For the past 8 years of my life I have been trying to lose weight, drinking shakes and slimming teas, spending big bucks on diet pills and even prescription medicines. Needless to say, I’ve never succeeded in reducing my weight to lower than 68KGs.
Throughout those 8 years I bounced back and forth between "sensible" dieting and throwing caution into the wind by buying weight-loss ‘aids’ that I mentioned above. I would also alternate between exercising religiously and giving Ms Couch Potato herself a run for her money.
For the ‘sensible’ dieting and workout parts I gathered information from books on the subject, devouring the knowledge and theoretical parts but finding it burdensome and unable to practice it in real life. For one thing everything was so restrictive. Everything has to be low fat, whole grain, sugar-free, and light for it to be ‘healthy’.
Which begs the question if full cream milk for example is bad for us, why does it come out of the cow with that particular content of fats, vitamins and minerals in it? If fats and sugar are so bad, why is it naturally present in nuts and fruits respectively? If rice is so bad for us, why does it even exist on this Earth?
Deep in my heart I knew that all natural food sources are here for a reason and that no food groups should be excluded from our diets. However, desperation always did make me succumb to short bouts of totally ditching rice (only to eat it in two fold 3 to 4 days later).
This kind of yoyo dieting is the norm for me but after years of going through the same happiness and disappointments of losing and gaining weight, I was ready to quit and just be happy fat.
Then I discovered a book entitled ‘French Women Don’t Get Fat’ and I seriously feel like it is God-sent. This book doesn’t necessarily focus on healthy eating as we know it to be as much as balanced eating towards achieving weight-loss and wellness. It doesn’t include any charts of nutrient or calories, instead it puts enormous emphasis on eating for pleasure.
Despite being a bit distracted and ‘story-telling’-like at times, it’s still packed with practical and useful tips in pleasurable eating towards weight-loss without feeling deprived. It’s so good that I am thinking of sharing with all of you what I learn from this book in bite-sized portions.
I’m doing this simply because I want all of us to throw away our wonky ideas that has been burned into our minds of what and how weight-loss is supposed to be. I know so many girls who throw up after a meal, refuse to eat despite getting daily migraines and painful gastric attacks and taking laxatives or inflicting diarrhea upon themselves just to see the numbers on the scale go down.
Please, please, please enough with the body torture already! Being thin is not worth it at all if it’s at the expense of your health. Cliche as it may sound, our body IS a temple and we should respect it and treat it well.
So are you ready to "French-fy" your eating habits?
