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The Four Hour Body Four Week Update!

I can’t WAIT to share photos and stories from last week at ALT with you, but first I figured I needed to share my Four Hour Body update!

Back in December, I had a breaking point. There are many cooler terms for what happened, but the reality was that I broke. Somewhere between my desire to just be able to buy a dress off the rack at Anthropologie and watching “Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead” followed up by “Food, Inc.” I ended up deciding that it was time to follow the lead of many other people I knew that had lost 40-60lbs and buy a copy of Four Hour Body.

I won’t lie, it wasn’t easy at first. The first few days are rough, and I consider Day Four to be “hell day” for most people. I don’t know what it is, but I bet it has to do with your body just freaking out because you haven’t been giving it all those starchy carbs for four days. But by Day Three I had noticed that without gluten (wheat), my allergies that I’d been battling for what seemed like forever were pretty much gone. GONE! My inflammation was down too, and since that was a huge, huge goal of mine, it made it easier to stick with it and just plow through.

Which brings us to today. I’ve lost 10.4 lbs, and I’m pretty damn happy about that, especially since I was traveling for 8 days last week! Now I’m moving towards my next goal, to have lost 20 lbs by WPPI in a month! (Which is completely possible in my mind if I stick with it.)

In the past month, I’ve heard every excuse under the sun from other people. You all realize that *I* have been using those same excuses for about 10 years now, right? Yeah, they are bunk. Stop it. You guys are always tell me things like, “I could give up (one item), but I could NEVER give up (another item)!!!” (Fill in the blank with flour, rice, potatoes or sugar.) Look, I loooooooove things made with flour. Matter of fact, my mouth is watering just typing that sentence. A good biscuit? I’m all over it. How about some well made tortillas? Divine! But the fact is, eating flour, sugar, rice or potatoes raises your blood sugar, causing your insulin to spike, causing you to get FAT. So if you don’t want to be fat, try giving them up. 30 days. It isn’t going to kill you, I promise. It is just 30 days – you can do anything for 30 days! But STOP giving me excuses for why you couldn’t. And don’t tell me that you can’t do it if you haven’t TRIED to do it.

Carbohydrates from starchy foods are what are making you fat. It is that plain & simple. Cut them and you’ll lose weight.

Things I have learned throughout this in no particular order:

  • After Day Four (aka HELL DAY), my normal cravings for carbs stopped. Feed your body enough meat, vegetables & beans and it will stop craving starchy carbs, the cheap whores of food.
  • If – and only if – I haven’t eaten enough or it has been too long, I then crave carbs. A few cashews or almonds stops the craving, and eating makes it go away completely.
  • Any time I eat gluten, I wake up congested the next morning. Have issues with allergies or inflammation? Try it.
  • Speaking of inflammation, did you know that Type II Diabetes and High Blood Pressure are both related to inflammation?
  • I stop losing weight when I eat cheese. Every time. Skipping cheese from now on.
  • I also seem to stall when I eat fruit. I have been doing one “binge day” a week (I prefer to call it a free day) and I save potatoes, fruit and cheese for that one day a week.
  • I can lose weight while I travel if I have control of my own meals.
  • I can stay steady at my weight loss while I travel when I don’t get to choose my own meals.
  • Gluten-free options are still full of starchy-carbs. (Cheap whores!) Ok on that binge day, but not ok the other six days of the week.
  • Binge days make me gain a pound normally, but ultimately I lose even more by the end of the week following. Plus they keep away the mentality of dieting sucks.
  • Veggies are my friend. I especially love a good spinach salad.
  • I’ve tried new foods and it didn’t kill me. People! This is a big deal for me!!!
  • If I “listen” to my body and eat as much as I want of meat, beans & vegetables, I will eat enough.
  • The biggest thing I’ve learned? I CAN DO THIS.

    At least three times in the past seven years I’ve tried to lose weight on a rather big scale. My goal was to lose 5lb a month – 1.2lb a week – and keep it off. It is all documented here on the blog. Every single time, I was miserable. Dieting in the modern meaning of the word SUCKS. I’m NOT on a diet. I am eating to lose weight. But I plan to keep eating this way for a loooooooong time after I’ve lost the weight. Because it doesn’t make me miserable and cranky. Who knew?!? A diet that won’t make you miserable!

    It brings it all back to what diet is supposed to mean – what you eat. Your dietary needs. Not the four letter word that diet has become!

    I’ve bought new jeans because my old ones don’t fit. The belly fat that has been plaguing me for years is melting away. All I have done is changed what I’m eating. Meats, beans (legumes) and leafy green vegetables. Lately I wake up craving meat or a salad. My how things can change in four weeks!

    10.4 lbs. I can hardly believe it. I don’t think I ever got past losing 10-15 lbs in all the times I’ve tried to diet in the past few years, and it was always an uphill battle to get there. Try this. It works!