How I lost a LOT of weight

[canetoad]

I was skinny during my childhood, youth and prime adult years. I worked mostly as a chef although I had a fine arts degree - hard to make a living as an artist. My height was 167 cm (5'5 1/2)

Mid to late 90s, as I hit mid-40s, a serious back injury meant I had to give up cooking in commercial kitchens. That was OK - I took to computers and graphics like a fish to water and worked for architects doing presentations etc. My weight ballooned from sitting down most of the day despite regular excercise.

The exact date escapes me, but around 2010 the Paleo Diet became a fad. Protein, no grains or dairy. Bone broth fer gawdsake.....

Being a lover of history and archaeology I asked myself, 'how authentic is the paleo diet". My conclusion was Not At All. The Paleolithic, or Old Stone Age, covered a period of roughly 3.3m to 12,000 years ago. People had not yet adopted permanent settlements and agriculture, instead living as hunter/gatherers. This can be a tenous, uncertain way of living.

Unlike Paleo Pete, they probably didn't have meat every day. I'd imagine that some days were very lean as far as food supplies went. The gathers would have been able to graze as they gathered but less so for the hunters. In a co-operative small group, I think they would have eaten once a day - after they returned from the day's work, regulated by the sun.

Breakfast wasn't popularised until medieval times. The main meal for peasants and working folk was in the middle of the day. Three meals a day is a modern convention.

Ten years ago, long before the OMAD diet becam a thing, I decided to eat one meal a day in the late afternoon. The morning coffee is a ritual, so gave up sugar for sweeteners. Like the old stone age people, I didn't eat meat every day, but luckily I love vegetables and more importantly, pulses and beans. It's really important to be attuned to your body and what it needs or craves, unless that is fat or sugar.

In a nutshell, at my heaviest I was 100kg and like an apple, which was the shape of my grandparents. Today, I can't even imagine a lifestyle with breakfast, lunch and dinner, although once in a while I'll have a snack earlier in the day.

I relapsed a couple of years ago - ran out of sweeteners and went back to a spoon of sugar in my three coffees a morning. Soon I was eating dessert every night. Sugar is an addiction that makes you 'normalise' sugar consumption. Beware of hidden sugar in the foods you eat.

Processed food and takeaway too. Try to cook from scratch with simple ingredients. In winter, make a 'wet' dish that you can reheat for a couple of days.

I know - TLDR! Sorry, I'll wind up now. The outcome is, over ten years, with a couple of humps I have lost 25kg (55lbs), am still slowly but steadily losing 0.5 or a kg every month and the best thing is, this is manageable. I am so ingrained in the habits that the odd deviation makes no difference to my weight or my psyche. This way of eating isn't for everyone, but it's definitely helped me.