Old/New goal

Out of all my goals this year, one I focused on a lot was my weightloss and health goal. I've seen some progress, and some regression. It has been disheartening to see some pounds come back, but I figure it's part of the journey. Part of that is because of the detoxing I started in July, and part of it is just plain because I lost the pounds in the wrong way in the first place.

I have always felt that I shouldn't eliminate any food, but rather that I need to learn how to eat all foods in the proper portion size, to have a well-balanced diet. While visiting the naturopath I've learned that eating low fat for so long may have contributed to my current health (or lack thereof) and I have happily increased the fat I eat. Early in this journey the naturopath asked me to track my food and had very few suggestions to make my eating better. I was doing quite well on my own and once I started really looking at what I was eating I started losing weight because I started eating better portions.

However, the last six months have really been hard for me as I worked towards this goal. The slow track got very boring. HCG came along and promised quick weightloss. I thought I could cut 5-6 months off my overall journey. I didn't realize until later there were several aspects of that program that wouldn't work for me, and in all reality hcg cost me a good 6 months in my progress. 1. It was so restrictive that I ended the diet even more tired of self-denial and gave up not eating certain foods completely and in some cases a little too early. 2. It totally messed with my head and my thinking. I have always worked on having healthy thinking when it comes to food...but after hcg I was entertaining serious thoughts of bulimia and other diet mentality thinking. 3. While some people can readjust in the three weeks of maintenance, I took months and months. I don't know if I am totally stabilized yet. 4. My body kicked into heavy metal detox which made it even harder to readjust after the diet.

So, I'm back to doing what I know deep inside myself is the right thing for me to do. To strive for a well-balanced, healthy diet that eliminates nothing. I recently found some inspiration in this. One of the sisters in our ward started doing something very similar last March. All she has done was to limit her sugar and refined foods to two days in a year's time (her birthday and Christmas) and exercise 6 times a week. In nine months she has lost 80 pounds and is looking great.

My goal this year is to limit my sugar intake (the obvious sugar) to one day per week. I'll try to limit it to reasonable portions on that day, but I'm not going to sweat it if I over do it once or twice. The second part of this goal is to eat as gluten-free as possible. That, by itself takes care of alot of refined things. The third part is to do some kind of exercise 5-6 days a week. I'll have to figure out how I want to report my progress, but I'm excited.

I'm also a little scared. I'm stepping out on faith. What if my body is still so stressed with detoxing that I still don't lose weight? What I'm hoping for is that I'll be back down to 163 by my birthday in June, but I've decided that at least I'll be eating for health and some day the weight loss should catch up.

So I'm off on a new year already. December 26 was my first day. I haven't done perfectly, but I have done a ton better. So I'm happy with my progress so far. I'm even seeing a very slight sign that things are turning around after the first two days.