I have always had a tendency to gain weight easily. At the age of 25, after an extremely complex adolescence, I forced myself to first rebalance my diet. At the time, I managed to lose 40 kilos in 10 months.
And then I had four children… Of course, with the pregnancies, I gained weight. I let myself go, stopped taking care of myself and gained about 80 kilos in the space of 15 years.
I weighed 135 kilos. I was morbidly obese. On a daily basis, I was handicapped: I had difficulty walking (even though I love walking!), I had difficulty standing for more than five minutes (I had pain in my lower back when I did the dishes) and I struggled to put on my shoes (because of my stomach). It was no longer livable!
Not forgetting my health problems… My obesity triggered high blood pressure and I almost had a stroke. My doctor then suggested I have a sleeve gastrectomy. I refused because the procedure scared me. I told him : “I am capable of losing weight on my own, let me do it“. This is where I began a second dietary rebalancing.
Daily sport and a balanced diet (with pleasure breaks)
First, I took two months to prepare myself psychologically to lose weight. I set a start date for myself and, every day, I repeated it to myself, like an auto-suggestion. I really put myself in a “weight loss” mindset. On September 4, 2017, I began my dietary rebalancing, the program of which is:
- Daily physical activity
I forced myself to start walking again, despite the pain and shortness of breath. At the beginning it was very difficult. I could only walk 15 minutes a day. But after about 7-8 months, through perseverance, I managed to walk for an hour and a half every day. In addition, I did a little core training and an exercise bike.
- Three (well-balanced) meals per day
Every day I made breakfast, lunch and dinner. Breakfast was my “pleasure” meal: in addition to my hot drink, I ate toast with honey, butter and/or jam. On the other hand, I stopped eating pastries and considerably reduced Nutella!
For lunch and dinner, I made sure to have on my plate a portion of starchy foods, a portion of vegetables, a portion of protein, a dairy product and a fruit. I was careful not to use the same “category” of food twice: for example, if my dish was based on cheese, I did not have cheese before dessert.
- One cheat meal per week
Once a week, I treated myself to a “cheat meal”: it could be a pizza, a burger… The idea was to treat myself without counting the calories. Excellent for morale!
- Superfoods
As part of my dietary rebalancing, I discovered lots of interesting foods in the supermarket: for example, oat flakes (which I now use to make an apricot and blueberry clafoutis, replacing half of the flour with oatmeal), chia seeds (useful to combat intestinal problems linked to a change in diet – constipation, in particular), vegetable yogurts (tasty and very low in calories) and stevia (for sweeten your morning coffee!).
- A concrete motivation
I was really determined to lose weight, and I think my two months of “mental preparation” helped. The encouragement of my loved ones also supported me throughout my dietary rebalancing; I also shared my results on social media with my growing community.
Thanks to my efforts, my discipline and my perseverance, I managed to lose 58 kilos in 18 months. Today, I share my advice with my followers on Facebook and through several books… If I did it, you can too!
Thanks to Carine, founder of The little dishes of the marquiseand author of In the kitchen with the Marquise!
