Reset
6-4-24
I started exercising so it made sense to start looking at what I was eating. I have a Bachelor of Science in Nursing so I’ve taken a nutrition course but I realized I actually didn’t know much about nutrition. I was soft and fluffy, so clearly I needed to rethink what I was eating. Gaining weight had been very gradual, so I hadn’t really noticed…just slowly going up in sizes and sighing if I ever did get on a scale. Plus I was pretty good at disguising myself with my choice of clothing. I decided to try a keto diet and did this for about 2 months. Looking back at this time, I was totally freaked out about carbs (oh the evil carbs). But really this time was about breaking cravings and figuring out that the real issue was I was eating a lot of convenient and processed foods. Keto was just a way to figure this out. I eat carbs now, but I eat different carbs than I used to (i.e. a sweet potato, it’s a carb but it’s a good guy carb).
Advice that stuck with me and seemed very simple was - don’t eat it if you can’t look at it and immediately identify the ingredients. What’s in broccoli? Broccoli, good I’ll have some. What’s in an avocado? Avocodo, good. What’s in a hard boiled egg? An egg. This wasn’t hard, I could do this. So if I could identify what it was, then I decided I would eat as much of it as I wanted. I wasn’t depriving myself, I wasn’t hungry, I was just eating different things. I’m not saying this reset was easy BUT eliminating many of the things I was eating - bagels, ice cream, muffins, etc. made complete sense to me. I looked like a cinnamon roll because I was eating cinnamon rolls! Just keep it simple. Plus I didn’t want to become obsessed with what I was eating - I didn’t write down what I was eating, I didn’t weigh it, I just tried to eat unprocessed, whole foods. Early on, my trainer asked me to take pictures of everything I ate in a day - the advice? Eat more, but eat more protein (a future blog post about this!). And did I mention I lost 45 lbs? Not right away, but it has stayed off and with adding strength/muscle, my entire body looks different and I feel great.