Read an Excerpt
The Weight is Over
Your Journey to Health, Happiness, and Weight Loss
By Angela D. Enos AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2016 Angela D. Enos
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5246-5053-7
CHAPTER 1
Let Me Take You on a Journey
I am always willing to learn new things and improve myself. Each day I strive to be a better person — healthier, kinder, more compassionate, and more understanding. If I had learned what I am about to write by education only, I would stand at the beginning of a road and tell you that you are about to take a journey that I have read about. I would give you a few pointers that I had studied, and I would send you on your way and tell you it will be okay and you should be successful. That is not the intent of this book. I have walked down this road, and experienced the bumps and the straightaways, and I am excited to say I have found success and am eager to continue on this journey. Don't look at this book as more advice on how to eat, how to exercise, how to count calories and basically suffer as you deprive yourself. I want this book to be your friend, to encourage you, and to become a part of your life. I want your journey through this book to bring you to success in finding your new life, the new you. Allow me to be your encourager and your friend, allow me to continue my journey with you.
We begin our journey at a crossroad. There are several paths ahead of us. I hope you choose to take the path to healthy living and weight loss, the path to a long, healthy life. Along the road, there are going to be choices. I will present these choices to you and you will decide when you are ready to embrace them and apply them to your life.
I don't want your trip to be technical or rigid. I want it to be fun, something you are excited about, something that makes you happy. I don't want you to count carbs or use a special fork or spoon or a special plate that tells you how many fatty foods or vegetables to put on your plate. I don't know if I am appalled or humored when I see the titles of some of the diet books out there and hear their theories. To me it seems like trickery and lies, and it sets you up for failure. There is no quick fix. You can't start counting fast carbs and slow carbs, lose 14 pounds in two weeks and call that success. That's not a lifestyle; that is deception. I want to empower you to make the right decisions, enjoy taking control of your life and your health, and love your new life and the new you! You can do it. It's exciting and fun and someday you will be telling someone about your journey and asking them to walk down the road with you because the rewards are so great. I am excited for you to join me on the road to health and wellness and enjoy every step we take together. Clear your mind of all the knowledge and information you have received in the past, and let's simplify this process to make it fun and rewarding. If this procedure is not fun and rewarding, you won't stick with it. If our journey is stern and demanding, you will want to quit. If it is laborious or tiresome, you will want to give up. Let's make this a fun and rewarding commitment for the rest of our lives.
My Journey
I'm going to admit something that you will not like hearing ... I've been thin all of my life. Before you jump to any conclusions based on that comment, let me explain. That's not to say that I haven't dieted my entire life or that I haven't struggled with weight issues. I am a professional dieter. I have successfully dieted my entire life. I don't even consider it a diet, it's a lifestyle. It's a way of living that helps me maintain optimal health, fitness, and a healthy weight. I'm not a doctor who has devised some book smart plan. I am an actual person who, since the age of 20, has maintained her weight by establishing a few sound principles for eating, and in recent years, has learned the benefit of not only being thin, but being healthy.
I came into this world at a whopping nine pounds, seven ounces. I was not a small baby. I was fat. As a baby, my parents had to water down my formula because I was overweight. I was raised in a rural community by two obese parents who had no concern for a healthy lifestyle. My town had a strong German background and we ate a lot of heavy foods. I was not instructed or taught how to eat healthy. One thing that probably aided in saving me from being overweight in my early years was the fact that our town was so small that we didn't have any fast food restaurants. We didn't eat McDonalds or Burger King. We didn't eat fast food and rarely ate processed food. Even though my parents didn't especially care about eating healthy, I was raised on fresh meats, potatoes, and vegetables. Also, as with most of us, I was active enough in my teenage years to eat pretty much anything I wanted, and I would burn it off. It was fairly easy to stay thin.
Four years after high school, I got married and had four children (in three and one-half years), which included twins. In my twenties, I, like other women who have had children, had to lose the extra pounds after each baby was born. After each childbirth, I would return to my normal diet and exercise regimen to take off those extra "baby" pounds. I have followed my eating principles for my entire life. As I approached the 50-year mark, I began experiencing the slowing down of my metabolism, the deterioration of my muscles, and a mid-section that seemed to want to bulge over the top of my jeans no matter how many sit-ups I performed each day. Anyone around me would attest that I have always been conscious of the amount of food that I put into my body and managed to stay thin my entire life. However, in recent years I have learned the importance and the joy of eating healthy and including exercise in my daily life. I went from being somewhat healthy and thin to becoming healthy, fit, and feeling great! Even though my hair may be graying (no one will ever know) and I may be getting a few wrinkles, my muscles are bigger and stronger, my metabolism is cranked, and I have more energy than I did a few years ago. I am determined to stay healthy, strong, and lean.
Let's take a look at my walk down the path to good habits, where it began and how it progressed. I was married for 18 years and had four beautiful and wonderful children. After 18 years of struggling to make our marriage work, my husband and I decided to amicably end it and try to find the happiness we both deserved. I found happiness just a short time later when I met the love of my life. My new love and I had six wonderful years together, including an engagement. Sadly, small problems started to add up to bigger problems and we decided to break up. We were both being stubborn and I knew at the time that the break up was a mistake, but I didn't know how to fix the relationship. I knew in my heart that we would both be miserable, yet we couldn't find a point of reconciliation.
I was now a 48-year-old single mother of four children, ages 20, 20, 22, and 24, most of whom were in college. I was at a sad and lonely place in life. I was working a stressful job throughout the day and coming home to an empty house at night. I missed my fiancé more than words could say and cried for nine months straight. I eventually filled that emptiness with drinking too many gin and tonics and smoking too many cigarettes each night. I was thin when the breakup occurred, but now I was even thinner. Perhaps if you had looked at me at this point in my life you would think I was in good shape but I knew better: being thin doesn't mean you are healthy. I was stressed, eating too little, drinking too much and smoking too much. I knew I was not in a good place and I needed to come to a crossroad and start down a new path. This new path is the path I would like you to go down with me. This new path is a process of good decisions that lead to beneficial changes in my life. That's what I'm talking about: making good changes to your life, but with ease. This is not supposed to be difficult; it is a walk, a journey in which you decide what steps you want to take one at a time. I'm going to make suggestions, and you have to decide when and how you want to implement them. It's a gradual process.
I took a look in the mirror and realized that I was beginning to show the signs of aging. My skin was sagging and beginning to wrinkle. I decided the first step I would take on this new journey was to go to the gym and start lifting weights. I was determined to fill out my sagging skin with muscle and get my body looking younger. In my late teens and early 20s I did quite a bit of lifting weights and body sculpting but upon the arrival of my children, I hadn't lifted a weight in quite some time. An added benefit from going to the gym would be that I wouldn't have so much alone time at night and might even make a few new friends.
I found a gym near my apartment, and one night after work I skeptically entered in an attempt to become a member. Was this first step difficult? Yes! I was scared. It's tough to step out and try something in a new arena when you don't know anyone. It's tough to walk into a new gym and feel a bit lost, not knowing where any machines are located, not knowing what my routine would be, not even sure what I should be wearing-in sum-fearing that I might look stupid. It was difficult to step out and try this new experience but I had to do it! What if body building became my new love? What if it replaced gin? What if it replaced smoking? What if I actually made some friends at the gym? It was a chance I had to take.
I scheduled a meeting with a trainer and began working out. If I went to the gym after work, it meant I was not at home alone each evening for endless hours, wallowing in self-pity while drinking and smoking.
I was soon pleased with the changes that were occurring. My body was filling out, getting muscular, and looking much better-and younger! I was addicted and had found my new love.
My walk down a new path had begun. My new love for the gym started to make other things in my life feel "wrong." One step at a time I started to make good decisions in other areas of my life. All of a sudden, it felt wrong to go to the gym and then come home and have a cigarette, or two, or three. Also, I needed to start to eat more protein. I needed to feed my body the right nutrients so it was satisfied and my muscles would grow. I realized that I now had to start changing other areas in my life so they would line up with my workouts at the gym. I was really excited about my new body and the results I was seeing; I wanted to keep moving in that direction. My walk down this new path was exciting and required more good decisions from me. I wanted to make other positive changes in my life. I was ready to "go all in." I wanted to get even healthier and look even better!
Although I have always been a pretty healthy eater, I really started to think about everything that I put in my mouth and whether or not my body needed it and what nutritional value my body was gaining from it. Your decisions at this point in your journey may be different from mine. I will give you information and options so you can make good choices. At this point it seem appropriate for me to eliminate processed food, white flour, red meat, and fried foods from my diet. I started looking for vegetarian recipes and high protein meals. I got addicted to reading labels. I was getting in tune with what my body really needed to become healthy, and I wanted to keep it fine-tuned.
I smoked for 12 years in my youth and quit when I was 28. I was smoke free for 13 years and then started smoking again in my mid-40s. I know, that was a stupid thing to do. I tried to quit every other month, but I never succeeded. Why? Because I loved smoking. Smoking helped me keep my weight down, and it relaxed me. On the other hand, I thought it was a dirty, stinky habit, and extremely unhealthy, but I couldn't quit. Now I was working out and eating healthy, and I smoked! Which one of these doesn't fit the equation? I avoided doing much cardio at the gym because I seemed to get winded quickly.
On many occasions, for many years, I tried to quit smoking. I knew smoking wasn't a smart thing to do. I knew it wasn't good for me but every time I tried to quit, I failed. This attempt to quit was different. This time I had come to a point where smoking no longer fit my lifestyle and I just couldn't justify it anymore, there were no more excuses as to why I shouldn't quit. I had to quit — I actually wanted to quit. Because I fell in love with working out, eating right, and getting healthy, I was losing my love for smoking. I actually came to a point where I was able to quit because I wanted to find a new love. Smoking was my greatest addiction and I had conquered that addiction. There is much more to my story about how I actually quit and have remained an ex-smoker to date. I don't want to spend time explaining my cessation process, that is another book I would like to write to help people. Let me say that my smoking cessation was a great journey, and I am still proud of myself for accomplishing it. You too will feel this pride for yourself when you reach your goal of getting rid of something in your life that you just can't justify anymore, something you've run out of excuses to support. You will find a new love!
CHAPTER 2
Types of Eating
Emotional Eating
It's not just what you are eating. It's what is eating you. For some of us eating is as much an emotional issue as a physical issue. We eat because we are stressed, we are stuffing emotions, we are sad, alone or bored. Maybe you were raised in a family where everyone ate all the time, or you were raised on unhealthy foods. Maybe these are the habits of the home where you currently reside.
We may be eating to make us happy, but in reality the eating is making us obese, unhealthy and lethargic. Emotional eating diminishes our quality of life. If we are eating because we are physically hungry, we will experience the urge to eat coming on gradually. Thus, we will be hungry for foods that our body truly needs for nutrition and energy, we will limit our food intake to what our body really needs, and we will not feel guilty when we are finished eating.
Emotional eating is a sudden urge, it is comprised of comfort foods that are almost always fatty and sugary, and leads to stuffing ourselves, which leads to feelings of guilt. These feelings of guilt often lead to more overeating and more unhappiness. Emotional eating is real. It is difficult to overcome, but gradually you can overcome this bad habit. As we decide what we want to change first on our path to healthy living and weight loss, take into consideration the events, circumstances, or people that trigger our emotional eating. Find other ways to feed those feelings.
Remember, I was in an emotional and lonely period of my life when I began to change. I wasn't at the top of my game, I was at the bottom. I knew that having too much time alone was enabling me to smoke and drink too much. I needed to fill my lonely time with something positive. What causes your emotional eating or creates the timeframes where you overeat? Is your job stressful? Do you use food as your comfort when a problem occurs? Are your family's habits causing you to overeat? Are you bored?
This book is designed to help you make better choices about your eating habits, but don't overlook the fact that you might have to make other changes in your life that do not involve food. You need to find your trigger points and replace them with something healthy or eliminate your trigger points completely. For instance, if your job is stressful, perhaps you need to take a walk each day at work to clear your mind and relieve your stress instead of sitting at your desk and eating your stress away. If you are easily upset by a particular circumstance or person, it may be time to deal with that situation and improve it. If you eat because you are lonely, perhaps you need to find something to get you out of the house (even for an hour a day) and into a healthy environment where you can meet new people.
Celebration Eating
Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Memorial Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. What do all these days have in common? We celebrate these events with food.
I got a promotion, I got engaged, our team won, I got an "A" on the test, my son just graduated from High School, my daughter just graduated from college. It's my birthday! Again, we celebrate these events with food (and sometimes alcohol).
We should eat for nutrition and energy. We should not eat to celebrate or reward ourselves. Using food as a reward or as part of a celebration typically leads to overeating. It's Thanksgiving, so we stuff ourselves. It's Christmas, and we always bake cookies, eat cookies, and gain five pounds. It's my birthday, and I always have a triple-layer chocolate cake. We do all of this without giving a thought to the fact that we are rewarding ourselves with food-coupled with using food as the central focus of our celebration.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Weight is Over by Angela D. Enos. Copyright © 2016 Angela D. Enos. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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