Weight loss

 

After over fifty years of losing weight I can promise you one thing. 

You cannot buy weight loss.

If you could there would be no fat rich people. You can buy quick fix tricks, but unless you are willing to repeat these forever more, you will eventually gain back your weight and maybe even more. I kept my weight between 102 and 126 for nearly ten years by eating small and very small amounts of food along with very high levels of exercise. There was a point where I was playing tennis almost six hours a day.

This is not a sustainable lifestyle if you have children, or other priorities in your life. Neither is it sustainable to do something that will get you to your goal quickly so you can eat the way you want and hope to maintain the weight loss. In the past fifty plus years I think I have tried all these things and more.

Bread and bread type things are comfort foods for me, but they are also full of carbs and sugar, so it wasn't until I became a full fledged type two diabetic that I gave them up.  It has been hard. I used to dream of crusty loaves of bread, toast, buns, cookies, pasta, corn and rice. I have found sprouted bread which is better for me and even then I only get one slice early in the day. I don't get ice cream except on very rare occasions and that goes for any other desserts even canned fruit. 

I know this is not just until I reach a certain weight. If I want to keep my diabetes at bay it has to be forever.  My  glucose averages 100 and my A1C is 5.1 and I want to keep it that way, or lower it. My kidneys, my heart, even my skin relies on that and at my age there is no room to fool around. 

I have found a combination of foods that seem to satisfy both my body and soul. They help eliminate the cravings I once had and with a little bit of self encouragement they work for me. I still have a tendency to want to eat more right after a meal, especially in the evening, but I now know if I just wait an hour I will be fine. I am not physically hungry. I am mentally primed to eat.

Exercise is good, but it really does not maintain weight loss unless you do extreme amounts. I lose weight with a normal amount of movement and it works. My exercise is to maintain muscle coordination. It is a scary balancing act that requires lots of small rewards, but not food rewards.