I’ve been asked to expand on the topic of what foods are best for weight loss, or what eating style helps people lose weight. I’m sure that many of you have strong opinions and testimonies to share around this topic. I’ll start by sharing my story.

When I originally started to research healthy food, it was initially driven from the desire to lose weight. After hitting a brick wall with all the contradicting information, I became frustrated and gave my research a rest for a while. However, during the course of the process, I had learned a lot about food and health, in general. I decided to change my focus from searching for a way to lose weight to learning how to have a healthy diet that was part of my lifestyle and not the latest diet fad. I took the point of view that I was no longer going to worry about weight and accept myself for how I looked. I would instead change my eating patterns to provide the correct nutrients with the intent to reverse damage from years of eating poorly. I poured over books explaining what to eat to clean out plaque from arteries, cancer prevention, strong gut (intestines), energy and to help conquer anxiety and depression.

I started this journey by introducing green smoothies into my eating routine and over time, found myself practicing a plant based eating lifestyle. During this time, I found, to my surprise, that the weight was literally melting away! I was shocked and thrilled as this was not expected nor my goal. I was 49 years young when I had this experience. I maintained this lifestyle for less than a year and found that I reverted to what is now known as a flexitarian. I was able to still maintain my weight as a flexitarian as long as I didn’t consume too much of certain foods. The whole point was to develop and maintain an eating style, not a diet.

I believe strongly in a plant based diet but have talked to some vegan’s that shared stories of getting sick after being meatless for so many years. I watched one of the Regina Meredith episodes that had a lifelong vegan that explained that having clean, red meat a couple times a year was healthy. But that is a topic for another blog.

Please share what is your eating style and have you seen results? I’ve seen amazing results when eating purely a whole food, plant-based eating lifestyle. My blood work has been excellent and I’m going strong at 50 with no medications.