Don't Drink Poison

When I eat poorly, when I eat food that does not nourish my body + mind, I feel sluggish and tired.  It's kind of like how I imagine what my car feels like when I fill it with cheap gas.  The car will still run, but not at optimum levels. 

Fast food is so dangerous.  Because it is so easy to  find yourself in an endless cycle of eating this junk food.  It doesn't do anything positive for your health.  It fills the gap when you're hungry, but it is a poor imitation of nourishment.   I really think that poverty and access to low nutrient foods like most fast food (especially dollar menus) are the enemies of good health.  A good deal of people on low incomes do not have the time or resources to prepare meals, and fast food is the easy fix. 

I don't want to be trapped in this cycle of poor nutrition, which is why I am starting to remove all of these types of food from my diet.  I've realized that there cannot be a moderate approach to this.  Junk food for me at the moment, is like being addicted to drugs or alcohol.  I do need to eat, but I don't need this kind of poison.  Perhaps describing junk food as poison seems extreme to some of you.  But that's what it has become in my life.  Junk food is a poison that colors my life and my health for the worst.  My addiction to this type of food has brought nothing positive, aside from a few seconds of mild pleasure.  We all know the first three bites are the best. 

I started eliminating junk food from my diet as of yesterday.  I had my last fast food meal.  A double cheeseburger and a 'value fry' from Burger King:

As I was eating it, I was in two minds.  Part of me was savoring it, and the other half was thinking about how awesome it will be when I no longer feel any desire to eat this sort of food.  I was thinking about how fantastic I will feel when I start to feel (and see) my health improving, and when my body is running on optimum fuel - healthy, nutritious food. 

I also realized that while the burger and fries tasted good,  the "good" wasn't worth sacrificing my health, happiness or goals in life for anymore.  Essentially every time I have chosen junk food over healthy food, every time I have said "it's too hard" to go and exercise, every time I have chosen the easy way out when it comes to my weight, my health and my food choices, I have robbed myself of good health, of happiness and of reaching my life goals.  I don't want to do that anymore.  After a very long time, I am starting to see that I am worth much more than I though.  I am worthy of a healthy body.  I am worthy of happiness.   I am worthy and capable of achieving my life goals.    I don't want to rob myself of all these good things a second longer.   That is why I have chosen to remove all these "poisonous" foods from my life.  

I'll be taking it one day at a time.  I'm not expecting it to be easy, but I do know that it will be so worth it. 

I Don't Need To Diet

At the end of January this year I was 5'2" and weighed 235lbs.  This was the heaviest I had ever been.  Ever. And I looked like this:

The white & pink caption reads: "January 2010. At 235lbs/107kg. My highest weight ever."

These pictures horrified me so badly that I immediately decided that I HAD to do SOMETHING about my weight.   I signed up for Spark People, started reading The Spark, keeping a food journal and doing Walk Away The Pounds DVDs.   I lost six pounds by the end of February.

At the beginning of March, I got sick.  I wound up in hospital with a particularly powerful strain of food poisoning.  I dropped five pounds in a 48 hour period.    For a few weeks afterwards, I still wasn't feeling 100%.   So I used that as an excuse to not keep my food journal or exercise.    By the end of April I had gained back the weight I had lost.

At the start of May, I decided that I needed to get back on track and get serious about my weight loss.  I started exercising/food journaling and being an active member of the Spark People community - which helped to keep me accountable.  Toward the end of June, I had lost 13lbs.   And then I got the flu.  And I told myself that I could 'take a few days off' from exercising.  A few days became a week, which quickly multiplied into two.  Those two weeks became five and before I knew it, I was back to my bad old habits of eating junk food, not exercising and making excuses for both.    As of today, I weigh 217lbs.  I am proud that I haven't put any of the weight I lost back on, but I also recognize that I am in danger of heading down the Excuses Path because I have stopped doing the things that make my weight loss possible: exercising daily, tracking what I eat and being an active member of the Spark People community, which helps me stay accountable.

  I have  also come to the realization that I can no longer afford to live on this weight loss roller-coaster.  Bottom line, the thing I want the most for myself is to live a healthy, active life and to lose the excess weight that I have carried around with me so unnecessarily since I was 14.    I'll be 31 in November.  I've already lived half my life as a fat person, and I refuse to waste any more of my life living like this.  I was once a healthy girl at a healthy weight, living a healthy, active lifestyle.  That's why this blog is called 'Healthy Girl Redux' - because I've done it before, and I know I can get there again.