{"id":695,"date":"2013-11-24T14:58:34","date_gmt":"2013-11-24T20:58:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/?p=695"},"modified":"2013-11-24T14:58:34","modified_gmt":"2013-11-24T20:58:34","slug":"a-journey-begins-with","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/a-journey-begins-with\/","title":{"rendered":"A journey begins with"},"content":{"rendered":"

A decision. Sometimes that decision needs to be facilitated by some outside force, a push, maybe, that starts things rolling.<\/p>\n

I visited my doctor in September and shared my difficulties dealing with the weight that I’ve gained and my frustration at not being able to lose any of it. If you’ve been reading this long enough or you know me, I have PCOS. And one of its effects is weight gain. Often a large amount of weight gain. When my PCOS showed its ugly face several years back when I chose to stop taking birth control for a year, I ballooned out. I gained nearly 50 pounds in one year. And since then weight gain had continued, but at a much slower pace. We’re dealing with most of the other symptoms of PCOS well. But the weight just wouldn’t come off.<\/p>\n

So I went to my doctor. She’s very good. She takes everything I have to say into account and makes sure I leave with all my concerns dealt with in a satisfactory manner.<\/p>\n

She told me I was insulin resistant. That’s very common for gals with PCOS. I suspected as much. The issue I had now was what to do about it. She told me to pick up <\/u>The Blood Sugar Solution<\/u><\/a> by Dr Mark Hyman and follow its plan. I picked it up at the library and read most of it in about a month. I realized that I was going to need to buy this one.
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About 5 weeks after the Dr visit I started the 6 week plan. My husband and I had discussed it and he was very supportive – and wanted to improve his health as well. So we emptied our fridge, freezer, and cabinets of anything that wouldn’t work with the diet. You wouldn’t believe the amount of food we ended up giving away. It’s crazy!<\/p>\n

Our cupboards bare, we went shopping. The produce section was so overwhelming to me that I almost had a panic attack. I had no idea where to find green cabbage. Turnips? What do those look like? I had only a basic working knowledge of a produce department. Sad, I know. Honestly, it’s only improved marginally since then. But enough so I can find what I need. And it’s not like you can just wander around studying the produce – someone might just call the cops. <\/p>\n

That was four weeks ago. Since then we’ve been making all our food at home. We have been cooking so much more. And it’s really not much more time consuming than driving to the restaurant, ordering, eating, and driving back home (even fast food). Sometimes cooking is much faster. The recipes we’ve found are great. And the food were buying is higher quality. Which is great, but makes it tough to go eat at a restaurant that serves a crappy steak.<\/p>\n

In the last four weeks we’ve begun learning to cook. To really cook. And we’re learning how to eat to nourish our bodies and enjoy food. <\/p>\n

And we’ve lost weight. My hubby has lost more than twenty pounds. I’ve lost around fifteen. But I’m down 29 pounds since my heaviest point a few months ago. I can’t believe it. And this is just by changing our eating habits. I haven’t started exercising yet, because it still feels very taxing on my body due to my size. But soon, very soon, I’ll be able to do something and help this along.<\/p>\n

My recommendation: everyone should look at this book (or others like it) and try to learn about our country’s unhealthy relationship with sugar – and take its tips and guidance to heart. We’d all be healthier for it. <\/p>\n

I’ll check back again in a few weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A decision. Sometimes that decision needs to be facilitated by some outside force, a push, maybe, that starts things rolling. I visited my doctor in September and shared my difficulties dealing with the weight that I’ve gained and my frustration at not being able to lose any of it. If you’ve been reading this long […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[44,55,102],"class_list":["post-695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","tag-health","tag-life","tag-weight"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3aAvV-bd","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}