The other day I was visiting a friend of mine when his daughter arrived, this is someone who I had not seen for about ten years, and I was quite shocked at what I saw. She is about 5 feet 8 inches tall so not short for a woman, and she had never been overweight, but now she told me she was around 275 lbs. suffers from Type 2 Diabetes, has high blood pressure and cholesterol, neuropathy in both feet, and also has angina, and she is only 36 next month. The crazy thing is that she knows her weight is slowly killing her, but she is more afraid of the results of losing the excess weight.
It started for her when a relationship went sour and she turned to comfort eating fast food, and the trouble is here in the UK now you can get just about any fast food delivered to your door, and that includes McDonalds, and the only effort you have to make is a phone call. The weight soon started to pile on, making her more depressed, resulting in even more comfort eating until she was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes five years ago. I have known her since she was a baby, and as a teenager she was always drinking large bottles of cola, but she was always really active so no weight problems, but the sugar would have been doing the damage in the background.
You might be wondering what anyone would be afraid of when it comes to losing weight, well its loose sagging skin. The problem was she had watched a couple of programs on the television where they had lost large amounts of weight and had to have the surplus skin surgically removed, and she felt the whole idea was totally disgusting and dangerous. I showed her that I had lost over 100lbs. and no loose skin in sight, because I mixed diet with fasting, and when you do the longer fast, 5 days plus your body uses the surplus skin for energy through autophagy. I could tell she was interested in what I was telling her, and she certainly was not happy with the situation that she was now finding herself in.
She does have a big advantage on her side and that is the fact she is very capable of cooking to a high standard, and she understands the concept of real food. This all took place at the beginning of July, and I spoke to her on the phone yesterday 2nd of August and she sounded like a different person. Change can never happen overnight, but she has cut out fast food and is cooking real food again, and has done her first 72 hour fast, and is planning on a five day fast in the next couple of weeks with the help of her doctor. If you can get your doctor on side it makes things so much easier I had a lot of opposition when I started fasting, my doctor even made a note on my medical record that she had advised me against it, but changed her mind when she saw the results. The really good news was that in a month, taking into account the time it takes to make changes, she has already lost 12lbs and is sounding really confident about her future.
It is amazing how quickly things can start to change when you get back to eating real food, and cutting out all the processed high sugar crap. The thought of making major changes in our lives can be far worse than the changes themselves, but as we see and feel the benefits of these changes it makes the effort totally worthwhile. I think the lesson to be learnt here is not to accept the first thing you see, but to do some research and find if there is another way, because you will often find that there is, and often it can be far more acceptable than you first thought.
Until next time I wish you all the very best of health…