Since I was about eleven-years-old I’ve tried dozens of ways to lose weight, almost always with a certain measure of success. There were pills, powders, potions, shakes, pre-packaged foods, juice regimens, fasting regimens, even little chocolate candies that were supposed to take away hunger! I’ve done low-fat, low-carb, starve-yourself-until-you-eat-a-
whole-box-of-low-fat-cookies… you get the picture. Have you ever tried to eat a quarter cup of ice cream, or half a cookie for dessert? That’s not a diet, that’s masochism!

I always lost weight, but very often I felt horrible while I was doing it, and eventually gave up on every single ‘plan’ because I figured what was the point in losing weight and being miserable in every other regard? I’ll take my fat, I always decided, and at least feel human and somewhat happy.

Then, two years ago, I stopped focusing on losing weight and instead made my goal becoming more healthy and fit. I’ll admit up front that I haven’t stuck with this plan completely, but I’m preparing to adopt it again because as I look over all the years of ‘everything else,’ I realize it’s the only thing that worked, and didn’t make me feel like I was being punished. In fact, I felt good while I was doing it. There were no pills, no fasting, no crazy diet foods, no cutting out an entire food group or category like carbs or fat. It was almost crazily simple, given all the machinations I’d gone through for years, from complicated diet plans to pills that had to be taken precisely at certain times.

I avoided super-sugary or starchy foods most of the time, ate lots of fruits and vegetables, and I walked at least 5 days a week.

Complicated, isn’t it? Good healthy food and exercise. Who knew! I’d found the ‘miracle cure’ that I’d been trying to buy in all those boxes, bottles and books, found it completely by accident! I simply knew I had to do something to improve my life, and eating right and exercise seemed reasonable enough. They seemed a lot more reasonable than a liquid diet, or a diet comprised of only meat, eggs and macadamia nuts.

I ate regular, small meals, sometimes five or six a day, but these were meals about one-third to one-half the size of what I’d been eating before, two or three times a day. I ate salad at least once a day, but often two or three times. I made it more satisfying by adding a little cheese, or one of my favorite things in a salad, fruit. A lettuce salad with a little ranch dressing, a few raisins or grapes, or even prunes thrown in, that was heaven to me. All the crunch with a little sweetness inside was quite a treat after a two-mile walk, and it was healthy, too. We’ve always eaten a varied diet with lots of fruits and vegetables, fish, chicken and now and then some beef. But on top of those good things, we tended to eat quite a bit of prepared and fast foods. I merely cut back on those things and filled in the gaps with the good stuff.

Photograph by Andy Melton. Some rights reserved.

I started out walking one mile at a pretty leisurely pace, and in only a couple of weeks I was walking two miles, sometimes two-and-a-half, at a brisk enough pace that I was breathing faster than normal, but I could still talk, as sometimes my cousin walked with me. We had some profoundly personal chats on our walk, something else I enjoyed about it. Exercising with another person has to be the absolute best. I didn’t weigh myself before I started, but in two months my pants were about to fall off me, I felt pretty energetic, I looked forward to my daily walk-sometimes I walked 7 days a week because I craved it. Imagine that, I enjoyed exercise for the first time in years. A few months before that, if someone had told me I’d end up looking forward to a daily walk, I’d have laughed.

The walking wasn’t terribly easy most days; it was mid-summer and the heat was often oppressive. So I would wait until almost sundown, take a frozen water bottle, grab the mp3 player and my tennies, and head to the middle school to use the track around the football field. There’s no view there, nothing but a road and the school, no shade, very little breeze. And some days I forgot the mp3 player, some days my cousin who walked with me couldn’t be there, so it was just me, my heavy breathing and the sound of the bugs waking up as the sun went down. But I knew I was doing something good, that every step I took was a step toward better health, and yes, a smaller behind! It got me out of the house for an hour a day, a precious hour of ME time, something I hadn’t had for a few years. I felt independent and strong, and even proud of myself for taking my health into my own hands instead of sitting idly on a butt that was getting bigger and, I feared, arteries that were getting smaller.

Winter came, and I don’t tolerate cold well. I should have made arrangements to walk indoors somewhere, but I didn’t. I fell off my eating plan, little by little. Looking back, no excuse really holds up, but as anyone who has ever stopped something good for them knows, it really does sort of just happen without a conscious effort. I’m happy to report I haven’t bounced too far in the other direction. I didn’t eat that well for a while, but I am back to more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and natural foods. I don’t get nearly enough exercise, not as much as when I walked, but I’ve been getting some.

I think the best indication that my ‘healthy food and walking’ plan was a good one is my behavior when I stopped. Unlike the times before when I would fall off the ‘popcorn’ diet or the diet that forbade any food that contained flour, I didn’t go to the opposite extreme and undo every good thing I’d done. I wasn’t starved, I wasn’t so sore from over-exerting myself with exercise (as I’d done many times before) that I gave up on all activity for a while. I hadn’t gone without bread for three months, so I didn’t want to camp out in a bakery and make up for it. I hadn’t even gone completely without sugar-filled comfort food, I indulged occasionally in moderation, so I didn’t go on an M&M, Hostess or Hershey shopping spree to gorge myself on what I’d been missing. I continued eating in moderation (albeit a little less moderately than before) and I still managed to get some exercise now and then.
I’m starting to feel that health plan is like many things in my life that I’ve done one slow step at a time, with each time bearing more success. Two years ago, I peeled away the top layers, and now I’m ready to dig a little deeper. Now that we’re having nice weather for winter, I’m feeling the desperate need for that hour of blissful, sweaty, private ‘me’ time each day. I want to feel that good again, maybe even better. So I’m ready to pick up where I left off and take my health a few steps farther in the right direction.

Shelley Ontis lives in Illinois, surrounded by corn, cows and pick-up trucks. She claims it’s not nearly as exciting as it sounds.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 31st, 2008 at 5:57 pm and is filed under Planning for Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.