Details Details!

-By Mindy Irish

Walking through the aisles of the grocery store is much like a walk down memory lane.  "I remember when I ate food x and I weighed this much and felt like this....."  Next aisle.  "Oh and there's that one item.  Boy it took me months to figure that one out!"  Cart keeps rolling.  Next please!

It took me a long time to realize that the foods I ate were responsible for a very high percentage of the way I looked, acted, and felt on any given day.

I didn't wake up to figure it all out one sunny morning.  It took a lot of time.  It took food journals, a process of elimination, online research, and trial and error to find what foods really worked for me and which ones were causing me to hit three and seven-month long plateaus and therefore causing me to keep on the last 10 unwanted pounds. 

For me I had to cut out some larger, popular staples to get results.  Additionally, I focused on the daily dips of almond butter, to name one example.  Really it wasn't the almond butter (OK, it was), but rather the fact that I took no portion control, no absolute measure of how much I was eating at a time.  It's just a dip....who saw it anyways?  Love the line that "what we eat in private shows up in public!"

I also learned to cut out higher glycemic "healthier foods" such as certain fruits and vegetables that my body started processing like carbohydrates and causing higher insulin spikes (aka fat storage!).  Cut them out, upped the lower glycemic vegetable intake, and lost the last few difficult pounds.  Details details!  Love that D word!

Each of us has to make that call over what we will and will not eat.  However, regardless of what it is, what you eat today may not be what you eat tomorrow or the next few months because you will soon realize the items you eat on a daily or weekly basis, not the occasional treats, are really the ones that make the difference in your journey!  Back to that D word....details details, (difference difference!)