Back Story

Let me start by saying that food is my addiction, I self medicate with food on a daily basis but when I set my mind to it I have in the past been able to successfully live a healthy life.  Unfortunately that only lasts about a month or two (my record is 3).  I lose the weight, I feel great and then I fall right back into old habits or as I like to call it falling off the food wagon.  The longer I stayed on the diet aka healthy eating the longer the results last but I eventually always give in to lady temptation.  Now for a little back story.

3 years ago I was nearing 140 lbs and felt fatter then I ever had in my life.  I had never weighed so much and was very unhappy and uncomfortable.  While for some people this is a healthy weight, I am 5'3 and my frame is fairly petite.  140 for me is an overweight BMI, doctors recommend that I weigh at most 125 (some even say 117 but I would be a size 0/2 at that weight!!).  I feel my absolute best in both the way I look and feel at 125, I am a size 4/6 at this weight and I look slim but healthy.  I personally feel that nothing looks worse then a woman who is too thin and I don't give myself unrealistic weight loss goals.  At the time my future mother in law was looking to lose weight and had asked me if I would do the South Beach Diet with her.  I had never tried a diet before, only exercise in the past and was very hesitant at first.  She bought me the books and after reading everything I felt really good about the method and decided to give it a try.  It was very hard at first but within the first week I lost 5 lbs (8 lbs in the first 2 weeks) and it gradually became easier.  I kept a diary throughout the process and I felt like this really helped me keep on track.  I wanted to quit so many times but I just couldn't let my FMIL down.  She needed to lose the weight and get healthy very badly and I just couldn't let her down by quitting.  After 3 months of being on the South Beach, I reached my goal weight of 125.  I had lost about 18 lbs and I looked and felt amazing.  My mother in law stayed on the diet for a year and lost nearly 80 lbs.  She is still on it today but her weight loss has stopped and she is maintaining now.  At the time that I reached my goal weight I felt invincible like I would never gain the weight back again.  I know understand this is a common feeling with dieters and without properly maintaining a healthy lifestyle you will eventually gain back every pound plus some which is what happened to me.  I would occasionally jump back on the south beach lose 10 lbs and then go back to my unhealthy ways but I never reached my goal weight again.  Now for how I got to my current weight.

I have been suffering from severe skin allergies for 10 years, no doctor (not even the Cleveland Clinic) was able to figure out was wrong with me.  I haven't had health insurance for many years so I had been unable to get any help.  A day in my life did not go by without being covered with hives and rashes.  Being itchy was just my life and I hid my skin as best as I could.  A year ago though it began to escalate, my lips began to swell like balloons, my ears would swell, my hands, my feet.  The hives were so large on my body they were like giant plateaus.  Benadryl did NOTHING to help me, all it did was knock me out for hours at a time.  I would basically just sleep through my allergic reactions.  One day after eating some pasta my throat swelled up and I had trouble swallowing.  We went to a pharmacist at our grocery store and asked if there was anything I could take to help and all they said I could take was Benadryl, when I told them that it didn't work they just told me to take more Benadryl.  I was at my wits end and becoming scared for my life so my Fiance and I decided to go to a place called Progressive Medical Center in Dunwoody Georgia.  It is a mix of Natural and Conventional Medicine, they treat you from every possible angle.  It was very expensive but we sat down with the owner and he negotiated a lower price with us that we felt we could afford.  My fiance chipped in half and off we went.  Many many tests were done and to summarize it we found out that I have a sluggish thyroid, my adrenal glands were not functioning, I was not producing enough progesterone and most importantly I have severe and extensive food allergies.  They put me on a detoxifying diet to completely rid my system of all of the poisons that were plaguing me and therefore giving me a clean slate to start over with.  Now my Fiance had done a version of this diet the year before me and had lost a ton of weight.  It was really hard though back then finding gluten free, dairy free, casein free, egg free etc products which left his choices very limited.  In the year though between the time he did the diet and I did the diet there was an explosion on the market for products in this category so I had absolutely no problem finding things to eat and the whole process was fairly easy.  Unfortunately with the advent of allergy free food products there was an army of options in the junk food category so where he had lost weight when he did it I actually gained a substantial amount of weight.  Everything that I was eating was basically made of rice and potatoes.  I will say though that by the end of the detox my allergies were 100% GONE.  Another side bonus was my face had completely cleared up along with the skin on the rest of my body.  Internally I felt really good but externally I was fatter then I had ever been in my entire life.  It was also relieving to learn through this process that while I tend to eat terribly I also am fighting a losing battle with my thyroid so it's not entirely my fault (it just mostly is).  With all that being said, I have had a hard time going back on the south beach now that I am aware of all of my food allergies.  Many of the vegetables and things that I lived on during my weight loss I now knew that I was very allergic to them. Not only was I allergic to a lot of fruits and vegetables but due to my thyroid I have to avoid soy.  Soy is very bad for your thyroid but unfortunately it is in a ton of delicious diet food options. I had a very hard time adjusting the diet to work around my allergies.  It felt very limited and therefore made it a lot harder for me to be successful so I have not made a solid attempt for nearly a year to lose any weight.  I am now a weight I only thought I would ever reach if I was pregnant!!  I am a size 10 and it's not even comfortable.  Now that you're up to date with my history and all of my problems I'll tell how I got to this moment.

I had just come back home to my mom's house after visiting my fiance in Georgia when she announced that we are going on a diet.  Not just any diet a new diet that was on the Dr. Phil show a week ago.  She had already ordered the book and had some photo copied pages from a friend to get started in the meantime.  Now please let me say that my mother is THIN.  She is a size 4 but she is for whatever reason convinced that she is the fattest cow on earth and talks about it all the time.  It does not exactly make me feel good to listen to a woman who's legs don't even touch in the middle moan about how fat she is when I am a solid 30 lbs over weight.  I also want to say that A. I am not comfortable with trying a fad diet (South Beach is not a a fad diet, it is a tool to teach you how to eat healthy and live a healthy lifestyle).  B. I am not comfortable starting a diet when I have not read the book and know nothing about it.  C. My mother has a tendency to buy every fad diet on TV and then not follow through with it but she is paying for all of the food and I don't have any other real options right now so I am willing to give it a try.  I decided to blog about because of my success with my diet diary in the past and also because there are zero reviews on this diet on the Internet (I am assuming because it is brand spanking new).  I thought that this would be helpful to both myself, women out there thinking about trying this diet and also to anyone out there that suffers from food allergies like I do.  Now time to get started!