by Kathleen Delicato

Created on: August 20, 2010   Last Updated: August 21, 2010

I have been struggling with being overweight most of my life. I've put it on and taken it off over and over again. I have spent thousands of dollars trying different weight-loss and excercise programs. I came to realise diets do not work.   Being on a diet is a mind-set of something you are doing temporarily. Most people go back to their old habits once the weight is lost, or when faced with stress go back to using food as a way to reduce the stress.

The most important thing to do before trying to achieve anything is to make up your mind.  This sounds easy, but it's a process that is more than just saying to yourself, "I'm going to lose weight."  You have to make a vow to yourself. Making a vow is a spiritual determination to change yourself. It's like a prayer, but an inner prayer, focussed on empowering yourself, not looking outside your own life for the answers on how to achieve your goal.

I began with knowing I did not want to be on a diet, I did not want to become an exercise-aholic. I just wanted to lose weight.  My process began when I began to feel so unsatisfied with fast food.  It started to be unappealing to me. One day I was spreading butter on toast and it looked like grease. I threw it in the garbage. Every day I was praying (in my case chanting) to find wisdom and resolve from within to make choices good for MY life. Then I began to dislike meat. I found myself passing the fast-food places.

I was transforming internally and it was manifesting externally. I began to use all the knowledge I'd gained from a life-time of all the  different diets I'd been on, and decided to start a version the rice diet. Rice and fruit. I found it to be very satisfying and lost weight quickly. I segued into adding other things I like, brown rice based pastas and breads, even cookies and pizza. I added vegetables and found that I'd become a vegetarian. This was not a conscious decision- somewhere within I had fundamentally changed myself.

I saw my doctor and told her what I'd been doing and she told me I HAD to eat some kind of meat- at least poultry or fish. I bought a turkey breast and could not eat it. I felt sick and wound up giving it to a friend. I found different vegetarian choices for protein, beans , tofu, veggie burgers and other low fat vegetarian proteins. I lost 40 pounds without feeling deprived or hungry. I didn't even want to eat fish, which was unexpected. I just didn't want it.

Then I hit a plateau, i even gained a bit

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