I have to share with you how I found a way to diet to loose, and eat to win. The two may seem diametrically opposed to each other, but I found they are not necessarily so.
For many years, more than I would like to think, I have been way over my proper weight. By “proper” I mean the weight I once felt comfortable at, and held for more than twenty five years. Since I was in High School, until I was in my late thirties, I weighed in at the same weight, give or take a few pounds. I was comfortable, energetic, and what I would consider fit, at this weight. I never had to diet to keep the pounds off, I never had to worry whether I was in shape or not, then I hit the forties and I began collecting the pounds.
I know this sort of thing is not supposed to bother men, but it bothered me. I worked construction most of my life, my job was my form of working out. Working my way up in the construction industry I got to the point where I was managing, no longer doing the labor. My workout was over, and time did not allow me to begin going to the gym. First, I was in denial, not willing to admit I was getting fat.
On a visit to the Carolina mountains my lovely wife and I went on a short hike to see a beautiful waterfall, I was winded and out of energy. I could no longer wish it away, I was officially out of shape, while gaining shape, if you know what I mean.
Thus started the long process of trying one diet after the other, hoping to achieve the results preached about by those selling the diet book. I began researching online to find the best diet, one I could live with. My work requires a lot of travel, so I have to be able to eat at restaurants. Trying to stay on any of the wild diet plans I found proved to be nearly impossible. After years of failure, and larger pant sizes, I was now nearly fifty pounds heavier than I need to be, and no longer felt healthy. To compound issues I am not getting any younger either. Now in my fifties I realized that I must drop this weight now, or loose the weight loss battle, and my health, for good.
This past year the issue of health and wellness became more critical, my wife began to experience symptoms of menopause; let me rephrase that, my wife got hit hard by menopause. Because my wife’s family has a history of cancer we elected not to go the rout of hormone replacement therapy. We decided to combat the menopause with herbal remedies and diet. No longer am I just trying to drop a few pounds, but now I am fighting to keep my wife from slipping into bouts of depression, prolonged dizzy spells, hot flashes, and fatigue that drains the life right out of her. The research into dieting and hormone balancing then went into high gear, it became a mission.
Through the search for what to use to balance hormones I became better educated about our bodily functions and the relationship between food and our metabolism. I began realizing that just throwing herbal supplements at the problem of hormonal imbalance was not much better than the method doctors often use to treat patients. How many times have you heard “take these pills and let me know if your condition improves in a few days” from your doctor? Medical practice is just that, a lot of practice. The practice of trying one herbal supplement after the other is not much better. I found myself chasing symptoms, while never treating the root causes of my wife’s menopause.
I began reading up on what causes the hormonal imbalance, and discovered that much of what makes the hormones to go so far out of whack is our self destructive diets. Part of the problem is related to age, but much of the imbalance is treatable by watching what goes into our diet and some exercise. Nutrition is central to healthy hormone production. When a woman is younger her body is able to compensate for the lack of nutritional discipline, few younger women ever notice that their bodies are constantly struggling to maintain a proper balance of hormones. With age it becomes more difficult for the body to compensate for a lack of proper nutrition and exercise. Then it leaped out at me, this is the same reason I have been overweight, the two issues are closely related.
I bagan looking into the concept of eating for health, balancing nutrition with physical activity; what I was finding was that my wife and I needed essentially the same thing, a holistic approach to wellness. Not being a nutritionalist, or a personal trainer, I was at an impasse. That is, until in my research I found a program, one put together by someone who is a nutritionalist, and a trainer. The information is solid, and the diet plan is not really a diet plan, it is just proper eating, in balance. I learned what I long suspected, what I have always felt in my heart was the case, if we just eat the right things we can enjoy eating (within reason) and enjoy good health and wellness. Along with eating in balance comes more energy, and less need for herbal supplements and vitamins. When you eat the right foods, in their proper balance, and stop eating the things your body does not know how to process, then you feel better and are naturally more active.
No more crazy diet plans where I try to starve my body of carbs or overdose on proteins, one day up and the next day down. With the information I have learned from Isabel at Diet Solutions, and I have just gotten started, our lives are already coming into balance, the natural way. No gimmicks, no starvation tactics, just good sensible eating skills. Diet Solutions provides all the tools to determine our metabolism, my wife has a different one than I do, so we can gauge the appropriate amounts of which food types for each of us. The program has so much available to help make the transition to eating properly: recipes using readily available foods, a short and simple manual on how to eat properly, meal plans, shopping guides, and a whole host of other things to assist you to succeed in dropping the pounds naturally. Isabel has a down to earth program, one anyone can achieve, she tells you how you can go all organic, using the best foods, for a more affordable rout she shows you how to use what is in every grocery store at lower prices.
What I have chosen to do, so we don’t drive ourselves crazy making separate meals, is to meet in the middle with our differing needs. We both eat the same things, each of us much more closely satisfying our own body’s requirements than we were doing previously. With the Diet Solutions program, the more closely you follow the regimen, the more weight you will loose. You can implement what you learn to whatever degree you desire. I am now dropping the weight, about fifteen pounds in the first month, while my wife’s hormones are now easier to control with fewer herbal remedies.
My wife and I eagerly anticipate that as we continue to learn from Isabel, and Diet Solutions, how to better facilitate our health by eating properly we will both enjoy an increasingly healthier lifestyle. Eating well and living well is not just a catchy theme for our website, for us it is a way of life; one I am finding I only thought I understood before.
