The Diet Journey: a 15 year recap!

What has been my definition of a diet and how has that changed over the years?

In this post I am exploring my view on diets and how my perception of them was formed and how that has changed significantly over the course of the last 15 plus years! Are you ready? My guess is that there are going to be many of you who this resonates with, at least a little. I talk about how my parents played an integral part in the relationship that we form around food, how the educational system has let us down a little and how I really JUST in the last 4 years have found eating recommendations that actually made sense, were truly doable and found success with.

Me and my Mom in 2006.

It All Started With Mom:

I usually try to make sure I speak positively about my mom, because I lost her to pancreatic cancer when I was seventeen years old and I like to remember her fondly and in a positive light. And I do. My mom was an amazing person, wonderful example in all things, except nutrition. But I have come to the realization, when looking back on my interpretation of what a healthy diet and lifestyle looked like, that I was wrong. And so was my mom. Growing up, my mom and I would constantly be looking at the magazines in the grocery store checkout for the latest fad diet that was helping people lose that weight! We tried a new one fairly often. I can think of at least four off the top of my head, so I know it was fairly regular.

Now before you start thinking of how horrible my mom was for forcing me to diet with her, please realize that this is not the whole picture! I have been overweight for my entire life. My mom felt that it was her responsibility to help me lose that weight by watching the food that I ate as well as exercising regularly. Not an entirely flawed point of view, right? It is a parents responsibility to teach their children healthy habits when it comes to their food choices and physical activity. My mom was trying her best to do that for me and my siblings. Turns out, I happen to be pretty competitive and just needed to know that someone else (Mom) was doing it too and going to keep checking on my progress, aka weigh-ins.

So starting around the age of 12, Mom and I tried diet after diet and I’d lose a little weight and because the diet was not usually maintainable, I’d then go back to my old way of eating and gain all or more of the lost weight back. This is the introduction to my fad diet habit….and probably a lot of the reason I struggle to this day to stay healthy and keep my weight under control.

College Years...still totally lost:

Fast forward to when I was a freshman in college in the fall of 2007, and living away from home for the first time. I was eating cafeteria food 100% of the time and totally responsible for my nutrition. I felt so confident! I was ready to eat from that salad bar every day, and start working out at the gym which was included in the room and board. I was ready to see a change. I would NOT be gaining my freshman fifteen, no way!

Turns out, things ended up playing out a little differently than I thought. Along with and endless supply to a beautiful salad bar, there were also bottomless french fries, make your own pizza, icecream by the 5 gallon bucket, and a completely endless supply of the most beautiful, decandent chocolate and fruit DESSERT BAR. I mean WOW. I had never seen a variety of this caliber in one place. And it was offered EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. And this was just the food.

The gym was open most hours of the day. In the beginning, I tried to work out 3 days a week like a good athlete...or so I thought. (3 days a week?? Seriously, I had no clue what good physical fitness looked like!) I often would miss a day, but I still felt good about myself that I got there a couple of days a week. Turns out, sooner than I’d like to admit I stopped altogether because it was embarrassing to say the least. People that worked out, looked decent doing it and I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to be doing. Pretty soon, my exercise consisted of a game or two of ultimate frisbee (which I TOTALLY fell in love with) a week and I ignored the gym most weeks out of the month.

During Sophomore year I took the mandatory phys ed class, that everyone took. We learned about the traditional food pyramid, tracked our calories for a week or two, learned how to exercise 3 days a week and tried to learn to run 1 mile without stopping. And who am I kidding? I never ran a mile without walking at least half, it was rough! My main point here is that even after completing an entire semester of “physical fitness and nutrition” I still had absolutely no idea what a healthy meal or exercise plan looked like. So again, no help at all. After that, I just went back to what I was doing, not tracking food intake and continued on with my gradual, consistent weight gain.

Marriage changes everything...right?

In the months leading up to my wedding in June of 2012, I enlisted the old calorie counting trick again and dropped a few pounds before I said “I do.” I was at my all time low for my adult life of 183 pounds as I walked down the aisle to become Mrs. Gulstrom.

Again, I started to see my weight climb up and realized that I needed to do something. My new husband and I started a 1200 calorie a day diet that consisted of a lot of salad, lean meats and breakfast smoothies. It was not maintainable and we quit after a very short time and we both continued to gain weight.

Maybe Kids Change Everything:

In January of 2016, our daughter was born. I was weighing in at my all time high (non-pregnant) weight of 215lbs. As time went on and I adjusted to being a new breastfeeding mama who ran on what felt like little to no sleep. Looking back, my daughter was a great baby, it was just all so new to me at that point! By May, I noticed that I had started to slowly gain weight again! Those rumors of being able to eat anything you wanted because of all those extra calories you were burning by nursing? Yeah, that doesn’t work for everyone and didn’t for me! I was horrified!

I decided I needed to do something and after doing quite a bit of research, I started Beachbody’s 21 Day Fix program with Autumn Calabrese. I loved it! In a nutshell, it combined the portion control of a variety of healthy foods and daily 30 minute workouts. I started to lose weight right away and saw a difference very quickly. By the end of the year I had lost 28 lbs and was feeling great!

My biggest lesson that I learned through working with this program was that health and fitness is a lifestyle. It’s not a goal that you achieve and then go back to your old habits until you gain back all your weight and need another change. It’s about a total mindset change in a couple of areas of your life. I realized that moving everyday, was so important. It made me feel better about myself and more energized in general. Watching your nutrition was also very important. Every single thing that you choose to put into your mouth is either going to fuel you well or it’s not. You get to decide how your food affects you. If you make good choices, you feel better and tend to keep those dreaded pounds off. This was the first time that I realized that health and fitness couldn’t be a fad, it had to be a lifestyle that I was willing to put forth effort for every day in order to see lasting results.

Baby#2, no baby is the same:

Early in 2017, I found out we were expecting our son which was so exciting! I felt great. I was so excited to be pregnant again and super excited because I had a plan I could easily follow postpartum, to quickly get back to my pre-pregnancy weight! I stayed active through pregnancy, but let my food choices slip a bit. Again, I figured it was no problem, I had a plan and it had worked before, surely it would work well the 2nd time around.

I gained about 40 pounds during my second pregnancy. Not an overwhelming amount, but pretty much most of that weight was due to the donuts from the bakery next door to my midwife’s office. Every time Adaline and I would survive a prenatal appointment, I would treat us to several honey dipped donuts, which were the very best donuts I had ever eaten, and they were SO SOOD!

Six weeks after Owen was born, I got back to the 21 day fix workouts and started my portion fix meal eating. I had a new resolve to get back to my old self and continue life as I remembered it. But it didn’t work. You see, my son was different than my daughter in almost every way. He didn’t love being around his dad, he didn’t sleep through the night at all until he was a year old and weaned and he didn’t really want anyone but his mama to hold him. Now he still wasn’t terrible, but it was so much harder than I dreamed it would be. Because he wasn’t sleeping, neither was I and that meant I was exhausted. Not only did I have a baby who wasn’t sleeping well, I also had a 2 year old girl that needed me all day as well, even when the baby napped.

Motherhood is a big adjustment, your second baby is another very different and big adjustment, and I am sure a third baby is an even bigger and more different adjustment. Children are wonderful, beautiful and some of the best gifts that have been given to me, but I had to figure out my new normal. And it turns out, I did not have the brain power or the energy to do the 21 day fix daily workout or the container counting during this new stage of my life. I felt so defeated. The weight gain started again around May. I tried so hard to get back on track and ended up losing about 10 pounds before our family pictures were taken in July.

I felt good, confident and beautiful going into those pictures. I was excited to see our new family photos with our spunky 2 ½ year old, 8 month old mama’s boy and my sweet, handsome husband. I got the pictures back a few days later and nervously opened the file on my computer. My heart sank. I looked at the couple shots taken of me and my husband and all I could see was the tired, overweight mom who was so overwhelmed by everything! Although our family shot turned out to beautifully capture this stage of life, I looked at it and all I could think was, “why didn’t anyone tell me?” “I look so fat! I’ve never seen myself this heavy, what am I going to do??”

Now, what was I going to say or think if someone did say that I was starting to look kind of rough? I probably wouldn’t have taken that well either...But nevertheless, I decided to try again to make a change. After discussing my weight issues a little with my sister in law, she asked if I wanted to follow her on My Fitness Pal. This was simply a food and exercise tracker that I had used a couple of times in the past and was very easy to start using again. So I just stayed within my calorie limit, the key word being LIMIT. I slowed down my eating and just tried to be as balanced as possible.

After this I tried the Whole30 for the month of August, which is a high fat, moderate protein and no gluten, legumes, dairy or sugar. I realized that I needed to make some serious changes and that it was ok to tell myself no for a short time on some food groups that were possibly causing me to gain weight. Some people thought I was just crazy, but I honestly needed to be super serious and detox from the sugar and most carbs that I had been filling my diet with. During this month I started to do some research on the Keto diet. It seemed like the goals were pretty similar, but the rules were a little more relaxed.

So in September of 2018 my husband and I pulled the trigger and went full keto. We have only looked back briefly as we experience an occasional, painful cheat...because of course we aren't perfect. We fuel our bodies by embracing a diet that is filled with healthy fats, a moderate amount of healthy proteins and very low carbs that mostly come from vegetables and berries. It's now July of 2019, Joel is 40 pounds lighter and I am 45 pounds lighter and we have been successfully living the Keto lifestyle for the majority of the last 10 months!

And that is why I have started this blog. To talk about my love for Keto life and all it has done for our health!