Weight loss

I felt surprisingly good yesterday, one day into my healthy eating. I chose the keto way. Whether I stay with this method remains to be seen. However, it is a good start to detox my body from sugar.

Ashleigh, who is a naturopath, has offered to give me guidance around food choices and we have tentatively decided on next week for a consultation. In the meantime, I'll continue with keto. I am familiar with its requirements, though as I said yesterday, I am not sure I am willing to give up fruit, this time around. Hopefully Ashleigh and I will come up with some kind of compromise that allows me to still lose weight while continuing to eat fruit.

For years I never dieted, instead relying on physical activity to lose any unwanted kilos. I have always been active. While nursing, I clocked up kilometres marching up and down the wards. Shedhand work was nine hours of non-stop physical activity. There was lots of hard work on the farm too, especially in summer with shearing and haymaking. I always enjoyed the hot evenings and throwing the heavy green bales onto the truck.

I gained weight with each of my pregnancies but lost it soon after. Breastfeeding was another great way of losing weight.

However, once I started the journalism, my binge eating and sugar-laden diet caught up with me. I now didn't have the physical activity to counteract this eating.

When teenagers at boarding school, we used to diet, eating a minimal amount for days until fainting episodes forced us to stop. Apart from that, that was the only dieting I had ever done.

So around 2007 I started my first stint on Jenny Craig. This was extremely successful, with me losing 22kg. I kept it off for a year or two until I shifted to Hawkes Bay for my massage training. There, I was private boarding and eating what was prepared for me each evening. It didn't take long for all of those lost kilos to return.

Once I started massage, most of the weight came off again. However, when I moved up here, my weight shot up once more. I tried Jenny Craig a second time, but this time the loss was sluggish. I eventually lost it again while intermittent fasting. Then Stephen moved up and on it all went again. As I stated in yesterday's blog, I lost 17 kg in 2021 only to have it all back by Christmas.

What is becoming obvious as I am writing this, is that the extra weight follows changes in my life. I started putting the last lot of weight back on last year after I got Covid and reduced my physical activity.

I can see I need to change how I eat as the last 15 years or so I have been either losing weight or putting it on. In fact, most of my life has been this way as the eighties were taken up with pregnancies where my weight went up and down with each baby. I would like to develop a way of eating that stabilizes this yo-yo approach. Lose it first, then maintain my weight at a steady, healthy level. I have obviously developed unhealthy habits. Is it too late to change? I hope not.