Introduction

First of all, this blog is simply to keep myself accountable. I'm not even sure if I will share it with anyone! But I've decided that it is important to keep a record of how I'm going and what is helpful (and not helpful!) in the way I live my life in regards to my overall health.

Some background (just in case this is being read by anyone other than myself):

For most of my teenage years, I was blessed with an incredible metabolism. I was able to eat whatever I wanted, and always remained quite slim. Never unnaturally skinny, but well proportioned. I stopped growing at just over 5"1 (or about 155cm), and was usually somewhere between 52-54kg. My nickname from around year 8 onwards was "fatty" - an ironical comment on my eating habits. I was never a very sedentary person, I did lots of walking, dancing etc. I wasn't fit by any stretch of the imagination, but I wasn't that lazy!

When I left high school, I decided that I should, in fact, make some effort to eat healthily and include some regular exercise. I was working 7 days a week, about 4 of those at a desk job, but began going for jogs or walks nearly every day, and making a concious effort to eat well as much as possible. I wouldn't say that my express purpose was to lose weight (although naturally that was quite an appealing consequence) - but I did most certainly want to get fit and tone up.

It was around this time that I found most of my body toning - except my stomach. I had never had a flat stomach, and had affectionately thought of it as my little pot belly, and never really thought much else of it. I began to realise, however, that I was often getting really bloated. I also discovered that I was gaining weight. This didn't really make a lot of sense to me, and over the next few months I was experiencing often painful bloating, really bad flatulence, and exhaustion. It was incredibly frustrating, and slowly compounded until a point where I had gained about 7kg in just over 6 months. For someone who was so used to being skinny while eating what I pleased, I was constantly frustrated, and often broke down in tears and felt depressed. Many of my clothes stopped fitting, and I was always self-conscious and experienced a massive drop in self-esteem.

I made the assumption that a lot of this was to do with foods I was eating. A natropath/detox specialist thought that I may have picked up a bug while in Singapore that was causing my body to store carbs, rather than use them. This seemed to make some sense, and cutting out ALL carbs and sugars, including all natural sugars (read: everything). This helped some in terms of a small amount of weight loss (but really, if you cut out all carbs, its a bit hard to NOT lose weight), but she assured me it would only have to be a for a few weeks and my body should adjust. After being incredibly strict on myself for nearly a month, I tried to go back to normal eating and started gaining weight again.

The next thing I thought might be linked was dairy (something I had had to cut out when cutting carbs - so noticed some differences!). My doctor agreed (once I finally went to see him - not sure why it took me so long!), and suggested that I try going off dairy for 2 weeks, and then going back on it. Although this seemed to help some, it didn't completely stop the bloating. The doctor then ran some blood tests which cut out thyroid conditions, diabetes, coeliacs disease and a whole lot of odd rare bacterial things. I then had the breath tests to officially check for lactose and frustose intolerances. Lactose was completely negative, and frustose was "inconclusive" (but definitely not a proper intolerance). Meanwhile, despite trying to eat "well", and exercising quite a lot, I weighed 61kg.

SO I made the decision to try a few things on my own. After going through a little while of "fad" ish diets, I saw Alicia Silverstone on Oprah one day, promoting her new vegan lifestyle. She spoke about how it helped her with allergies, increased her energy, and helped weight loss. I was hooked! I began to google vegan blogs and recipes and started cooking a bit. I was still often eating meat and limited dairy - but about a week ago I made the decision to at least give veganism a good go.

This blog is to help me keep track of my food intake, exercise routines, and weightloss, and to keep myself accountable when I slip up!