It's time to get healthy!

No more pretend food!! No more products with promises of getting rich and thin at the same time! No more programs where someone tells me what to eat without caring if I even like it!! No more weigh in meetings with charts and smiles and ways to cheat to eat the bad foods if you can manipulate them into your total points!! No more meetings where people convince themselves that overeating is a disease!! No more pressure from weight loss shows where fat people balance a bag of sand on their heads while crawling up a 100 foot tall ice slide!! No more GUILT!!! No more BALONEY!! It’s time to get REAL with what works for me, my family and my lifestyle!

No more believing that it’s "calories in vs. calories out" to lose weight!!!! At my weight, I should be able to eat two to three times the amount of food that I really do to maintain my current weight, but I don’t. There are no one-size-fits-all weight loss solutions!!

Recently an overweight business friend tried to entice me into one of the 90-Day Challenge Network Sales programs by saying “What’s the worst that can happen, we both lose weight and make some money. At the end we’ll go out for a big steak at Del Friscos!!” Yes, bribe the fat lady with food!! The worst that can happen is that if you don't change your lifestyle, when the 2 shakes a day challenge ends, you go back to the way you lived before!!! There goes another pre-planned “yo-yo cycle”!!! I REFUSE TO SPEND ONE MORE DIME on a "weight loss miracle!" I'm over the roller coaster!!!

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a lot of books. I devour them. Tonight I figured out that I have over 12 linear feet of cook books and about 4 linear feet of diet and nutrition books. If you calculate 1” per book times 16 feet of books, that’s over 200 books and I’ve read them all.

I’ve been on many diets and weight loss programs. If I add it all up, I think I've lost and gained over 1000 pounds since Junior High!! For the past few years I’ve chosen not to diet. I’ve maintained my weight out of fear of losing weight and then regaining twice as much.

I believe I finally know the solution that will work for me. It’s giving up the gluten, white sugar, white flour, fake diet foods and processed chemical foods. It's eating less meat, avoiding most dairy (I will not give up butter, Greek Yogurt and some cheese; but that’s another story) and eating the bulk of my diet in high fiber grains, fresh vegetables and fresh fruits.

It’s moving more when my body is ready to move. It’s not jumping off a cliff with a bunch of mandatory “have to’s” and charting my daily exercise. It's not allowing some "personal trainer guru" to shame me or yell at me until I puke or pass out!!!

It's taking all of the things I already know that work and putting them into action in a way that is reasonable, comfortable and do-able for me and my family. It’s re-learning how to cook for optimum health, finding ways to move more, creating a healthier lifestyle and enjoying life to the fullest.

When you eat this way according to both Dr. Oz and Dr. Ornish, everything comes into balance; weight, mood, immunity, everything!!

I am never going to be a 100% vegan, but I figure 80% is a lot closer than before!!! I’ve eliminated 26 pounds in less than a month. My mind feels clearer, my body hurts less, I am waking up earlier and I feel better!

Here are 6 transformation promises that experts give for adopting a Vegan lifestyle:

Lower bad cholesterol: In four weeks, vegan dieters lowered their LDL cholesterol two times more than traditional low-fat dieters. (A Standford Study)

Slash cancer risk: According to German researchers, people eating a plant based diet are up to 50% less likely to die from cancer.

Cut risk of diabetes: People who switch to a vegan based diet lower their risk of Type 2 Diabetes by over 60% (Loma Linda University)

Get a healthier heart: Vegans have a 57% lower risk for developing coronary heart disease than meat eaters.

Ease your arthritis: 40% of people following a vegan diet reported fewer symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis. (Study in Sweden)

Younger looking skin: Tests show that low-fat vegan eating causes a 29% increase in an enzyme that protects and repairs DNA, thus fighting lines and wrinkles.

These results sound pretty good to me!

I will share what I am doing, the recipes I am creating for myself and my family, healthy lifestyle tips and some humor along the way. Maybe someday this will evolve into a business, but for now it’s all about sharing and living life to the fullest!!

If you love someone who is orbidly obese, please introduce them to Chubby Chicks Health Club.