Some disclaimers to start:
1) I have a thyroid condition that is barely under control with medication. I have been on the medication for 5 years and did not experience weight loss like this after the birth of my other two children.
2) I put on a huge amount of water while pregnant - by the time I was 7 months pregnant I couldn't get my feet into a pair of size 12 crocs... So a lot of the weight I have lost is water weight - in fact, I reckon I still have at least 10-15 kilos of water to lose. BUT excess water is still weight - my knees and ankles don't hurt anymore; I've gone down 4 dress sizes, etc
3) I didn't start trying to lose weight until my baby was weaning onto solids at 5 months, he's now a year old. I lost no weight during this time - after the initial water loss in hospital, my weight started creeping up again...
....So in a blind panic I started to put into place the diet that I had spent months researching while pregnant. I was so huge during my third pregnancy that I was almost constantly in pain from my aching joints and couldn't sleep because I kept snoring, and had to keep rolling over as I started to go numb if I lay in one spot for longer than 15 mins. . . awful...
This ISN'T about the almighty goal of "Being Thin" - this is about NOT getting degenerative arthritis by the time I'm 45. I think its important to emphasise that I have been fat for almost my entire adult life - I'd say my average size has been between a 22 and a 26, so I am completely OVER the body-image rubbish that we get fed in this culture. I did all my body-acceptance stuff years ago*, but its very different at almost 40 than when you're 22, bouncy and bullet-proof. My knees hurt; my hips hurt; I couldn't get up off the floor. My current goal is to be in the double-figures in kilos. My goal after that is to wend my way down to 85 kilos, or a size 14/16. I think more than that at my age and I will start to lose my looks, which have been very well preserved in fat, thankyou very much !!
* Notice how I have no problem with the word "Fat" ?
I had been looking up "The China Study" on Amazon as I was looking at the healthiness of a vegan diet during pregnancy (I was desperate) and I noticed that although it had 700 odd 5 star reviews, it also had a handful of one star reviews. I thought that was a bit odd as I had thought the conclusions of The China Study incontrovertible, and I had been vegetarian, and vegan, for a long time in my youth, so I thought of this as the most healthful diet. Being curious (and a professional researcher) I checked out the one star reviews and discovered dozens of reviews pulling the science of The China Study apart. One of these reviews mentioned Gary Taubes, and following him up I read the New York Times article he wrote What If Its Been A Big Fat Lie, and my journey began....
...and I ended up in a place where I eat meat, eggs, dairy, vegetables and the occasional cup of cooked brown rice, and the occasional block (yes, BLOCK, not one square) of Lindt 85% and the weight is still melting away from me, with no hunger, bad temper, or feeling deprived. And NO exercise, apart from toddlerobics and baby-lifting.... Not even walking.
The greatest advantage is the psychological boost of seeing the weight drop away - its works out to 1 1/2 kilos a week, but in reality, if you stick to the diet it comes off much faster - that's 40 kilos for me over 35 weeks with loads of birthdays and xmas etc in which I did not stint myself. I've been sticking to it really closely after coming back from a holiday where I stuffed myself with Nutella, and have lost 5 kilos in a fortnight.
I took a long time to implement all the changes, and I am NO saint - we're still working on it. We were already eating Failsafe as my boys react to food additives so cutting out processed food wasn't so hard. Cutting out wheat was very hard until my Hubby came on board and we are now wheat free. We use corn cakes and gluten-free pasta for the boys, but we tend not to eat them. We also eat a lot of home-fermented foods now - saurkraut, kim chee and keffir.
I added an extra part - the No-S diet which is No sugar, Snacks or Seconds except on Special Occasions and days which start with S. This meant for the first part of the diet that I would allow myself to eat carb-y cr*p on the weekends and for special occasions, and I think that in the beginning, I really needed this. 5 Months on - last night I ordered a mars bar mud cake and only managed four bites. It was delicious, but I just couldn't finish it :) - your palate resets.
It is more expensive than a veggie-based diet, but as we are making our food from scratch and not buying certain types of food at all, overall, our food bill has gone down.
I know that this is a radical, even heretical approach, but I am putting down a roadmap here so that if, like me, you have done the "right thing" for years - ate less and exercised more; and year after year just got fatter and fatter, then this approach may well help you, and you can follow my reasoning.
I am recommending the works that have helped me, by people who are far better educated and more experienced in this field than I am. I have sent links to their sites, rather than their books as they all have a great deal of free information there.
The links are in order of radicality -
Zoe Harcombe, Sally Fallon and Barry Groves are very approachable. Gary Taubes is very technical. Charles Washington is a radical - he eats nothing but meat and drinks nothing but water and is well worth a read !
Also, two historical sources that are free and well worth a read, although, like me it may well make you angry that this knowledge has been available for so long, and yet still ignored and denigrated by the scientific establishment, the Government and so-called health experts who have been telling us EXACTLY the opposite for the last 30 years:
Eat Fat and Grow Slim - the book thats started Barry Groves on his quest...
Letter On Corpulence - William Banting - well worth reading for the story of a sensible man who followed all the advice of his Doctors and just got fatter....
As you already know, its the 5 year results that matter, so I will have to get back to you in 5 years to let you know how its gone - but so far its going really well !
I am also going to hunt down some before photos to compare with some recent after photos, and will post them up.
xxx Molly
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