I don’t usually make this public, but in the interest of helping someone else I will. My top weight was 189 pounds. I am 5’3”. My BMI was 33. My doctor diagnosed me “obese”. I also had borderline high blood pressure and high cholesterol. I had anxiety and I was depressed. I felt like the world was going on all around me but I wasn't moving. I had no energy to.
I had a gym membership for over 2 years. I did everything they said to do. I told the trainer my goals who then took me around to all of the machines,showed me how to operate them and made me demonstrate that I could do it. They helped me to calculate how much weight to use on each machines and how fast to go on the cardio machines. They even wrote it all down on a weekly schedule that I could take with me. Sounds great, right? I thought so too. I went 3-4times per week faithfully. In 3 months, I gained 8 pounds. And no, it was not muscle. My clothes were tighter than ever! I was done. I did end up going back periodically for a bit of cardio, maybe a class or two but I just couldn’t find a groove. I knew I needed physical activity but I didn’t want to gain anymore weight.
It was around this time that I started giving more thought to my food choices. Not just what kind of food I ate but what kind of food I thought was available for me. My biggest excuse was my job. I am a nurse and I used to travel as far as 3 different counties in one day to see patients in their homes. I also live in Florida, so anything I packed would surely get hot in the car. I used the drive thru as my main source of food during the day.Occasionally I would go to a sit down restaurant with co-workers. Most days I would have nothing to eat at all until I came home. I still continued to gain weight. I would think, “How can that happen? I don’t even eat that much. It’s not like I eat all day long!”
I had been hearing about a documentary from several people. I kept thinking maybe there is something to this. A friend loaned me the DVD. It was called“Forks over Knives”. Maybe you have heard of it? It’s not the most exciting video in the world to watch. I mean, it’s a documentary, full of facts and statistics and studies. It actually took me two days to watch it. It kind of was a snoozer but once I got through it, I was in shock. It was one of those defining moments in life that you don’t forget. I was lying in bed watching from a laptop computer. I remember pushing the computer back and saying, I’ll never eat those things again!
The next morning, July 1 2012, I went cold turkey vegan. I wasn’t really sure what to eat but I had decided to do this and by God that’s what I was going to do. I asked my friend a lot of questions and researched on the computer. I went to the grocery store a lot and bought things every day. I read labels carefully and after a while, I found my way and it got easier and easier. The light bulb had gone off in my head and I was so ready to make a change. Not only because of what the documentary had taught me but because I started losing weight immediately. I was losing 1-3 pounds consistently, every week!That was enough motivation to keep going!! I even took it a step further. I cutout coffee, soda, high fructose corn syrup and prepackaged foods (for the most part). If it had ingredients in the label that I cannot pronounce or if I didn’t know what it was, I was not eating it. I was determined to lose weight and get myself healthy!
