I recently went from a size extra large to a size small in about 4 or 5 months, and a lot of people have been asking me how I lost the weight.  Some of them are men, some single women, some older, some younger, some are moms wanting to get rid of postpartum weight and some are still breastfeeding.  Many of them try to eat right and exercise.  Yet all of them are dealing with the same frustration– they can’t seem to shed the pounds.  After a while these people may start to think that they just don’t have the type of body or physical make up that will shed the weight like other people who are trim.  But I believe it is a simple combination of factors that can either prevent or assist someone in losing weight.  (FYI– I grew from my original size small to extra large after birthing 3 babies) (Some or all of this may not apply to: anyone who has health issues or disease, children, teenagers, the elderly, pregnant women, menopausal women, or other conditions I may not be aware of or can think of at the moment.)

Here’s my theory based on observations, things I’ve read over the years and my experience of being heavy and trim in different times of my life… 

It basically comes down to two things– happiness and whole foods.

We’ll talk about whole foods in just a bit, but first, let’s look at what happiness has to do with losing weight.

Happiness = weight loss. This is probably the first time you’ve even entertained the idea of the two being interrelated.  It is not part of any diet program that I’ve heard of and I have no scientific proof to back this up, but I’ve witnessed this over and over to be true.  Here’s why I believe happiness or being joyful helps you to lose weight.

I’ve noticed that many people who have a hard time losing weight think of exercise and weight loss as a struggle. They take it on as a battle that they have to fight.  When they exercise, even if it is with determination, in their minds they think of it as hard work or something they dread.  What happens in the mind is a mental fight.  One side is saying, “come on fatty, chunky-o, blubber or (other hurtful name), get to work on this!  You look (insert hurtful adjective)!  How can you walk around like this?  Doesn’t it make you feel (insert shameful adjective)?  This self scolding may make a person go out and do something toward losing weight, but think about it… is scolding the best way to motivate a person?  Even if someone wants to lose weight, they won’t feel energized and motivated by this internal criticism.  This internal criticism is like a monkey on your back.  It’s always there to scold and ironically we think this monkey is being helpful, when actually the monkey is weighing you down.  This negative energy (monkey) literally creates a heaviness in the body.  It acts like a magnetic force making your body hang on to this extra weight.

You say, so what does this have to do with happiness?  Hold on, I’m getting to that..

Instead of struggling while trying to lose weight, I believe if you are doing things that make you happy, the weight will come off. Yes, you do need to exercise (consistently).  But if you choose something that you enjoy, that makes you feel exhilarated and free, I believe those positive energy endorphins send a message to your body’s systems to flow as they should.  This allows your body to release the fat… as opposed to when you are stressed or depressed which raises your cortisol levels (stress hormones) which tells your body  that you are in survival mode… which gives your body a reason to horde the fat.  Happy = weight loss.  Stress = keep on the weight.

During the times where I was heavy and couldn’t shake the weight, I would work out hard (again, creating struggle) doing things I didn’t really enjoy– aerobic classes, riding a stationary bike, military style boot camp exercise.  I would look at my body with disgust and the negative self talk would anchor the fat even deeper and seemed to slow my metabolism.   I was also either sad, depressed or not letting go of something in my life that wasn’t working for me. 

I think the fact that I was unhappy lead me to do exercise that felt like a punishment, affirming my unhappy state, causing a self perpetuating fat inducing downward spiral that never ended until I addressed what was making me unhappy. {I also believe that unhappiness creates a chemical reaction in the body causing your metabolism to slow down.}  When I was able to look into what was making me unhappy and let go of it, not coincidentally I got into yoga, mountain bike riding and rock climbing– activities that made me feel happy, feel free and exhilarated and again, not by coincidence, I lost weight.

My latest weight loss experience, proved my theory again. Normally I am a very happy person, but I had just been through a traumatic birth experience which deeply affected my one and a half year old son.  My daily life was highly stressful with every second of the day trying to stop my toddler from attacking the newborn baby (and any other children in his presence) in addition to the usual daily needs of a toddler and a newborn.  Just thinking about that time now gives me a heavy feeling.  On the advice of a couple of other moms, I joined the YMCA, not necessarily for the exercise, but more because they have a child-watch program.  I could get 90 minutes of time to myself and take a breather from every stress-filled day.  I started doing “zumba” (a sexy latin dance aerobics class) and swimming.  And around the same time a friend of mine started a surf moms club and I learned to surf while the other moms watched my children and vice-versa.  The zumba, the swimming and the surfing were all activities I loved and made me feel free.  There were days I didn’t feel up to working out hard so I would read a book or listen to a lecture on CD while riding the recumbent bike.  But most of the time I felt so exhilarated by the fun activities that I couldn’t wait to get to it and experience my minutes of freedom.  This is partly how I went from size XL to small.

Here’s another example of what I’m talking about. Almost every day I see a man and three ladies walking up and down a very steep hill leading up to my neighborhood.  They are quite dedicated to working out.  They’ve chosen a very difficult hill to climb.  There is no sidewalk, so they have to work hard to avoid cars.  They also probably feel like they are “really working out” because they always walk during the hottest hour of the day.  I give them kudos for trying to do the right thing.  They have been doing this since I was pregnant and are still doing it today which means it has been more than a year, maybe even a year and a half.  They all look about the same as they did when I first noticed them walking in my neighborhood which means none of them have lost any significant amount of weight.  I feel very bad for them because they are expending so much energy and so dedicated to it.  But I think the problem is that they see this as hard work and each of them is carrying that negative energy monkey on their back that keeps the weight on (unless they have a disease or condition that affects their weight).  I believe the solution to their weight loss problem would be to find some activity that they don’t see as hard work.  This would automatically change the negative speech going on in their heads because they would become focused on how much fun they are having.  They would also be feeling the “happy” endorphins in their body, and like a drug addict, they will quickly be jonesing for more.  The happy, fun feeling mixed with the endorphins is a perfect cocktail to motivate a person of any weight to want to exercise again and again.

Eating “Right”

Okay, so if you’ve found your “happy exercise”… good, now let’s talk about what you’re eating.  I believe, this is where a lot of people get lost.  They think they are eating “healthy” food or “diet” foods so they assume that plus exercise will guarantee they lose weight.  But for some reason they can’t figure out why the weight is still hanging on to them.  What are they doing wrong?  It’s simple.  Forget all the “diets” including “low fat”, “low carb”, and calorie counting.  When you are “successfully dieting”, all of those things feel like a punishment which does not help according to my happiness theory of losing weight.  It actually sets you up for a cycle of failure because you might see some results at first, but then, you won’t be able to eat this way forever and on top of that, you’re building that negative energy each time you feel you’re being deprived.

So you ask, what is really healthy and what do you eat to lose weight? Personally I don’t eat to lose weight.  Instead, I eat to nourish my body and to have a pleasurable experience through eating (again, creating happiness).  I like to enjoy the entire experience– the look, the taste, the texture, the colors of the food, the table setting and even the ambiance of the room.  But besides enjoying my food, the actual foods I put into my body make a difference in how easily I can burn off the extra weight. 

Higher quality whole foods in the body are like a high quality gasoline in a car.  The body burns the high quality food more efficiently and the result is more energy and less waste left over to turn into body fat.

What are high quality whole foods you ask?  Foods that have not been modified or processed.  Think back to the days when people ate what they had on the farm.  People in small villages traded milk for bread or cheese for eggs.  People made fresh food from scratch.  They used salt, pepper, spices, animal fat, cream and butter to flavor their foods.  They pickled and jarred fruits and vegetables to preserve them for when they were out of season.  There were no processed, packaged foods with chemical preservatives, pesticide sprayed foods, genetically modified foods, man-made products like high fructose corn syrup, white bleached flour… or even white sugar!  Hold-on, I am not saying that you need to grow your own foods and make everything from scratch.  I certainly don’t.  But if you can chose what would be closest to what people ate back in the day, those foods are the high quality whole foods I’m talking about that help a body run more efficiently.

What is also important is to eat a variety of foods. What do I mean by variety?  Before I was married, I met a guy on match.com who told me he ate very healthily.  When I asked him what he typically ate, he said chicken.  I said, “just chicken?”   He said, “no I eat a lot of different things– chicken ceasar salad, grilled chicken burgers, chicken tacos…”  While he was searching his mind for more, I decided he wasn’t the right guy for me.  He was totally sure that he was doing the right thing for his health by only eating chicken.   But his interpretation of variety was not the same as mine.

Here’s what I try to eat:

(if you don’t care to know how and why, just read the bold text and skip down to the end of my menu of foods)

A variety of whole grains– multi-grain bread (whole wheat, barley, …) whole wheat pasta, spelt flour (for baking), brown rice, oats.  (I do eat white rice and white flour on occasion, but I try to keep it to a minimum).  FYI, when you’re buying bread or any kind of grain know that whole wheat (or whole grain) is different than wheat or that grain listed without the word “whole” in front of it.  Whole means that the grain has not been refined.  That means you’re eating all of the grain as it was meant to be eaten.  Important Fact: When foods are refined and not eaten in their whole natural state, you lose important elements that help the body to digest and assimilate nutrients.  That’s why whole foods help you to lose weight! It makes sense, doesn’t it?  But somewhere along the way, someone thought refined foods were finer, maybe for the elite.  That doesn’t make them healthier… and I’m sure you’ve heard of elite men dying of heart attacks, diabetes and strokes.

A rainbow-colored variety of vegetables– Eating different colored vegetables will give your body a variety of vitamins and nutrients naturally keeping you healthy.  For example, red veggies provide a powerful antioxidant called lycopene.  White vegetables like onion, garlic, leeks contain allicin which studies show to help lower cholesterol, blood pressure and fight infections.  Orange and yellow veggies provide vitamin C, folate, and an immune boosting, antioxidant called beta-carotene.  Blue foods with anthocyanins can help reduce the risk of cancers, strokes and heart disease.  We all have heard that eating green veggies is good for you and it’s true.  They can help combat cancers and vision problems.

Oils and Fats– olive oil, grapeseed oil, coconut oil, sesame oil, flax oil, chicken fat, duck fat, pork fat, beef fat, and lots of butter. According to Sally Fallon, author of Nourishing Traditions, most people benefit from more fat in their diet than less, especially infants and growing children.  It is really important to eat oils and fats, not only to keep your hair and skin looking shiny, but eating the right oils can also help your body function properly.  Stay away from all processed foods with hydrogenated fats and polyunsaturated oils.   The most healthful way to eat oil is to add it on top of food, like a condiment to add flavoring and a slippery texture to your food.   But eat with moderation because even too much olive oil can be bad for your health.  Heating certain oils can change it’s molecular structure so that an oil that is healthy at room temperature can become unhealthy when heated to high temperatures.  If I am searing meat or stir-frying, I use grapeseed oil or coconut oil (or animal fat) which can withstand high heat. I stay away from canola oil because it turns rancid easily, depletes vitamin E and is said to create heart lesions.  I try to stay away from safflower, corn, sunflower, soybean and cottonseed oils because they contain an excessive amount of omega-6 that can be bad for your health.  Animal fats contain saturated fat which is said to be the enemy when trying to be healthy, but according to research mentioned in Fallon’s book, saturated fat actually is necessary for healthy cell membranes, bones, liver, heart, digestive tract and helps our body in many other ways.  I cook with duck fat, pork fat, chicken fat and beef fat…. and I also use a lot of butter. I know this goes against all you’ve heard, but it actually does help your body to run better, so you will lose weight.  My sister who normally eats a low-fat diet at home, stayed at my house for a month and lost weight eating the way that I eat.  Not only that, her skin looked more supple than in usually does.  Besides that, lard is an excellent source of vitamin D, a vitamin that has been touted to boost your immune system and even prevent cancer.  Of course, everything in moderation.

Protein– Eggs, Chicken, Turkey, Duck, Fish, Beef, Pork, Nutritional Yeast, Nut Butters. My family eats a lot of eggs.  Organic eggs have more nutrients, so we try to eat organic.  Eggs are such a complete food and our body actually needs cholesterol for healthy cell membranes, for good digestion, to produce vitamin D, and get this– cholesterol is necessary to produce serotonin which is the “feel-good” chemical in the brain (creating happy weight loss).  Low cholesterol levels have actually been linked to violent behavior, depression and suicidal tendencies.  I buy hormone-free, anti-biotic-free meat and chicken because I don’t want the chicken or cow’s hormones and drugs affecting my families health.  I am the type of person who needs to eat animal protein or eggs every day.  I have tried a day here and there to eat no animal protein and I get light headed and can’t focus.  I think beans are a great thing, but my system doesn’t do well with them, so they’re not on my list.  My husband’s digestion can’t tolerate tofu, so we don’t eat it.  I usually will eat protein twice a day (including dairy and nut butters).

Here’s some important info from Fallon’s book that backs up our need for animal protein, especially if you want to understand why we need animal protein:

The protein that is important for the brain, the nervous system, for the formation of hormones (hormones regulate our metabolism), and other things like blood clotting and making breast milk are most plentiful is eggs and meat.  All proteins are combinations of 22 amino acids, eight of those are “essential” which the human body cannot make.  When the essential amino acids are in our diet, our body can usually build the other nonessential amino acids, but if just one amino acid is missing, the body cannot synthesize the other proteins it needs even if your overall protein intake is high (like beans, legumes and tofu).  Animal fats are our only sources of vitamins A and D.  Protein and fats occur together in eggs, milk, fish and meat and should be eaten together because our bodies need animal fat to assimilate protein.  Protein powders often consumed in a lowfat diet can deplete vitamin A and D reserves and calcium because the protein isolates are obtained by a high temperature process which denatures the protein. (This info was paraphrased from Fallon’s book)

Dairy– Milk, Cheese, Yogurt.

I love dairy foods.  I could eat cheese, cream, cream cheese, yogurt, buttermilk, ice cream and any dairy product for every meal and snack.  I don’t just so I can eat more variety of foods, but I do eat dairy a lot.  Because there is a good amount of fat in dairy foods, I find it keeps me satisfied for long periods of time.  I sprinkle cheese on top of pasta and salads.  I cook dairy into foods.  And I eat cheese or yogurt as a snack nearly every day.

Important note: When buying dairy products, it is important to buy hormone-free, antibiotic-free milk. Since weight loss is also regulated by our hormones (affecting our metabolism), don’t you think putting cow’s hormones into our system could make your metabolism work more like a cow?  Scary, bad image!  Taking in antibiotics through cow milk products can also affect your health over time.  If possible, look for organic milk products– which means the cow ate grasses and grains without pesticides.

Fruit: Whatever is in season; Just one serving a day.

Most people think of fruit and fruit juice as a healthy thing to eat, but that may encourage people to eat too much.  When fruit is broken down, the body uses the sugar and the fiber.  So if you only drink the juice, you are getting an abundance of the sugar without the fiber (that’s why I don’t give my children juice as regular part of their diet) .  When you eat the whole fruit, your body uses energy to digest the fiber– that means you actually burn some of the calories you just ate.  My mom loves fruit.  I think she sees it as an all-you-can-eat type of deal because she thinks of fruit as healthy.  The funny thing is, is that she won’t eat a lot of sugar, but she will chow down on a whole plate of fruit at one sitting.  Basically she is eating a whole plate of sugar.  I suspect that this affects her insulin levels (which affects metabolism).  She tries really hard to diet and exercise all the time, but is not able to shake the weight.  This could have something to do with it.

Sweeteners– Maple Syrup, Honey, Molasses, Sucanat, Agave, Brown Sugar, White Sugar.

Breast milk is the most nutritious food and it is sweet, so that gives me reason to believe we are meant to eat sweets.  I don’t have a huge sweet tooth, but I do like to eat some sweets.  I sweeten my families’ oatmeal with maple syrup, honey or molasses.  It makes sense to me that sweeteners made by nature would have more vitamins and minerals.  I bake a lot and I like using sucanat (although I use all of the sweeteners above).  Sucanat looks and tastes a little like brown sugar, maybe a little heavier in flavor.  It’s a basically sugar cane juice dried into crystals which keeps the molasses content and has the highest nutritional value of all sugars made from sugar cane.  I am adamant about not using corn syrup or eating anything made with high fructose corn syrup.  I think high fructose corn syrup (which is in almost all processed foods) is why Americans are obese, especially children.  It seems to affect my body worse than just regular white sugar.  I accidentally tested out this theory when my husband and I fell into a short stint of eating Costco hot dogs a couple times a week which come with a free soda.  After a month my body ballooned up and got pudgy from the high fructose corn syrup in the soda.  If I were to eat sugar twice a week for a month, it wouldn’t affect me that quickly and that drastically.  So I definitely stay away from all foods with high fructose corn syrup.

Desserts– Cookies, Cakes, Pies, Muffins, Chocolate, Anything Homemade, Rarely Store-bought.  Whenever I have the urge, I eat whatever satisfies my craving

I don’t believe in denying myself.  It goes against my weight loss theory based on happiness.  I also think that if you are craving a specific food, your body probably is telling you something and you should listen.  I’ve noticed whenever I did not give into my cravings right away, I would not be able to get that craving out of my system and I’d be pining away for hours or days… and then eventually I’d have to eat it to make that craving go away– those were in my overweight days.  I noticed in my slimmer days that giving in to my cravings right away, not only made me happy and satisfied me, but it didn’t make a difference in my weight.

When and How Often You Eat

One of my sisters eats one meal a day of just vegetables and rice.  She is not thin, but she thinks this will help to make her a thin as she can be.  On the other hand, I eat when my children eat which is literally every couple of hours.  I actually get hungry every two to three hours, so I eat starting at six in the morning and my last meal I try to have around six in the evening.  I think eating often keeps my metabolism burning whereas my sister’s metabolism acts like a camel’s.  It stores up the little that she eats because it thinks she is in survival mode and that actually slows down her metabolism.  I’ve found that eating too late makes me gain weight too.  It’s hard to get dinner on the table by six pm especially with two children to take care of… so for about a month, I let things slide.  My husband and I started eating dinner later and later and I gained eight pounds in a month’s time. So eat early and often.

So to Recap My Simple Formula For Losing Weight:

• Do what makes you happy

• Only do exercise that feels like fun, but do it consistently

• Stop the internal mental criticism and replace it with activities that make you feel exhilarated and free

• If you still can’t shake the weight off, look at your life and assess what is like a “ball and chain” or “heavy” or making you sad and get rid of it.

• Eat quality whole foods

• Eat a variety of foods

• Eat early and often

If you follow this formula, I can’t guarantee you’ll lose weight, but I can guarantee you will be happier and healthier.

Happy Eating,

Your Sensible Girlfriend