Eat When Hungry
TRANSFORM SHADOWS
HEalth, wellness, and weight loss
Transform Shadows comes out of my personal weight loss journey and what I have learned as an educator about transformational learning. When I decided to apply what I knew to myself, I lost half my weight and gained my health.
For years, I knew what I needed to do to lose weight. However, knowing and doing were two different things, and I was never able to act in my own best interests.
The shadows of my failure weighed heavily on my body, mind, and life. I did not hate myself, but I hated how I felt. Yet, I held on to hope, starting and failing countless times.
My success has taken many failures, deep education, uprooting misinformation, focused determination, and the ongoing use of many strategies to center health, wellness, and weight maintenance.
This has been a complex and empowering journey. Because my story and learning may help others, I am sharing it to do the following:
Show the mental processes that I have used to lose weight and transform myself.
Explain the positive impact that a plant-based lifestyle has had in bringing my healthy self out of the shadows.
Encourage others to transform their own shadows using personal reflection and realistic action steps to meet personal goals.
This information can help you transform your own shadows — whether you are looking to lose weight or to make other positive around health and wellness in your life.
Transforming the Heavy shadow of Weight in My Life
Losing weight, gaining Freedom
I was not broken, and I am not fixed.
In 2020, I decided I was going to lose my weight once and for all and that I would fight my way through the challenges to finally take care of this problem in my life.
I liked myself, but I did not like how I felt. I wanted to feel and be the healthiest version of myself, from the inside out. And, that meant losing weight. Half of it.
The statistics for sustaining weight loss are dismal. Approximately 97% of people who lose weight do not sustain the weight loss. I lived that reality for decades. Being in the 3% who succeed over time became my mantra.
I have found freedom in a complex and empowering journey. At the heart of this journey was educating myself and uprooting misinformation around food, weight, and health.
One of the most liberating parts of this journey was letting go of the idea that some deep-seated psychological problem caused my weight problem.
Understanding the root causes of obesity has been foundational to losing and sustaining weight loss. These causes are deeply rooted in the science of human survival, genetics, food addiction, processed foods, nutrition, and health.
The mental journey has been as important as the foods I eat. I have had to center myself in this science, face my strengths and weaknesses, and plan for my successes and failures.
While the food I eat has changed throughout my journey, the mental processes have stayed consistent as I have learned and adjusted my eating.
There is no magic answer, but the answer feels like magic. And, that makes a successful path much easier to follow in a world designed for failure.
Sharing My Story
Finding transformative hope
My own story is only one of many — living stories of real people transformed by the power of unprocessed plants to treat food addiction, reverse lifestyle diseases, promote healing, strengthen the immune system, and impact aging. These stories have inspired me, and I share my story to help others.
Our personal stories counteract some of the misinformation about weight, weight loss, nutrition, exercise, and health that permeate mainstream society. This misinformation often downplays or ignores the dangers of supernormal processed foods — foods that are designed for maximum sales, not for health.
The problem is not me. The problem has never been me. The problem is supernormal foods that trigger food addiction and disordered eating patterns — in some of us more than others. The more I learn, the more I see that these addictive foods are the undoing of many of us — no matter what our weights.
Understanding the science of the human body and knowing my own body have given me the knowledge to act in my own best interest. I am finally the person I have always wanted to be in relation to my weight.
Even so, I still live in this society, surrounded by the foods that are my undoing. At half my weight, I fight many of the same battles that I fought when morbidly obese. Some days, the war within me still rages deeply.
Most days, though, feelings of freedom, hope, and well being fill me in ways that I never thought possible. Eating whole plants has provided me hope for long-term success. And, the health benefits extend well beyond weight.
An educator at heart, I want others to find this same personal empowerment, hope, freedom, and health. These provide the foundation of why I am sharing my story and why I am building Transform Shadows as an educational resource.
let’s create a plan that works for you
Through my personalized coaching, I’ll work alongside you to develop an integrated plan to lose weight.