Where Do I Begin?

Trying to lose weight can feel overwhelming. I’d be lying if I said I was not completely discouraged especially because of the efforts I started making earlier this year. But this journey to lose weight was going to start with small steps. 

I decided the best place to start was exercise. In January of this year I started going to the pool to swim laps every day. I was there four to five days a week swimming anywhere from 40-80 laps.  From January to August I did this.  One would expect that getting this kind of exercise I would lose weight. But that was not the case, not even 5 pounds. I even increased my walking distance from 1 mile to 2-3 miles every day.  No matter how much or how little I ate, or how much I exercised, the weight stayed static. I also struggled with inflammation in my body. My joints ached, I felt stiff in the morning, had the old lady shuffle when I got up in the morning. Eight months in I was feeling defeated.  My primary care doctor, when I went in for my physical, smiled and said “you weigh 1 pound less than you did last year at least you didn’t go up.”  REALLY?  Is that supposed to motivate me? I asked to speak to a nutritionist, which I did, but that was a complete waist of my time. They simply regurgitated the American diet spiel, reviewing food groups and saturated fats. 

I’ve watched many documentaries on all the things that are wrong with our food supply. The processed sugar overload in all our foods, the bioengineered foods and hybridization of wheat that has completely changed our flour that is in everything. The deception of labeling and how to really calculate the percentages of sugars, fat and other ingredients by learning how many calories are in a gram of sugar or fat and calculating the percentage based on the total calories of the food item. You would be surprised at what is labeled low fat but more than 50% of the calories are from fat. Did you know that 4 grams of sugar is a teaspoon? The typical 16 oz soda has more than 26 grams of sugar? Go ahead you do the math. How about McDonalds ice tea with 62 grams of sugar. 

Oddly most of what we do in the USA has been banned everywhere else in the world. Even health organizations like the American Heart Association, and American Diabetes Association are funded by special interest groups that actually contribute to those diseases.  Big Pharma makes billions every year with the treat the symptom approach to medicine. Knowing all of this, I wasn’t sure I was ever going to find an answer. 

Insulin resistance is a big buzzword in the weight loss industry but most people don’t really know what that means. Simply put it means that our red blood cells which normally release insulin to provide us with energy are so overloaded with insulin that they block the intake of more insulin. Even if you’re eating reasonably healthy every carbohydrate you consume gets stored as fat. It’s a vicious cycle but this too can be corrected. 

The Diabetese Cure

A local wellness center called “Declare Wellness” marketed a free seminar on Facebook that would speak to all of these concerns and additionally talked about hormone health.  As I suffer from Hashimoto’s an autoimmune thyroid condition this intrigued me.  The thyroid is like the carborator on an engine.  It tells our body what hormones to release and when. I signed up for that free seminar and this is where my journey to better health would really begin.