Home where our feet may leave,
But our Hearts never will
~Oliver Wendall Homes
It has been (1) month…30 days…leaving the USA…my home and stepping off a plane unto the soil of South Africa…my new home…so many changes…new things learned…old ways that I have had to leave behind…gladness…joy…lots of laughter…some sadness and tears…
One of the astounding changes…at least to me…is that finally I have been able to become healthier…and let me explain why it is such an amazing development that has been occuring within the last 30 days…
All my life…well, not actually all…
Normal…average weight…even though like all women, I thought I was fat…until I started eating my hurt and emotions…when my world started falling apart during my marriage…
Having lived a secluded life in a cult until I was 18…married at 18 and 1 month… to a man who I thought was a good Christian…but he was a Casanova and Lothario to every breathing woman he came into contact with..including my sister…
The only way that I knew to deal with the overwhelming and debilitating pain was to sooth it and stuff it with something that I did understand and have control over…
And so my battles with weight started…*the war is not over…but there have been many battles…
To keep a long story short…after my divorce…I did lose the weight again…but the cycle keep repeating itself…for a myriad number of reasons…until the cycle stopped…because I couldn’t lose it anymore…no matter how hard I tried…much little I ate…which program I followed…and I think you get the picture…
The last few months before I left the states…I had learned a few things about my body and how it responded to how I ate…I worked with a beautiful friend who is also an HSP…her Mom has suggested she try Keto…
So we tried…good days…bad days…but we learned that we felt so much better when we ate very low carb…and when we ate too much white stuff…foodstuffs with sugar and flour…we were less able to handle the stress…became depressed…and craved the “evil” carbs all the more…a vicious cycle…
Still weren’t consistent…so we tried another tip from her Mom…intermittant fasting…now this was a new one for me…give up breakfast…oh my, Lord…that would be an impossibility…my blood sugar just wouldn’t allow it…but at this point…anything was worth a try…
And again…I started feeling better…I waited till between 12 and 1 pm to eat lunch…16:8 worked the best…ok…another interesting fact…still couldn’t last more than a couple of days…but I didn’t have the ability to cook at home…and eating fast food…even if it is supposedly healthy does not contribute to consistency in eating healthfuly….
I could go into a long continuing saga about the ups and downs…but moving on…everything changed once I arrived…I was able to become consistent in eating healthfully…several contributing factors…
Before I left…I joined a group with a couple of my friends at work that started in August and ran 6 months…with monetary rewards for the persons who lost the biggest percentage of body weight…
I thought long and hard about the strategy that might work here…nothing had really worked before…2 lbs up and 2 pounds down…worse than a yo-yo on steroids…ok…what could I do that would be more of a lifestyle change and not a “diet”…
I know that a lot of people espouse the “Keto” way of life…and there are definite advantages…for me…I knew that it would not be sustainable…especially in a new country…and many new adventures…eating probably being one of them…
I thought that I should eat low carb and fast 16:8…at least during the week…yeah…that would be managable and sustainable…until I hit my first wall…kilocalories…ughhh…still haven’t figured the metric way of life yet…
Now what…I just started eating fresh food…food that I cooked from natural ingredients…I didn’t cut anything out…I do still fast my 16:8 during the week and eat low carb…the majority of the time…that just makes me feel so much better (even my body is hyper sensitive to “junk”)…
Trying more vegetables…which is a Mr. P thing…he also doesn’t like eating meat at every meal…so more vegan meals…and I am enjoying getting back to the creative art of cooking…but even eating Spinach lasagna with Bechamel sauce…last night..and a small glass of wine every night…I am still losing…
So I have been stunned…to put it politely…that the weight has been dropping a little every day…my friend reminded me that it could also be that I am not stressed anymore…that cortisol is a nasty hormone that is known to create belly fat…among other things…
The only other change that I have made is that I am walking almost every day…a goal of a minimum of 10,000 steps…I usually start my day by working out to “My Daily Walk”…3 to 5 miles…walking is something that I can consistently do with being HSP…exercises that are too intense will send me for a tailspin and I will crash and burn…this works for me…
Just interesting to me…that after all the years of frustration…something works…and it is the easiest of all…
Never quite…just keep getting up and trying one more day…when you can’t find the answer and every door that you walk through does not contain the solution…keep on a knockin…
Updates later….
