Orwell - Superfoods Soups & Stews: Over 70: Quick & Easy Gluten Free Low Cholesterol Whole Foods Soups & Stews Recipes full of Antioxidants & Phytochemicals for... & Energy Boost

Hello,

My name is Don Orwell and my blog SuperfoodsToday.com is dedicated to Superfoods lifestyle. I had some life changing experiences in 2009 and that led me to start rethinking my eating habits and my current lifestyle. Basically, I got scared to death and that moved me. My blog and this book would not exist without my dieting mistakes , so bear with me and you will get slowly introduced to superfoods. I wish that I had been clever enough to see my health disaster coming, but I wasn't, although I always thought of myself as being very smart. I was healthy by 2009, and I was overweight, but nothing too dangerous. At least that is what I thought. Before 2009 I was an average weight loss yo-yoer, with 2 highlights to brag of. In 1994 I managed to lose 35 kilos (75 pounds) in less than a year. I came down from 120 kg (265 pounds) to 75 kg (165 pounds). When I think of it now, I know that I did it in a very stupid way. I wasn't exercising at all and I ate very small amounts of food. I skipped breakfasts and ate some salads with some low-fat protein for lunch and dinner. I remember that I ate tomato and cucumbers in the summer and sauerkraut in the winter. Initially I thought to exclude bread and potatoes; these were the only carbs I ate back then, zero rice and cereals. I also stopped eating anything sweet, including fruits. I didn't read any books about dieting, I just decided on a whim to start a diet and since it went great from the beginning, I didn't think that I should educate myself about dieting. So I kept eating smaller and smaller portions, which slowed my metabolism to almost a full stop. Unfortunately, I managed to lose almost all of my muscle mass along the way. Before that diet I was going to the gym for 9 months and I was able to push 55-60 kg on a bench press. When I finished my diet and went back to the gym, I couldn't push more than 30 kilos for the first few weeks, I was so embarrassed. That was a lesson learned the hard way. Even at 75 kilos, I had some stubborn belly fat that I couldn't get rid of. Being overweight all of my life left a stamp on my body. A friend who was on medical studies back then, explained that fat cells are 85% fat and 15% is the cell nucleus and other cell material. He said that when I lose fat, the fat cell still continues to exists, it's just has less fat, but it's still there, dormant and ready to be filled with fat that body stores when I eat too much calories. Scary to know, isn't it? Later I read on the internet that dieting has its rhythm and that person loses the weight easiest in the beginning and that weight loss gets slower and slower until it stops. That stop can be prevented if metabolism gets faster and with exercising.

I was able to keep under 100 kg weight until 2000. I went 4-5 times a week to the gym, ate protein rich food and yo-yoed between 82 (180 pounds) and 94 kilos (207 pounds). Then, in February 2000, I switched jobs, life got more stressful and I stopped going to the gym. And within a year, I was back to over 250 pounds (114 kg). But I was 30 at the time and my health was good. Then our son was born at the end of 2002 and instead of my wife, I gained weight and went to over 120 kg (265 pounds). Then 15 months later, our daughter was born and my weight peaked at 275 pounds (125 kg). But, I had a new job, much less stress at work and Atkins diet was all the rage back then in 2004.

So I embarked on Atkins diet, but this time I was much better prepared. I wasn't exercising at all, but house chores around kids got me more or less active. I wasnt worried about muscle loss because Atkins is all protein, right? I was a little worried about ketosis and whether my brain will work fine, because brain feeds on glucose, which is the simplest type of the carbs. And I started the Atkins diet. I had some terrible side effects during the first weeks (headache, weakness, tiredness, constipation, bad breath) and it took me a while to find some sort of food that wouldnt be boring. Atkins diet encourages the eating of fat cheese and fatty processed meats, but I got bored with them after 2 weeks of eating it daily and I wanted to speed up the weight loss, so I ate low-fat protein with raw or steamed cauliflower (official potato replacement for low carbers). That got boring quickly too, so I educated myself about carbs that should be counted and fiber that should not be counted and started to eat lots of fiber loaded veggies with lean protein such as boiled eggs, fish, lean pork and chicken, stir fried with broccoli or Chinese cabbage, spinach and celery. For breakfast I eat eggs and every second day either low-fat cottage cheese or low-fat yogurt with cucumbers and/or celery. I even have bought ketone test strips and was happily peeing on them every few days in hope that I'm still in ketosis. And the weight melted away really quickly. After 4-5 months I have lost 30-35 kilos again and I was at 90 kg (200 pounds) and I was really satisfied with the results. I started to preach Atkins diet and turned myself into a low carb Taliban, proclaiming sugar and carbs as evil things. And I was able to keep my weight under 100 kg for almost 3 years, just because I ate low carb office lunch (fiber salad and protein). But after 3 years, my job got stressful and I went to old eating habits and kilos started to creep up again. And before I knew what was happening, my kids told me that I was fat in summer 2008 and end of February 2009, my blood tests came back. I was in the middle of my future diet engineering, but the results diverted them.