Diet – The Four Letter Word

I have struggled with diets for my entire adult life.  It’s funny because in normal daily life I don’t think of myself as fat, but when I look in the mirror or see a picture of myself and there it is in all of it’s glory – the gut!  According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention for my height and weight, I am “Obese”.

As I have gotten older I have started to experience more health issues like high blood pressure, digestive system issues and even severe heart burn.  I now have about 9 pills a day to take.  Over the last Christmas holidays it all came crashing down.   I spent the whole holiday in pain and could not bring myself to eat much of anything.  After the battery of test were complete, the good news was no major issues.   I do have a form of colitis that was causing the pain.   They also found fat deposits in my liver and early indication of some major health issues to come.

I guess its time to get serious.

I have played around with several diets over the years and only one ever seemed to work – The Atkins Low Carb Diet.   I did lose weight but ballooned back up once I stopped the diet.  I tried it again in January of this year, but struggled on it and didn’t get the success I had hoped.  I started looking at other diets and again felt very frustrated by all the conflicting information.   Finally, I decided I had learned enough and it was time to do something for me.   So I devised a new way just for me.   A life style, not a diet.  I wouldn’t say I have perfected it yet, but already I have stuck to this plan better then anything else I have done.   The key for me was finding a way to eat some of the foods I enjoy while cutting out the really bad things that I just don’t need.  My main focus is now on counting calories and eating more whole foods.   For my colitis I need to cut down on process foods and fast carbs, so I also factor that into my plan.   I have also added exercise in a simple way that I can do and even maybe enjoy.  By using this method I have already dropped about 13 lbs from my pre Christmas weight.

Over the next few posts I will detail out my plan and also how it is going.