active: climbing trees, hiking, swimming, walking and riding my bike. My parents they ate what I would call a healthy diet, the typical Standard American diet but there were limited sweets and processed foods in the house, and salads and vegetables were always part of the meals. However, meat was always the main part of the meal.
As soon as I stopped being as active and left my parents home when I got married at the mature age of 19, I started adding on weight. Sweets, cookies and hamburger helper became staples in my new home. I still cooked vegetables but they were never the center of any meal, always a side dish. My favorite meal was Macaroni and Cheese as well as most anything with cheese. By the time I was pregnant with my daughter about 6 months later, I was up to 175 and being 5’4”, it showed. Three years later, I was over 200.
I tried everything to get the weight off, Weight Watchers and other programs. By time I was 37, I ballooned to almost 300 pounds. My doctor discovered I was hypothyroid and had high blood pressure. I was put on synthroid and blood pressure medication and was told I needed to lose weight. A year later, I discovered the Atkins diet. I dropped 105 pounds to 195 in about 1 1/2 years following his plan. It was the first time my kids had seen me under 200 pounds and while I loved not being “morbidly obese”, I stopped the diet when severe constipation and stomach cramping started to occur.
Over the next decade, pounds were creeping back on every year. I was back up to 282 by the Summer 2012. In addition to hypothyroidism and high blood pressure, I was now pre-diabetic and required a C-PAP machine for sleep apnea. I was miserable and hated how I felt and looked. How could an intelligent hard-working woman with a great job and who was graduating Magna Cum Laude from college in only a few months get this way? I was at my wits end. Nothing seemed to work.
This was when I began a path to surgery to solve my weight problem. My supervisor at work had lost over 50 pounds by having gastric sleeve surgery. She looked great and talked to me about considering it. My husband and I went to an informational session at a Weight Loss Surgery Center. I talked with the doctor there and made the appointment for my initial consultation. Even though the doctor said in his info session that it “wasn’t my fault”, that genetics and other factors contributed, I felt like this was failing: failing myself, by not being able to control my eating and my weight. On January 11, 2013, I went to the initial consultation, paid for the program kit and started down the surgery road. I was determined to get this under control but very nervous about this drastic change.
On the evening of January 20, 2013, I bored and flipping through movies to stream on Amazon. Since my weight and surgery were very much on my mind, I landed on “Forks Over Knives” and decided to watch it and I am very glad I did. I was impressed by the movie yet skeptical. Were the answers to my obesity was as simple as eating a Whole Foods Plant-based diet? Could it really be that easy? What about protein (yes, the question that drives me crazy now that I am "educated" in WFPB)? Would it be satisfying? And could I really lose weight doing this?
I decided that night that I had nothing to lose (except weight) by trying to follow this lifestyle. Pun intended; I went cold turkey!! I bought Dr. McDougall’s The Starch Solution and Maximum Weight Loss books. I figured that I have to change my lifestyle anyway if I was going to have surgery, why not try something that doesn’t require surgery and see how it goes. The skeptic in me still continued with the surgery preparation and counseling.
I have been a career dieter for most of my adult life and while I have had some success in the past, I have never found the “key” to staying with it. I hate counting calories, carbs, points, portion control or weighing and measuring my food. It gets old very quickly. Even though I have never smoked, I have always felt that it has to be easier to quit smoking because you can just avoid it completely. Food is something we all have to have to live, I can’t quit eating!! However, I can QUIT eating meat and fish. I can QUIT eating dairy. I can QUIT using oil. Those statements hit home and have helped me to succeed.
I read as much as I could on websites and books learning about this lifestyle. Learning how to cook and eat vegetables and starches such as potatoes, rice, corn and legumes has been challenging and fun. Not having meat or dairy, especially cheese which I loved, was hard at first but fairly easy to accomplish, I just didn’t buy any of it or have it in the house. With meat no longer the center of my diet, I needed to learn new ways to prepare and enjoy food. I have always love vegetables but they were just a side dish or a complement to the meat dish I was preparing for dinner. I have experimented with recipes, liked some and didn’t like others.
Within a month of starting, I was down 15 pounds. After 2 months, I decided surgery was out and stopped the process. In May, I was down 25 and saw my doctor. My cholesterol has gone from 186 to 138. The big change was my triglycerides went from 260 in December to 114 in just a couple of months!! My doctor took off the diabetes medication and even said that I am no longer classified as a diabetic with my glucose down to 88 and A1C at 5.2. I believe that the Plant-Strong lifestyle can get me down to what I weighed when I married 33 years ago: 135. I knew it may take couple of years to get there, but I now felt it is very, very possible, not just probable.
It has one year since I started this journey and I have lost 75 pounds. I can’t wait to see my weight below 200. I have increased my activity too. I am walking about 5 miles per day. I want to increase my activity more by biking, kayaking and hiking or anything that doesn’t involve going to a gym but activities that are fun and exciting. Life is good and getting better every day!! All I can say to the people who produced “Forks Over Knives” movie, Dr McDougall and all who contributed so much to this lifestyle is THANK YOU. Thank you for saving my life and leading me down a new path that will continue to be full of health and new adventures I never dreamed I could do.
December 2012/December 2013
Suzy
