Once Upon a Time...

...I was thin and didn’t know it! Yep. All those years ago in high school I looked fine but always thought I could stand to lose 10 pounds. How ridiculous!

I look back on pictures of myself in my teens and I can’t believe what I’m looking at. A 5’5” girl who weighs about 130 pounds and was wearing a size 6/8. How could I have possibly thought I was fat?

As I went through my high school years I dieted once in a while trying to lose weight for modeling. I gave that idea up since I wasn’t very tall and couldn’t stand having to watch my food intake so closely. At 16 I decided I wanted to be in the May Company fashion show and lost 10 pounds before the big day. The result was me at 120 and in a size 5! That’s the picture you see to the right. Me at 16 - April 1983.

Tell me, does that look like a fat girl to you? Of course not! I didn’t even have a behind for crying out loud! The amazing thing is, I can remember very clearly in the dressing rooms, only moments after this picture was taken, wondering what size all the other models were wearing. I was sure that their sizes were smaller than mine but why did I care so much? I was already wearing a size 5. Who cares if some other girl was wearing a 4 or a 2?

After high school the pounds started piling on but oddly enough, I never noticed. My clothes started getting tighter and tighter until I was buying a bigger size every time I went shopping. This went on for years before I actually LOOKED at myself in a few photographs and saw that I was huge. Who’s that? I don’t recognize her. She kind of looks like me but much fatter and much puffier!

So how did I go from a size 5 to a size 24 without even realizing it? Who knows? A much better question is, where am I going from here? My answer; LowCarb.

I tried the traditional lowfat/lowcal diets off and on but never managed to stick with it. In 1998 I lost about 30 pounds doing this and then gained it back and then lost it again, etc. By 2000, my husband was looking for a better way (he needed to loose some weight too) and that’s when he brought up the subject of lowcarb and the Atkins diet. At first, I said no way. I told him “that sounds terrible!” Steak, butter, and eggs? How can you lose weight AND be healthy eating like that? I was very skeptical but he talked me into trying it. I told him I’d give it 2 weeks but I’d quit before that if I started feeling funny.

Well, I didn’t feel funny at all. I felt great! I was so surprised at how well it worked and how wonderful I felt. I slept better, didn’t have heartburn, had more energy, etc. I did it for about 3 months until we went on vacation that Nov. After that, it was downhill! I spent the last 2 months of ‘00 and the first 5 months of ‘01 eating like crap and FEELING LIKE CRAP. I kept off 10 out of the 30 I had lost but felt terrible. That is what finally prompted me to start lowcarbing again because I KNEW I felt better when I wasn’t eating so many refined, manufactured carbs and I KNEW I would lose weight.

That leads us to June 4th, 2001. I started lowcarbing again on that day and have been ever since. I have my little treats here and there but 98% of the time I’m lowcarb all the way. One of the key factors in sticking with this way of eating has been education. I’ve been reading so much about health, aging, nutrition, etc. that I can’t help but be excited about what I’m learning and encouraged to stick with it. I encourage everyone to read as much as possible in order to fully understand how the body works and why lowcarb is the healthy way to eat, permanently.