Before starting with RMR I had a very all or nothing approach to dieting.
I had 60 yrs of being obese. I started my first diet at 12 and after each weight loss attempt I would end up putting it all back on plus more.
When attempting to diet I would take a no fat approach to my food intake and try and count calories. Before a weigh in I would even restrict my water intake.
I saw food as the enemy. Something that was trying to derail my efforts of controlling my weight. It was either a feast, which made me feel totally out of control, or famine when I was starving myself.
It made me feel very sad that the one thing I wanted to do, to be a normal size person was beyond my ability to achieve. I just did not understand why the low fat mantra did not work for me. It made me feel out of control around food.
At the beginning of 2019 I had finally given up on any type of diet. I had countless diet books. My professional life had been teaching about cooking and nutrition. However I felt a failure and decided to stay at a size 24 and just try not to get any heavier.
My world was getting smaller. There were activities I knew I would just be an observer and could not take part. Getting into small boats was always a worry!
I was concerned about my future health. I was already pre diabetic, had a TIA after a flight, and on blood pressure pills. My MIL had ended up diabetic in a wheelchair for the last 10 yrs of her life. My grandfather had a leg amputated before he passed away. I could see all that looming in my future.
I subscribed to a UK paper and saw a book called Breakfast is a dangerous meal so ordered it and found that instead of making me more hungry, skipping breakfast made me feel more in control. I had believed the lie that you eat to stop feeling hungry later. For some of us that is a false belief.
I started that in February. In March I was in Umhlanga and found a copy of the Real Meal Low Carb Cooking in a small bookshop. I picked it up and put it down again. ( I so nearly came close to not buying it and my life would be very different now, if I had not). I came back an hour later and it was still there so I bought my last copy in the shop. Signed up for the RMR program about 3 weeks later using the code in the book.
I was expecting another diet with weights and instructions. What I got was a plan I can live on for the rest of my life.
I found the possibility of a whole new career training as a health coach. I found a support group eager and knowledgeable to help me on my journey to wellness and a normal body size. I am planning an active and healthy retirement. I have started playing golf again with my husband. Pre RMR I could not walk 2 holes without a struggle, now I can play 9.
I enjoy the food that I do eat and have got my love of cooking back.
RMR is a positive experience and not a negative one like some low fat diets where each day is a struggle.
I am around 20kg of fat lost and plan to lose another 10 to 16kg over the next year. I have reduced from a size 24 to a 16. I have got back into jeans and trousers I have not worn for 12 years or more.
I have cut right back on my B/P pills and will give up in the next month. My insulin has reduced from 25 to 10 and I hope it will go lower by next medical in Oct 2020.
If you are the kind of person who just does not understand why you find yourself eating in the afternoon and evening when all you want is to have a slim body then this is the diet for you. Eating carbs in the morning drives hunger for some insulin resistant people. If your weight has yoyoed all your life this will finally give you answers as to why it happens and what to do about it. Its not effortless, you have to put the work in, but it is finally possible to be in control of your food intake and to enjoy your meals and not fear the effect food has on your body and your mind.
So many of us are in despair about our weight and health. We try and fail to follow all the ‘healthy eating mantra’ , eating 5 fruits and vegetables a day, eat whole grains to fill you up, 7 to 11 portions a day. Don’t eat fats and oils as they are bad for you and make you fat. Its all not true.
If I stayed at this weight for the rest of my life I would be a happy woman. But I know now I can lose weight slowly by moderating my carbohydrate consumption and basing my diet around nourishing fats and proteins.
We need to get this message out to the mothers of young children and teenagers so they don’t have to go through the endless attempts at low fat diets which have failure built in. Our children and teenagers need good fats in their diet. We are all giving our children far too much glucose in different forms and not enough good fats.
This has to change before another generation also takes the wrong path started by Ancel keys.
This is a note that I transcribed from one of our coaching sessions, with permission from Michelle.
A year and half ago I would sit slumped in my chair, I’d be hungry all the time, I wouldn’t know why I was hungry. I had no energy, I had no desire to actually, you know. I was half comatosed. I really was. I was lethargic. I had no energy. I didn’t want to do anything. I didn’t want to go anywhere.
This is a difficult thing to say, but I’m going to say it anyway. But, I thought that if I could get into hospital, and they could actually knock me out and keep me in a coma for 6-8 months, that I could lose the weight. I couldn’t think of any other way to do it, than to do that.
You know, like having your stomach stapled or having your jaw wired up. Something, anything like that, to stop what I was doing to myself. But I didn’t realise it was because of what I ate.
Something that I found is that my own family has the same problems that I had but because we never talked about it, we just thought it was some sort of mental failing of ours. That we didn’t understand because the way we ate that we had this hunger and overeating, and all these other things. But if we could just change our diet, and eat the foods that we were told weren’t good for us, that we could actually cure it, and now it is cured.
Literally. It is cured.
My whole life is different to the way it was.
My husband and I are about to go for a walk. 4:30 is our time to escape from the house. We’re going to go and walk around the pivot this afternoon which is about a 50 minute walk and now I’m actually faster than he is. So he’s got to keep up with me. Before, it would just be too exhausting. He can see the change in me as well.
It definitely feels so much better than I’ve felt in my life before. You know, it’s just what I’ve always dreamed of basically. That this problem would go away. And it has.
More important than actually losing the weight, is the feeling that I will never actually put that weight on again. Because I now know why it happened. And it’s just a matter of time now. Maybe I will get my goal, maybe I won’t. But I will enjoy the journey.
It’s changed my brain, not just my body.
I have come alive again.