One year ago I blogged about how the plant-based diet made me an overeater.
A lot has happened since.
After the post, hundreds (I’m not exaggerating for impact) of people sent me an email saying that my experience was THEIR experience.
“I feel like I am so similar” was a common phrase.
Here’s one of those emails:
“When I first went plant-based, my weight dropped beautifully for the first 40 pounds. Then the weight-loss stopped, so I cut back a little more and I lost another 10 pounds, but then it just stayed there. No matter what I did it just stayed there.”
We all hit a weight we couldn’t move past.
No matter how plant perfect we were eating, or how much exercise we incorporated, the scale would not budge.
For a lot of the people I talked to, (and I’m included in this group) this barrier happened at a lower weight.
Meaning, our weight was in the “normal” or “healthy” range for our height but we still had visible body fat. And I’m not talking about vanity fat “a little here or there.”
Before strict compliance with the meal plans (but plant-perfect) vs. me last week.
In my case, my stomach was still hanging over my pants and I had chronic, painful chafing along my armpits and thighs from constant rubbing.
I wasn’t comfortable physically and I didn’t like how I looked.
Then I had my body fat measured.
I was at the tippy top end of what was considered “healthy” even though I was at a “healthy” weight.
“You have a really high percentage of body fat for your weight,” the technician told me.
Before I can continue this story, I need to first explain how the plant-based diet made me an overeater. (Don’t worry I’m not blaming kale.)
The plant-based community puts a lot of pressure on being perfect.
I saw this in the vegan movement too, though in a different way. With vegans, your membership card was revoked if you ate a hot dog, or in my case, used the wrong hand soap.
In the plant-based movement, there became this attitude that anything that was wrong with you was your fault for not being perfect.
If you weren’t losing weight, for example, it’s because you weren’t being perfect. You were eating oil, or sugar, or too many nuts, or not enough greens, or cheese.
And that’s not entirely untrue.
You can do any diet or lifestyle wrong, and it DOES come down to what you put in your mouth with weight-loss (more on that soon), but it’s also not as simple as “eat this, but not that” to lose weight.
Plants do not have magical calories that don’t count.
So, how did I become an overeater?
Click here to continue reading.
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