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Medical Grade Dieting

I've been kind of up and down lately with the dieting thing. I've been thinking about how long I've been at this whole trek to reach a goal weight and how I'm still in the same place I've been for years and years. So the time has come where I need to either accept that this is how much I'm going to weight and this is how I'm going to feel both in my body and about my body, or I'm going to fix it. 

One of my neighbors lost 80 pounds on medifast. She's a really cool lady, very inspirational. And her story really inspires. She was around 200 pounds - like me - and had pretty much given up on herself. She agreed to follow the plan for one month and 7 months later she'd reached her goal weight and hasn't looked back. 

This sounded so familiar and awfully appealing so I decided to do some research. I so badly want to find the easy and real solution to my weight problem and I was so hoping that perhaps all the apprehension I"d felt about the whole medifast diet wasn't founded in anything.

What I found was not so good. Once I started steering away from the official site and even a newsweek article it started to look grim. Particularly the consumer reports having dealt with everything from horrible customer service on returns and exchanges to gallbladder and liver failure. 

Then I stumbled across this blog:
http://goodbyefungus.blogspot.com/2011/12/medifast-diet-planis-quick-weight-loss.html


It's an excellent and very thorough account of what's in the foods you eat on medifast. (It's kind of a bad-ass blog in general! I read a bunch of different great and well-researched stuff.) Reading this was a deal-breaker. Everything in the medifast foods is counter to everything I have learned about good nutrition.

This diet is doctor recommended?! This further diminishes my views on the quality of westernized medicine. *sigh*

Feeling a bit deflated from such a let-down I ended up feeling better after meeting my new doctor yesterday. I'm one of those weirdos that believes in preventative care. This doctor had a waiting list so I figured he must be good and if I got in to see him now it would be better than having to find someone  I didn't trust in an emergency situation.
Anyway, I told him I was tired of carrying the extra weight and I really needed to just break down and get it off. I knew I was going to like him as soon as he admitted he hadn't ever needed to lose a lot of weight (he's a twig) and that he's tried cutting sugar before and it's hard! I appreciated his honesty. It makes me mad when doctors assume they know what their patients go through when they've never dealt with an issue personally. He also validated several things that I have come to know to be true as I have attempted to lose this weight.

First he said that I'm not going to be successful unless I am in the mindset where I decide to be successful. (He actually said this. I wanted to show him my blog!) Once you start negotiating with your rules it's all downhill. So we agreed my rules are whole foods and no sugar. NO SUGAR!

Whole foods means things as close to their original state as possible. Instead of apple juice, an apple. Instead of wheat flour, whole wheat berries. This is pretty much how I was trying to eat after my juice cleanse anyway. 

Next he said I should eat pretty often, every couple of hours. This is another thing I've noticed. If I eat enough to be satisfied - not full and only eat when I feel hungry and water isn't cutting it, I end up eating every couple of hours naturally. (Another homage to my juice cleanse!)

Last he said I should have very very special occasions and allow myself to eat outside my limits. I know this isn't really conducive to the first thing, but I think that specifying what "special occasion" means will help. Going out to dinner = not a special occasion. Going out to dinner to celebrate something especially significant (birthday/anniversary/new job...) = okay have something special. 

So I'm set to task. I think that if I can force myself to get in the right mindset even though it doesn't feel "right" I can make the difference. This is really where I've continued to fail so many times before. I'm going to do this. This is going to be my life. No excuses.

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