THE # 1 ENEMY THAT NEARLY KILLED MY MARRIAGE
Just like all others, when I got married, I had a perfect perfect love story to start off with. Being carried down the aisle by my prince charming, a grand wedding and even a grander honeymoon to boot! I had never expected in my wildest dreams that 20 years down the line, the perfect love story would only remain in distant memories and nothing else!
As time went on, my relationship also started changing with the times. The romantic weekend getaways, the steamy showers together, the lazing around naked in bed on weekends, started making way for the kids and their activities.
Once the kids started growing up, the initial spark in the relationship started fading out, as it does for most of the couples once they approach menopause. My husband and I were slowly drifting apart. I never realised that my happy married life was under attack from one unknown enemy…
This unknown ememy had started controlling my health and my relationship…and was about to make a final attack that would shake the very foundations of my 20 year relationship with my husband…On one fateful night it was a wake-up call…
My husband had come home late the other evening and we had a little argument about the fact that he has been spending too much time at work and has been neglecting his family responsibilities…We both went to bed sulking over the issue…
It was around 3 am in the morning. Wanting to release myself in the washroom, I woke up only to find my husband missing from his side of the bed. In the darkness, I could see a faint light coming from the living room. I came out and found him sitting on the sofa in the living room, working on his laptop. What could he be doing at this unearthly hour? Not wanting to disturb him, I slowly crept up to him…
Only to get the biggest shock of my life!
He was commenting on pictures of women in bikinis on his social media handles!
My world came crashing down!
It only took a moment for me to realize that this was the reason that he was staying away from me and the kids!!
Momentarily, on seeing me behind him, too shocked to react, my husband shut down his laptop, and went back to bed, leaving me with tears in my eyes!
It was the worst nightmare of my life! Waking up, thinking about what transpired between me and my husband the previous night…
Glancing at my bedside table, I found a 20 yer old photograph of me in a bikini at the beach during my honeymoon!
In my husband’s handwriting, it was written…
I still love You For What You Were!
For a moment this hit me really hard… and I suddenly realized that…
The enemy was within me. It was the scale that was hitting me all these years without me even realizing it! It is but obvious that no one likes to make love to a fat elephant in bed!
I was weighing 220 Lbs on the scale!
Looking at my naked self in the bathroom mirror…I really looked like a dinosaur! No wonder that my husband was staying away from me in bed!
With tears flowing in my eyes, I eagerly waited for my husband to come home and have a talk with him. The moment my husband came home, I hugged him and started crying uncontrollably. He assured me that everything is going to be allright and that we shall both overcome this challenge together.
Earlier, though I had tried every other method to drop the scale, nothing seemed to work. Even though some method did work, the results were as good as negligible.
THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE THAT I FACED AT THIS POINT IN TIME WAS To Find An Unconventional Sustainable Fat Loss Method That Would Work For The Long Term…
Statistics on various diet plans showed that…
The average life of a diet plan is 4-6 weeks where almost 90% of the people quit due to the restrictions that are present in the diet plan!
I came across an online research paper on the cells inside the human body which mentioned that no matter how healthy we ate, or followed a healthy lifestyle, it would be difficult to lose weight since the cells are sick from inside!
The research paper was backed by scientific proof that the cells in the body start storing the extra fat in the body to make up for the nutritional imbalances that are caused in the body, all thanks to the conventional diet plans that restrict the intake of certain food groups in favour of another to lose weight faster.
These diet plans focus on cutting down the caloric intake in the body, as excess calories that are present in the body are the main cause of weight gain. These calories are derived from the food that we eat and to lose weight faster drop high calorie foods from the diet and instead switch to low calorie foods. How convenient!
When the body’s nutritional requirements are cut off or reduced, even though the body adjusts to the new dietary regimen in the short term, once we stop the diet, and go back to our old eating habits, the body suffers from withdrawal symptoms, whereby it instructs the cells in the body to start storing more fat for future energy requirements, to make up for the nutrition that it had been deprived of during the period of the restrictive diet.
That is the main reason why 98% of the diets fail to give results in the long term, no matter how hard we try. Statistics from the research showed that women are more prone to gain weight faster after they drop out of diets as their bodies are differently structured for energy requirements from those of men.
No matter what the research said, I was committed to defeat my enemy, the scale, by bringing it to its knees. I very well knew that if I failed this time around, my husband was sure to dump me and head for one of those slim bikini profiles that he had been commenting on!!
The new diet regimen that I was to follow, based on the research, required a few modifications in my eating habits, where I could eat all my favourite foods, in combination of the foods suggested in the diet chart and would be able to defeat the scale effectively.
The only thing that I would have to commit from my end is that I would have to persist with the changes for a minimum of 8 weeks to see the results. I could start seeing the results earlier also, however, I was not to get carried away by it! I was committed to make any sacrifice and get my husband back and therefore…
WEEK 1:
The first few days of the new diet regimen were tough as I had to adjust myself to the new eating routine and the tastes of the new foods that were provided in the diet plan. Though I loved bread and pasta, which I had to replace with more of green veggies and meats, I did not mind, as the new foods were quite tasty and nutritious at the same time. For the first 4-5 days, this sudden modification made my stomach feel emptier and more left me feeling hungrier.
The solution for the same was also mentioned in the diet plan. Whenever hunger pangs struck and there was a flash of hunger, fibre was to be added to the body in the form of water or water-based fruits to beat the hunger pangs.
As I proceeded further with the diet, what I realized was that it was not the consumption of my favourite foods but eating the right foods at the wrong time that was helping my enemy all these years.
I was eating pasta and bread most of the time at night!
The # 1 mistake that I was making as part of my dietary habits was...eating carbs at night!
The research paper also mentioned that it is not the carbs that are the problem. Carbs are an important aspect of nutrition in the body, without which the body’s metabolism would not function. It is just that they had to be eaten at the right time!
The reasoning behind the same is that carbs are slow fat burners by nature and take a longer time to digest than the other food groups and therefore, having carbs at night, adds to the fat reserves in the body due to the excessive pressure on the digestive system.
My body was slowly adjusting to the new lifestyle and the change in the metabolism reflected that. I started feeling more energetic throughout the day, with the energy crashes slowly disappearing. The pain that I used to get in my joints, particularly the knees, had started going down.
The score at the end of Week # 1: 10 lbs down on the scale!
WEEK 2:
My 20th anniversary was fast approaching, and I wanted to run down 28 lbs by the end of the month to get down naked in front of my husband and make him drool over the perfect bikini figure that I had at the time of my marriage 20 years ago.
The only difference was that I had crossed 40, and getting the same results was difficult. However, with the results generated so far at the end of one week, I was motivated to go for it. To make things go around faster, I added a moderate exercise routine to my lifestyle, wherein I developed the habit of walking short distances and taking the stairs wherever possible, at home, in the office or the mall, instead of the elevator or the escalator.
A few months back, climbing a flight of stairs without panting and feeling breathless was out of the question. Now, in my late 40’s, and my new diet regimen, I could challenge a 15-year-old to a race as to who could go faster on the stairs!!
WEEK 3:
At the end of two weeks on the custom diet plan, I had already dropped around 4 inches on my waist and two dress sizes, and I was confident that I could beat any of those slimy bikini figures that nearly killed my marriage by the time my anniversary approached.
My overall physical health had already started improving and I could physically feel the fat melting around my arms, shoulders and thighs also. Some of the old dresses resting at the bottom of my wardrobe had also started fitting without alterations.
It was my 20th anniversary. I blindfolded my husband, led him in front of the mirror, and dropped the clothes that I was wearing on the floor!! For a moment he was too shocked and could not but ogle at my figure. He hugged me and tears of joy started flowing from my eyes!
I had at last got my husband back!
In conclusion:
One important lesson that I learned after shifting to the diet plan was that managing a lifestyle is more about right lifestyle habits and the right education about the body’s requirements rather than anything else.
Weight loss in the simplest form is nothing but understanding one’s body’s nutritional requirements and then take the necessary steps to manage the same. More than restricting the intake of calories, as we have been taught, it is more about eating the right foods at the right time and in the right quantity. Eating too much or too little either distorts the body’s energy requirements and the results reflect on the scale in the long run.