{"id":3021,"date":"2013-09-14T20:00:16","date_gmt":"2013-09-15T03:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/?p=3021"},"modified":"2013-09-14T20:00:16","modified_gmt":"2013-09-15T03:00:16","slug":"twenty-pounds-down-and-it-feels-great","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/twenty-pounds-down-and-it-feels-great\/","title":{"rendered":"Twenty pounds down and it feels great!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"scale\"Earlier this year I set a goal to lose 30 pounds. I didn\u2019t do anything about it for a few months, and then I started seeing a nutritionist who pretty much kicked my butt into gear.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m excited to say I\u2019m more than halfway to my goal, just about 20 pounds down now.<\/p>\n

For years I tried to lose weight and pretty much failed at any and every attempt to make changes in my eating habits. I was never exactly fit, but I used to walk 40-60 minutes a day, then a knee injury sidelined me, and all my bad food habits caught up to the tune of about 50 pounds over the past three years. YIKES!<\/p>\n

The strangest thing is that this time around it\u2019s been easy and enjoyable to lose weight. For years I used to always be thinking about the next thing I would eat, even while I was eating! It was really an addiction and I honestly didn\u2019t know how I break it. \u00a0It was easier for me to write a novel (or eight at this point) than to change my eating habits. I have motivation and will power, but they never seemed to help when it came to food.<\/p>\n

This time around I changed only two basic things in my eating habits and they made ALL the difference.<\/p>\n

Around the time I started thinking about getting serious and losing weight (yes, it\u2019s a long process to actually make a change!) a friend of mine mentioned she gave up wheat voluntarily, not because of allergy or intolerance. We were going on a weekend trip and I laughed at her, thinking her food restriction was going make eating a challenge. Then she told me all the health effects she noticed when she stopped eating wheat.<\/p>\n

It was enough to make me curious. I read some articles online and a book about the evils of wheat. I didn\u2019t buy into everything in the book, but the weight drop in people who went wheat-free sure got my attention. The author said some people get an actual addiction to wheat and always want more. This sounded just like me. Pasta, bread, bagels, crackers. A day didn\u2019t go by where I didn\u2019t eat wheat products. (The book is called Wheat Belly<\/a><\/i>, in case you want to check it out. I don\u2019t follow his diet and I don\u2019t agree with everything he says, so don\u2019t put me in the crackpot category),<\/p>\n

So I gave it a shot.<\/p>\n

I decided to try it for two weeks. I threw out my bread and pasta and checked food labels for gluten-free products.<\/p>\n

I was really amazed at the changes! I stopped feeling like I wanted to eat all the time. I stopped thinking about food all the time. I got so much more energy, and one of the best effects was a huge increase in focus and concentration. As a writer, I aim for about 2000 words a day on my project. Some days it\u2019s easy, other days it\u2019s torture. I was able to write 5k-6k-7000 words a day over the course of a week.\u00a0 I finished a novella in four days, an absolute record for me.<\/p>\n

Even if I didn\u2019t lose any weight I was really thrilled with these other \u201cside effects.\u201d But I lost weight too. Not tons, since I\u2019m admittedly not very active due to the knee, but steadily and without much conscious thought. I lost inches too. I don\u2019t measure, but all my pants fit comfortably or are loose\u2014a huge improvement, since before the changes my largest pants were feeling very snug. Now they are floating on me. Even the nutritionist said \u201cShe\u2019s melting away!\u201d<\/p>\n

I still look more like the woman on the right, but I’m taking it slow and I can get to my goal–and much lower!<\/p>\n

\"weightloss1\"Yes, cutting wheat out meant I couldn\u2019t eat pizza or pastries, or BAGELs, which was a real hardship. But I didn\u2019t actually mind because I lost the craving for those foods once I got all the wheat out of my system. It was like I was addicted to it, and once I gave it up, I wasn\u2019t really tempted. I found a few gluten-free replacement products: brown rice pasta and gluten-free bread, but in general I would rather eat quinoa or rice or salad instead now.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m very satisfied with less food. Some days I\u2019m never hungry at all and have to force myself to eat enough protein and calories to keep my metabolism from shutting down. I have replaced the junk\/bad carbs in my diet with better quality food and I have a lot of good new food habits.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know exactly how or why it works, but it\u2019s working for me.<\/p>\n

There is still a lot of bread around the house. My housemates haven\u2019t changed their habits and they have bread, cake or cookies around. I have not at all been tempted to eat it, even when they get pizza from the best place in the US (Zachary\u2019s!).<\/p>\n

I found some great recipes on gluten-free websites and have tried GF cupcakes and blueberry cobbler, pancakes and a few other things. I don\u2019t make any of these things often, but I know if I do get a craving for cookies or red velvet cupcakes, I have some recipes. \u00a0I\u2019m gearing up to try baking my own GF bread.<\/p>\n

Next time, I\u2019ll talk about the other change I made: fiber and some tips that made it easy for me to stick to my new eating plan. If anyone has specific questions, I\u2019m happy to answer them. I\u2019ll also share some recipes and websites I\u2019ve found useful.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year I set a goal to lose 30 pounds. I didn\u2019t do anything about it for a few months, and then I started seeing a nutritionist who pretty much kicked my butt into gear. I\u2019m excited to say I\u2019m more than halfway to my goal, just about 20 pounds down now. For years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":3023,"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":[506,587,180,640],"tags":[380,641,926,558,642],"class_list":["post-3021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-post","category-feature-article","category-personal","category-weight-loss-2","tag-food","tag-gluten-free","tag-personal","tag-weight-loss","tag-wheat-free"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/scale.jpeg?fit=290%2C174","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pzLgx-MJ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}