eat your fatty protein!!

Jul 10, 2009

healthy like a watch

Proud to be part of Real Food Wednesdays! (click here)
thanks to nataliedee.com
 
I've tried a lot of stuff in 3 years.
This blog just nicks the surface of my struggles to be....what?
Thin?
Small?
Not fat?

Was there ever a time in my life when I really wanted to be healthy?
I SAID I wanted to be healthy, but really I wanted to be thin.
To be thin meant to be socially acceptable, attractive, worthy and even enviable.
I'm finally getting to the point where I value my health more than I value my dress size.

All it takes is losing something.
Sometimes you have to lose something so you can realize its value.
I lost my health.
Now I understand the value of being able to wake, walk and function!
Thin??
You can't be serious.
Not after what I've been through this summer.
Thin is no longer the goal.
Healthy is the goal.

But but but...don't we all believe that we have to be thin to be healthy?
That's the bill of goods I was sold all my life.
My fat body was automatically judged to be an unhealthy mess.

In my efforts to take off the offending fat I ruined my health.

I won't even touch on the weight loss surgeries right now.
In a nutshell? Disasters.

What I do wish to touch on is the pride I took in eating virtually NO FAT for almost 2 and a half years.
It wasn't just that I was eating diet foods with tons of sugar or fake sugar with the words NON-FAT emblazoned on the label.
I was eating tons of whole grains, tofu, red sauce, fruit, vegetables, rice cakes, egg beaters, skim milk, soy milk, sugar free jello, sugar free ice pops, diet foods...and for what?

Sure I took off 140 pounds.
Sure I trotted off to the gym 6 days a week.
So why did my health crash and burn??

I burned out my adrenals.
I burned out my my ability to heal.
I totally malnourished myself.
And this summer, I broke down!
Just plain broke.

The exhaustion was too much.
If you read my blogs from the beginning of 2009 you'll see how desperate I was. I talked about feeling as if someone was pushing down on my eyelids.
I was drinking a pot of coffee a day and still struggling to get from task to task.

People keep asking me why I started this whole nourishing traditions way of eating.
They asked if something led up to this, some sickness.
Yes.
I hit an impossible plateau in my weigh loss despite a super low fat, supposedly health diet and ridiculous work out regimen
and
I had no energy left.

Before I could save myself my knee blew out over Easter weekend.
I'm spending most of the summer in a wheelchair.

Something radical needed to happen.
Another weight loss diet??

No.
I don't think so.

It's time for a different approach.
It's time to focus on health.

If I hadn't broken down the way I did, I'd still be hoping to lose weight even at the expense of my health.

Does that mean I'm giving up on losing weight?
Well, that depends on how you look at it.
Following a rehabilitation diet as prescribed by my nutritionist
along with exercise designed to reconnect mind and body
will lead to many changes in my health.
One of those changes will be regaining my ability to lose excess body fat.

Losing weight is not the focus.
It's the side effect.

Health is my priority, now more than ever.
I lost it.
Once I get it back, I'll never neglect it again.


*Lisa's Video Pick of the Day*
What part of a watch tells time?
Remove one part and the whole watch stops.
Trying to lose weight?
Let's take care of our bodies and trust that the weight will take care of itself.
And it will.
Focus on fat loss is isolationist thinking.
Focusing on health will succeed because it acknowledes that it takes a whole watch to tell time!
Paul Chek talks sense, always.
click here
Posted by Lisa at 7:15 PM Labels: adrenal fatigue, fat, healing, healthy, Paul Chek

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