We Are More Than A Scale

With Rip Esselstyn's new book about to come out in a few weeks, I decided to go take another look over on the Engine 2 Diet site and catch up on some Daily Beet articles or recipes I may have missed. Boy, were there a lot of them!

One of the articles that struck me was this one by one of the Engine 2 team's coaches, Natala. Here's the beginning paragraphs:

       More than a scale

For as long as I can remember I have been on a diet. I remember going to weight loss meetings when I was in Middle School. I remember trying my first diet pills when I was 14. The agony of diets is something that I have been struggling through almost my entire life, 24 years to be exact.

When I started going plant-strong I weighed upwards of 450 pounds. Life was not good for me, every day was a struggle. I didn’t weigh 450 pounds for lack of trying different diets, I weighed that much after attempting every single diet known to man, go ahead, ask if I’ve been on a certain diet, if it is out there, I’ve tried it.

For those people who, like me, struggled for decades to lose even an ounce and cry when the scale is up even a half pound, this article is a must-read.

I'm more than twice her age and have been through this struggle for almost 60 years now. I'm really tired of the agony of weigh-in's that show no loss, even though I'm almost 150 pounds over a "healthy" weight - and HAVE been for over 40 years. I'm been officially overweight since the day after my birth! Like Natala, with each weight loss attempt more weight eventually came ON instead of going off. I really want to just stop. Like Natala (and many, many others I've read about on the McDougall and Fuhrman message boards and elsewhere) I lost quite a bit of weight when I first went on the no added fat, whole foods, plant strong food program (McDougall MWLP, in my case), and like Natala and those hundreds of others, the weight loss slowed, stalled, then stopped completely after a while. A long while. For years, even while going towards more nutrient-dense whole foods and following strict MWLP, at times experimenting with a more Rice Diet like program (Dr. McDougall's suggestion, actually) and going well under 1000 calories. I actually gained weight during that phase of my dieting life, so decided to go back on the regular McDougall program and take what I get and try ignore the scale. Of course, after 50-plus years of weight loss dieting, that hasn't happened (the ignoring part).

When you finish reading Natala's post, search the Daily Beet for other posts by her, then watch this video of her with Chef AJ and Julianna Hever cooking Thai Noodles using a Mary McDougall recipe:




It's been many years since I had such an upbeat attitude as Natala has, and I hope she retains it throughout the rest of her journey, whether she losses another ounce or not.