My best weight loss was moving to another country. You don't know any of the foods and just stick to the fruit, veg and cheese that looks familiar.
I have always been short and easily put on weight, and love food - too much! It's something that we reward ourselves with and sometimes we like to treat our selves too much for that instant food high, followed by the regrets!
When I moved from US to Australia I lost the most weight I ever have and was just about a normal sized person, because I went from all these great (bad) foods and variety in the US that I knew well and grew up with to the very small variety in Australia (no offense to Aus). I didn't know what a lot of things were and everything that sounded like an old favorite tasted different, so I just had fruit and cheese and branched out into more veggies.
Then I met my future husband and he showed me the ropes and I eventually found the "good stuff", the chocolate, the cookies, the ice cream, the pizza, and super rich dinners. All I needed was a really stressful last semester of Uni, a scooter so I didn't have to walk to Uni, and a new rental house next door to a take away with great ice cream and I was packing it on like yak, soothing my stress with chocolate and ice cream, I didn't give it a second thought. In the space of 4 months I didn't fit into any of my clothes, my hormones were out of whack and I wasn't ovulating anymore, I lost my motivation, and could barely walk up a hill (because I was out of shape and my pants were so tight
). I packed on about 50lbs in that time, and I was so embarrassed by my graduation pics because I was so huge. I really mucked up my body in such a short period of time.
Two years later and we are eating a bit better and taking more regular walks, but it's still a battle. We have had an impossible time finding work and that had been a bit of a downer point so sometimes we overindulge to make ourselves feel better, but we are getting better at resisting rewarding our selves so much because we remind our selves how crap we feel afterwards., and try and reward our selves with other things... lets just hope we don't trade food addiction with shopping addiction
I think to loose weight one really has to focus on changing lifestyle habits over time, because for most people I think overeating is a bad habit, and food is like a drug that gives the user a high and encourages frequent use to maintain the high, and we tend to overlook how crap it makes us feel afterward. So if we try to resist the food "drug" completely to loose weight is only lasts a while and we fall back to old habits when we get stressed and need that happy food drug. I guess relapse is a part of breaking all habits, so perhaps one just has to keep positive and try again until the mind has mastered the bodies food urges. Anyway, this is where a big life style change like moving to a new country comes in, because you have to change to fit into your new environment, so it is easier to start fresh and learn good habits from the get go - but not find new bad habits like I did.
Anyway, I have blabbered on for ages, I would like to be in on the weight loss. We have been slack on our walks lately and I would like us to start doing it daily again! I'm in!
loosing 20lbs would be awesome, I have a huge stack of my old clothes that have been waiting for me!
