A few of you have asked to see more of my before/after weight loss photos, and I made a promise earlier this year that I would share more, as well as my story. Today I discovered that I now fit into my littlest sisters size 10 jeans (pictured below!), and yesterday I reached a HUGE 37kg lost since starting Skinnymixers – so I thought that there was no time like the present 🙂 While I don’t see myself as the ‘inspirational’ or ‘motivational’ type, so many of you have reached out over the past two years to share that I have contributed towards better health, weight loss and a happy home that I have come to the realisation that sometimes it’s not the stereotypical inspirational types that people find motivating, but rather everyday people like me.
Over the past year I have gained and lost the same 5kg probably 20 times, had complete melt downs over my weight and have denied myself my health by choosing to ignore my body when it was telling me that I wasn’t treating it right… but most of all, I have taken some huge steps towards fixing ME. I still don’t have it all figured out and I have no delusions that it’ll be an easy ride from here either. I still have around 10kg to lose to have a healthy amount of fat for my body type and I really, REALLY need to figure out how the hell to enjoy exercise and make it part of my daily (not yearly) routine. It’ll take a miracle to fix that one.
I know many of you will ask ‘how’, and honestly there isn’t any one answer. It’s been a lot of little things combined and I firmly believe that there isn’t a one size fits all to weight loss like many of the peddlers will have you believe. So while I will run through what I have done, what it boils down to is a) reducing my portion sizes, b) knowledge, c) sheer willpower and d) starting a Healthy Thermomix Recipes facebook group where 100,000 people watch what I eat LOL. While not everyone can manage, I believe that the other 3 things apply to any sort of diet or lifestyle choices we make.
I have lost the bulk of my weight by doing the Changing Habits ‘4 phase fat elimination protocol’. You can read more about it over on the changing habits website. Essentially, it’s a version of the HCG protocol which is centred on extremely rapid weight loss by eliminating foods which are inflammatory from your diet. It’s often used as a way of figuring out which foods might be causing health expressions like eczema and migraines too. The protocol is what helped me figure out my portion sizes. It’s really bloody hard for the first 5 days and 98% of my friends and family who have decided to give it a go because they’ve seen how great it worked for me can’t hack it. It’s not because they don’t want it bad enough, it’s because it isn’t the option for them. While many people might look at this as a failure, I see it as a positive thing – they gave it a go, and they now have one less ‘diet’ to try… which means they’re one step closer to finding the ‘one’.
As I mentioned, the protocol teaches you which foods your body does/doesn’t tolerate… which is where the willpower comes into it for me. Having this knowledge has been SO powerful for me in sustaining my weight loss. I bet there are a few judgemental know it all’s out there no doubt thinking ‘well of course eating hungry jacks is bad for you and that’s why you were fat’ – but what about raw tomato? What about cauliflower? These foods that people think are healthy and good for you, my body really doesn’t like. Having the knowledge of what will happen if I eat a raw tomato salad means that I can make an informed choice about it.
Before I tried the protocol, I was what people call ‘paleo’ now, and I had a generally healthy diet… I was just eating too much and some of the foods I was eating just weren’t working for me. I had lost about 10kg just by making the switch to grain free/dairy free/refined sugar free, but I had plateaued. I tried a few different things like weight watchers/calorie counting – all with very limited, unsustained success. Then I had this brilliant idea to start a healthy thermomix recipe and lifestyle group, and the rest (including the 37kg) is history.
People sometimes ask why I coined the name ‘Skinnymixers’ when my recipes aren’t even ‘healthy’ – I challenge those people to broaden their perspective on what ‘healthy’ is, and understand that their view of ‘healthy’ might not necessarily work for someone else. I will continue to release recipes that help me in my weight loss efforts, but that also fit inside the gigantic diet spectrum – all the way from low calorie to high fat.
I hope that sharing a little bit of my story has helped fill in a bit of history for those of you who haven’t been following my group or blog since day 1. If I’ve inspired anybody to make even one small change towards health, then perhaps the fear and shame associated with sharing photos like this, that no one else has seen before, becomes irrelevant.
Love Nik xx
Please note: http://changinghabits.skinnymixers.com is my affiliate page, although I am a new affiliate of this program, I have used it with great success for over a year before becoming an affiliate.