weight loss chronicles

                                     

or is it weight regain chronicles?

What can I say? My weight went back up. After losing a stone. I was so distraught that it was happening. I didn't seem to be able to stop it. Stress and something else were causing it. Plus I was unknowingly eating food that was making me quite unwell. Often dizzy. Strange sweats. Feeling awful and falling asleep after eating them. It was eggs. Which I do not often eat. I am now avoiding them like crazy. I have seldom eaten many. My body obviously knew not to. I have a younger sister who is this way with eggs, too. Maybe it will change for me, with time. Who knows.

allergies and intolerance

As well, I am allergic to tomatoes and the other nightshades make my joints and spine very painful. Arthritis and nightshades go hand-in-hand, for some people. Would you believe that I had been eating food that had capsicums cooked in it, just to be polite?  How silly of moi.  So, overall, I had not been in a good way.

Allergy is a DNA thing. One of my children was born with allergies and it was so distressing and a really scary time in my life. For him, and for me, frantic mother. I put him on raw goats milk, and he thrived. And one of my grand-daughters was born with allergies. Hopefully, all of this will weaken over the generations.

The thing is, that intolerance, and allergy, to certain foods, bloats our bodies. We get bloated with inflammation which manifests as weight gain. It messes with our hormones, too. Imbalanced hormones mess with our weight. We start to feel terrible until it becomes the way that we feel all of the time. Our poor body is fighting to regain composure and health. A vicious circle, for sure. We exercise less, because we feel so unwell.

but there is a way out of allergies

Remove the offending "things" and our body wants to slowly restore itself. We want to move. We feel healthier and happier, too. This is just my experience anyway.

I know yoga cleanses to do, and will probably get into doing them to have a toxin-flush, as the weather gets better. I really don't enjoy them, but they are effective. I am a yoga teacher and healer, and I would never, ever say "do this and that pose" to fix your allergies. To me, that is just crass and insulting. But, would you believe that I have been told that. (!)

exercise makes me feel good

And, as I am feeling "better" than I was when I was having the odd egg in my diet, my morning exercise has been reinstated. I've been reluctant to weave up and down West Auckland's hilly roads, but now I'm thinking: Just. Do. It. Get over myself. Have a sortie up and down those darned sloping roads. I had been walking every morning but that went by the wayside. What with shifting twice, sore joints and back, full-on winter storms, feeling "sick", and so forth.

I'm that person who just doesn't feel good when I don't move. So, I was feeling doubly, or even quadruply (new word), not my best, with all of this business.

I'm writing my woes because I do want my blog, which I love writing, to be honest. Which, of course, is a bit scary to expose oneself like this.

the demon sugar

I started having some food-on-the-run. Always lethal, health-wise for me. That helped the weight go up, too. I was eating sugary foods. Now, I know, have always known, that sugar is very bad for us. With my eldest, I just never gave it to them. But they had plenty, from one of their grandmothers. Annoyingly.

My youngest devised a cunning climbing plan to get to the top shelf of the pantry when she was, oh about nearly four, to help herself and my flatmate's daughter, sneakily, to the sugar jar. At three, she was already climbing tall trees and cliffs. Mother-having-heart-attacks time.

Those two little girls would get High On Naughtiness afterwards. No doubt rebelling against our mega healthy diet. Someone thought that the chakra pictures that we had on the wall were promoting that. But no, it turned out to be sugar.

I have been reading "Sweet Poison (sugar)" by David Gillespie.

What a great book. It explains his own journey of losing 40 kilos over two years, just by removing fructose (sugar) from his diet. (no exercise) He described in detail how fructose makes us, well, fat. He said to read labels, and I've also been asking m'sieur google, to see if a food has

10 grams of sugar per 100 grams of that food. Or less. To try and go no higher than 10 grams overall per meal. This is David's suggestion of what worked for him. 

So, I did this. Of course, I had a reaction. Three day full on migraine. I think it was my Inner Child having a wee tantrum for sugar, actually. Someone more outgoing than moi would probably been more expressive, as in obviously crabby, but I'm more inner directed, so I guess I imploded into that migraine. I caved and had something ridiculously sweet, and slowly the migraine subsided.

I'm also reading "I Quit Sugar" by Sarah Wilson. Sarah recommends to cut out starchy carbs and fruit if they make you crave sugar, and to add more fat into your diet. 

I'm trying to get my head around it all. So far, I've been able to do it, the under 10 grams of sugar thing. And, interestingly, the ridiculous food cravings have virtually disappeared. I've simply stopped being hungry.

The first night: panic! What to eat? All that I had at home were some vegetables, and a cupboard full of spices. So, I made a spicy vegetable soup, without starchy vegetables, with some cheese in it, and it filled me up. Phew. This morning I just got overwhelmed. So I had some Vogels bread (very low in sugars) with lashings of low sugar healthy peanut butter. Yum. A good hint that someone gave me many moons ago, about this bread, is to use the Very, very thin cut. Which of course is even less sugar.

I went to meet a friend for lunch and was able to find something good to eat. So, I can see that it's all do-able.

inflammation schlammation

I can tell you that inflammation started to go down, overnight, when I counted sugar. Plus 750 grams of weight disappeared into the ether, and has remained off. The proof, here, is in the pudding. Or, no pudding!

I was having problems with my new routine

I was doing the little and often thing which many fitness people do, which in theory should have worked. But, in retrospect, how could it have, for me, with sugar sensitivity? Which I'm sure that we all have. Now, I think that I'll work on the sugar thing for a bit, then hopefully revisit other aspects.

I'm already feeling so much more hopeful about it all. The weight thing.