“All round benefits – wow”

Before and after

Lorraine struggled with always gaining weight over the winter, and then working hard to lose it. A friend suggested that she should improve her high-carb breakfast, but it wasn’t until she started the 2-week low-carb challenge that things really started changing:

I was never obese and refused to buy size 14 clothes (that was my trigger to diet) but every winter I would snap on 3 lbs (1 kg), like overnight, then have to work to lose it in the spring. I used to say that the minute the heating went on I put on the pounds.

I had always run, not very far, but fairly regularly (I had joined the army when I was 19 and they made me!). And had used running as a way of getting the weight off and staying relatively fit. But I had a problem when I ran and pushed the exercise, even when walking uphill or on a strenuous climb, I would get so out of breath it felt like it was asthma, yet I got it checked out and was told it was damage from smoking and I was getting old!

Then when out with friends running, someone asked me what I ate for breakfast, “peanut butter or banana on toast” she suggested I try cutting, my ‘go-to food, bread’, out for a bit. I did try to cut down, but boy is the stuff so easy and ‘quick carb fix’ but I only replaced it with porridge, not much improvement. Slowly it dawned on me that my breathing was connected to wheat (not just wheat, I now know).

So on the 2nd of October 2016 I started the Diet Doctor 2-week challenge (haven’t stopped) and cut out bread, pasta, rice and potatoes first, replaced it with the yummiest cauliflower mash or cauli-rice. Then I joyfully added cream, all the cheese I wanted, eggs, hum not too many or they have consequences, more water than I can imagine and within a few days my running started to change.

No more feeling like my lungs had shrunk. The change was quite dramatic, my 3 mile (5 km) time is around 32 minutes (currently running in the dark with a head torch) and I’m up to a 15.5 mile (25 km) constant run with only the last 4 miles (6 km) being ‘hard work’. Even doing those hills without stopping and gasping for breath!!!

The biggest challenge is eating out and finding food without sugar added to it, oh, and Christmas. But I did treat myself to naughties (not bread etc.), but some chocolate and completely enjoyed it guilt free. Interestingly the desire for carbs has all but gone. I don’t miss bread etc. at all and the desire to eat them is gone. The second challenge for me is constipation – (although this has always been a challenge) learning to know what your body can tolerate is a real journey – so figs happen in my diet, lots more water with the occasional senna tea.

Weight loss; 2nd of October 2016 – 128 lbs (58 kg), 10th of January 2017 – 119 lbs (54 kg).

Now that may not be a huge loss, but it’s very significant when your only 5 foot 1 (155 cm) and it’s a dress size, so I’m now a comfy 10.

All round benefits – wow:

• No ‘post lunch’ fatigue
• Enjoying running
• Better sleep
• Food is even better
• Taste has changed, it’s been improved, I think as the ‘hidden’ sugar is out
• Flat stomach
• Hip bones!
• Feeling younger
• Save money on food
• Butter
• Cream
• Cheese

Disadvantages – not many:

• Eating out – requires a bit of knowledge so my advice is don’t do it until you really get going with the new foods
• Spending saved food money on new clothes!!!!
• No ice cream ☹
• Finding simple things without ‘sugar, dextrose, glucose etc’ on the label, its everywhere, even stock cubes!!!!

So I had realised I have a wheat intolerance and initially feel it was wheat that I reacted to with my breathing. But also I now think it was carbs that affected me. And as for the winter weight, more carbs because I ate more of them in the winter! All the British winter ‘root’ vegetables and lashings of bread and soup (with sugar in, tomato soup, my fav being the worse) etc.

If I had known that simply giving up bread, wheat, pasta, potatoes and rice would have made such a dramatic difference to me, I would have done this years ago.

Things I haven’t given up – honey in my tea.

I’m also reading more and will do my Banting Coach exam as this is something I want to help other people find the way that suits them and get the benefits they want in their lives.

Lorraine

Comments

Congratulations Lorraine – and thank you for sharing your story.

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