Orwell - Superfoods Today Cookbook: 200 Recipes of Quick & Easy, Low Fat Diet, Gluten Free Diet, Wheat Free Diet, Whole Foods Cooking, Low Carb Cooking, Weight ... plan: weight loss plan for women Book 32)

Hello,

My name is Don Orwell and my blog SuperfoodsToday.com is dedicatedto Superfoods lifestyle. I had some life changing experiences in 2009 and thatled 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 wouldnot exist without my dieting mistakes , so bear with me and you will getslowly introduced to superfoods. I wish that I had been clever enough to see myhealth disaster coming, but I wasn't, although I always thought of myself asbeing very smart. I was healthy by 2009, and I was overweight, but nothing toodangerous. At least that is what I thought. Before 2009 I was an average weightloss 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 stupidway. I wasn't exercising at all and I ate very small amounts of food. I skippedbreakfasts 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 thewinter. Initially I thought to exclude bread and potatoes; these were the onlycarbs I ate back then, zero rice and cereals. I also stopped eating anythingsweet, including fruits. I didn't read any books about dieting, I just decidedon a whim to start a diet and since it went great from the beginning, I didn'tthink that I should educate myself about dieting. So I kept eating smaller andsmaller portions, which slowed my metabolism to almost a full stop. Unfortunately, I managed to lose almost all of my muscle mass along the way. Beforethat diet I was going to the gym for 9 months and I was able to push 55-60 kgon a bench press. When I finished my diet and went back to the gym, I couldn'tpush more than 30 kilos for the first few weeks, I was so embarrassed. That wasa lesson learned the hard way. Even at 75 kilos, I had some stubborn belly fatthat I couldn't get rid of. Being overweight all of my life left a stamp on mybody. A friend who was on medical studies back then, explained that fat cellsare 85% fat and 15% is the cell nucleus and other cell material. He said thatwhen I lose fat, the fat cell still continues to exists, it's just has lessfat, but it's still there, dormant and ready to be filled with fat that bodystores when I eat too much calories. Scary to know, isn't it? Later I read on theinternet that dieting has its rhythm and that person loses the weight easiest inthe beginning and that weight loss gets slower and slower until it stops. Thatstop can be prevented if metabolism gets faster and with exercising.

I was able to keep under 100 kg weight until 2000. I went 4-5times a week to the gym, ate protein rich food and yo-yoed between 82 (180pounds) 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, Iwas back to over 250 pounds (114 kg). But I was 30 at the time and my healthwas good. Then our son was born at the end of 2002 and instead of my wife, Igained weight and went to over 120 kg (265 pounds). Then 15 months later, ourdaughter was born and my weight peaked at 275 pounds (125 kg). But, I had a newjob, much less stress at work and Atkins diet was all the rage back then in2004.

So I embarked on Atkins diet, but this time I was much betterprepared. I wasn't exercising at all, but house chores around kids got me moreor less active. I wasnt worried about muscle loss because Atkins is allprotein, right? I was a little worried about ketosis and whether my brain willwork fine, because brain feeds on glucose, which is the simplest type of thecarbs. And I started the Atkins diet. I had some terrible side effects duringthe first weeks (headache, weakness, tiredness, constipation, bad breath) andit took me a while to find some sort of food that wouldnt be boring. Atkinsdiet encourages the eating of fat cheese and fatty processed meats, but I gotbored with them after 2 weeks of eating it daily and I wanted to speed up theweight loss, so I ate low-fat protein with raw or steamed cauliflower (officialpotato replacement for low carbers). That got boring quickly too, so I educatedmyself about carbs that should be counted and fiber that should not be countedand started to eat lots of fiber loaded veggies with lean protein such asboiled eggs, fish, lean pork and chicken, stir fried with broccoli or Chinesecabbage, spinach and celery. For breakfast I eat eggs and every second dayeither low-fat cottage cheese or low-fat yogurt with cucumbers and/or celery. Ieven have bought ketone test strips and was happily peeing on them every fewdays in hope that I'm still in ketosis. And the weight melted away reallyquickly. After 4-5 months I have lost 30-35 kilos again and I was at 90 kg (200pounds) and I was really satisfied with the results. I started to preach Atkinsdiet and turned myself into a low carb Taliban, proclaiming sugar and carbs asevil 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 3years, my job got stressful and I went to old eating habits and kilos startedto creep up again. And before I knew what was happening, my kids told me that Iwas fat in summer 2008 and end of February 2009, my blood tests came back. Iwas in the middle of my future diet engineering, but the results diverted them.