These pictures are of me. The main picture was taken in 1994 and the other in 2021 at my book launch.
I love food! Eating and cooking are some of my favourite things to do in life. Food is such an important part of me, and I eat a lot of it! Despite my love of eating, I have lost over 100kg and I am still losing weight. How is this so? Contrary to popular belief, limiting what goes in our mouth and increasing what we do does not always result in weight loss. But what does?
The secret to my weight loss has been to reduce inflammation in my body as this can cause an increase in weight. When the body perceives harm through infections, injuries, and toxins the immune system responds. This response is the body’s way of fighting the harm and healing itself. When the inflammation is chronic the body remains on alarm at a low level. We will feel flu-like symptoms such as fatigue body pain, depression or anxiety, gut discomfort or pain, weight loss or gain and infections.
From childhood I had suffered from most of these symptoms, the most obvious being obesity at an early age. I now know that inflammation was the issue behind this. Contributing to this inflammation was stress in my home life, toxins from pesticides and my unhealthy food intake.
When I changed my diet, reduced the toxins, and eliminated from my life those things causing me psychological stress, I discovered how unwell I had been feeling. The joint pain and stiffness, fatigue and aching I had suffered with for so long vanished and I felt much better emotionally. Along with reducing inflammation, feeling better meant I had more energy to do the things I enjoyed in life such as walking and gardening. I found a new zest for life.
Changing my diet was initially hard, but over time it became part of my lifestyle and maintaining it was easy. Initially I reduced my intake of high sugar and fat foods such as processed pastries, cakes, and biscuits. Then I replaced them with whole foods such as fruit and vegetables. As I felt better, I could recognise when my body was reacting to a particular food and eliminated this from my diet. But I still desired sweet food, so I taught myself how to create recipes which were low GI and filled this desire. These I share in these blog posts.
Do you need help changing your diet? Please contact me for a chat.
In love, Jenny
