This is a subject that is super close to my heart, and all my other parts. I was always a bigger individual. Had finally convinced myself I must simply be genetically destined to be "big boned", or whatever adjective one chooses. Then I learned that genetics aren't the only thing that run in a family. So do the food choices. I remember having to buy size 6x clothes when I was a kid and being so embarrassed. I never could share clothes and play dress up and such with friends because I was always the bigger one. No one ever mentioned the critical importance of nutrition or exercise, other than what was briefly taught in school. Not even my doc, who always reassured me my "numbers" came back okay after annual blood work. Grrrrrr.....
The sexual abuse started at the age of 13 and added a layer of coping that I couldn't understand at the time. Food was always heavily taught as being a tool of comfort, celebration, reward, punishment, etc. So many emotions tied to it from birth. The one thing you can finally control when you're on your own, if you're lucky enough to have a job, a home, and a kitchen. Living for a long while with none of those things put a whole new perspective on eating, leading to me very often binging whenever food was around, paying no mind to actual nutrition, just focusing on trying not to wonder when I'd eat again.
But anyway, I ended up morbidly obese, weighing in at around 310 pounds, suffering with severe inflammation, osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, depression, anxiety, insomnia, nervous stomach, etc., etc. trying every diet and medication on the market to no avail. I was raised in a home with two parents working full-time, and then some, so we ate mostly fast, frozen, convenience foods, except for the weekends and holidays when all the big homemade spreads were made. When I started working f/t, often putting in overtime, going to school, being a f/t step-mom to two, etc. I followed the same harmful cycle of eating fast, frozen, "convenient" meals, too. Living what I learned and was consuming exactly what I was being highly marketed towards, and what was made affordable.
After meeting with a registered dietician, I switched to eating only "real" food vs. highly processed, only local meat, local dairy, local eggs, and lost maybe 20 pounds. Then I learned of gluten and eliminated it. Woah! My gateway discovery, it seemed, that solidified the gut/brain connection in my mind. That helped ease a lot of the inflammation and pain while also lifting some brain fog and energy levels. But I seemed to plateau with that, too, and was still not able to lose more weight and feel better overall, as the registered dietitian had often assured me I would by eating the cleaner locally raised versions of stuff and leaving the gluten out. How incredibly frustrating!!!
The next thing I learned was how toxic the sodas, teas, and other beverages were with the artificial colors and artificial sweeteners and such. Woah. Those were what I was using as my main sources of hydration, because I'd been taught liquid equals hydration, regardless of the source. Yikes. I was able to kick the sodas and the alcohol through drinking and learning how to make kombucha, a fermented tea. I lost a little more weight during that time, too, but once again, the relief and results were short-lived. Luckily, I didn't go back to my former choices in my frustration.
It wasn't until I suffered a gall bladder attack two years ago and faced the possibility of having to have surgery that I decided to take a much deeper intentional dive into the nutritional arena. My attack didn't require immediate surgery, thankfully, so I opted to treat it via non-surgical methods by doing a closely supervised liver/gall bladder cleanse and drastically changing my consumption choices to whole food/plant based options. I can't even read about a surgery without feeling faint, so I try to avoid them at all possible costs, unless my life depends on it, of course (knock on wood). So far, I've had dental surgery for wisdom teeth when I was still a minor and had no say in it, and an ectopic pregnancy requiring emergency surgery at the age of 22.
Once I gave up all meat, dairy, eggs (I was a heavy duty consumer of all three of those, just as I'd been raised to be), alcohol (used to often binge on it but had long since scaled back to a few cold beers on a hot day or adding a splash of irish cream and such to my coffee), and caffeine (I was a hard core coffee, sweet tea, diet soda and ginger ale junkie), the weight started dropping off (110 lbs within a year and a half) and aspects of my health I had been told by docs was lost forever or would only worsen with age was restored and better managed without their assistance. Some even email or call asking for reading/food references and such to help other patients out. LOL I never would have imagined receiving those types of inquiries in my former life.
I still suffer from long-term damage already done, but learning how to better manage and recognize things via my fork and my environment has been priceless and incredibly self-empowering. I've learned many times over that there is no diet that brings long-term sustained relief for my particular biology, regardless of what they claim. The word itself has DIE in it, which is not very comforting to my overactive senses. Only a regularly practiced healthier to your specific biology lifestyle change can do that, speaking only from direct experience as I lived it.
I remember very fondly and vividly how good some of my old favorites taste, and have been successful in making vegan versions of most, but I've also painfully learned many times over that absolutely nothing tastes as good as feeling good feels, be it vegan or otherwise. And as good as the "all things in moderation" response used to make me feel when I'd decide to "treat" myself, I painfully learned I had to take a serious look at what it was doing to me long term and redefine what an actual nurturing treat was vs. simply a momentary treat to the taste bud region.
The rest of the body seems to get a bit resentful when the taste buds get to have all the fun and they are left to do the hard work that follows in managing to eliminate the substances ingested. That moderation saying always reminds me of working at a gas station, too. Putting moderate amounts of diesel in a gas engine rendered it inoperable until it was thoroughly cleaned out. That's exactly how I felt prior to switching my eating habits, basically inoperable more often than not.
Some reading that helped me along my several years long journey:
"Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life" - Thich Nhat Hanh
"Food Rules" - Michael Pollan
"Safe Eating (formerly titled "Unsafe At Any Meal") - Earl Mindell
"Let Them Eat Junk: How Capitalism Creates Hunger and Obesity" - Robert Albritton
"Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think" - Brian Wansink
"Prof. Arnold Ehret's Mucusless Diet Healing System" - annotated, revised, and edited by Prof. Spira (in addition to his "Spira Speaks" book highlighting essays and dialogues on the mucusless and mucuslean scene)
There's many more, but these popped into my mind as being some of the most helpful, along with various you tube selections relating to the topics. Best wishes in your journey and your health.
