A Weight-loss Journey - July 2, 2001

Copyright 2001 by Rita Spillers

Hello to one and all, and happy July to you!!! For me, it is indeed a happy time, for I’ve had the good fortune of losing a few more pounds since I last wrote.  If you are reading this article, I feel that you may also be watching your fat/calorie intake, or perhaps you simply may be seeking encouragement and incentive toward finding a ‘thinner’ and healthier “you.”  I hope you will join me each edition as I travel down the long winding road of finding the “new me” and perhaps you will be my “walking pal”...

 Weight-loss is a tremendous challenge for most of us. It definitely is for ME! When I was an adolescent, I was thin, so thin that I looked “sickly” to some folks.  On my wedding day, I was 5’6” and 110 lbs. I was a slender bride, and even two years later after the birth of our first child, I weighed only 116 lbs, still having never in my life “dieted.” In fact, I was ‘proud’ to have finally “put on some weight,” as folks say here in the Deep South. Then something changed in my weight habits by my 30’s...it was a gradual change, but still it happened... 

Do you ever look at pictures of yourself from “a few years ago” and think to yourself how much “thinner” you looked “then”?? I know I do. However, it is ironic that at the time the picture was taken, I was probably feeling “down” about my looks and weight! I wish I could have realized that I didn’t look nearly as bad as I “felt,” and maybe if I had felt better about myself, I would have had more incentive to stay thinner!!  

When my 51st birthday rolled around this year and my mother took me shopping to buy me something new to wear, I had to settle for a women’s size 22 in my clothes!! I was at my all-time high!! Yes, it was a gradual weight-gain, and there were times I would try to lose some of the weight (20 to 30 pounds with each attempt), and it would work for a little while, but I was not losing it the ‘right’ way, for it always came back, and with the vengeance of adding even more weight that time around!!

To be very blunt about it, weight-loss is not exactly something any of us look forward to pursuing, is it? And we can have all the good intentions in the world, but until we make up our minds that we are ‘ready’ to give it a try, we will never be truly successful, for it “has” to come from within our own willingness to sacrifice some of the foods we love most to find a healthier way of eating...or at least that was how it was in my case!! But I’ve learned something really neat about all of this...changing eating habits does not mean I have to ‘give up’ all the great foods, I just moderate and find healthier ways to enjoy and re-train my eating habits! 

I began this journey on April 10^th of this year. To re-cap, I began my weight-loss venture because my height/weight ratio were unacceptable when taking a physical to apply for health insurance and that company turned me down. That was a HUGE SHOCK! But shock is EXACTLY what I needed to put me on a healthier path and to take control of my weight again. 

Since the second insurance company to which I applied insisted on a current physical exam (it had been almost a year since my last one), it was at that appointment that I told my doctor I wanted to lose weight and if he could help me. I was willing to take medication, for I knew I didn’t have the will-power on my own at that time, so he suggested two, one being a fat-blocker and the other being Meridian. I had seen the Meridian ads about how it helps us take control and not crave the things we had once wanted, so that is the one I chose. 

My doctor wants me losing no more than 2 pounds a week.  I am averaging about that much loss each week...since I wrote to you last time, I did have a couple of “slow” weeks where the weight-loss wasn’t falling off quite as quickly as earlier, but it was my own fault and no fault of the ‘program.’ I may go for days and see no weight-loss, and then the scales may show a 2-pound loss when I least expect it! So I’m learning to not get discouraged if the loss seems slow.

I do not have a strict regiment diet-plan to follow. It is advised to keep a food diary, but I am not doing that this time around. My doctor says ‘eat,’ so I definitely EAT! But I eat low-fat and low-cal and have cut out granulated sugar and stick with drinking water with lemon. (With lemon only because I do NOT “like” water, but I like it fine with some lemon juice flavoring it a bit.)  

The main key for me at this point has been to DRINK LOTS OF WATER. I simply use the common sense that God put in my mind. I know I need to be walking/exercising, which I am not doing at this time...maybe by the next time I visit with you again, I can tell you that I’ve started walking on my treadmill... *wink*

I hope that by writing this, somehow I can help encourage others to do what they need to do to get control of their weight. By sharing this with you, it also encourages ME! One thing to keep in mind...we know that as Christians, the scriptures tell us that our bodies are the temple of God! I do try to live for the Lord in everything I do, and I hope that somehow I can honor God in a better way as I continue on this weight-loss journey of having a healthier and thinner body, and I hope you will continue with me as we travel the road together! Please contact me with your thoughts and comments on this article. 

A LOW-FAT RECIPE TO SHARE:

It is definitely “summertime in the south,” and I have a delicious low-fat and refreshingly “cold” summer-soup recipe to share with you this issue that was submitted to me by my web-sister, Clara Miller. I thought this was “perfect timing,” and I appreciate Clara for sharing it. (She is a WONDERFUL Cajun cook, by the way! Clara lives “on the bayou” in South Louisiana.)

 COLD CUCUMBER SOUP

Ingredients:

One large cucumber, quartered lengthwise
Salt
2 cups fat-free plain yogurt
lemon juice
1 tablespoon honey
1/4 teaspoon salt
Pepper to taste
2 tablespoons finely chopped mint leaves

 
Start by peeling and removing the seeds of the cucumber, then split it lengthwise into quarter pieces and sprinkle salt over it and let set for about an hour.

Rinse salt from cucumber slices and puree all the ingredients together in the blender.
 
Once the cucumber has been pureed, add the yogurt, a few drops of lemon juice, honey, salt and some pepper. Then just blend it together. As a final ingredient, add finely chopped mint leaves fresh out of the garden, or purchased.

Refrigerate until you're ready to serve it. The great thing about this recipe is that there's no cooking involved and it's low fat.

 Recipe submitted by Clara Miller

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If you have a low-fat recipe to share or diet tips that have worked for you, please send it to Rita Spillers and let us know if we can also add it to our low-fat cooking site.

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