Reflection Paper On Weight Loss

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Recommended: Personal narrative about losing weight

Ali, tell us about your weight loss journey.

My Whole Food Plant Based (WFPB) journey has taken me a while. I learned about it back in 2013 when I was 22 and my initial motivating factor was weight loss. Over the past couple years i 've been back and forth with trying to lose weight. I had learned that the WFPB diet was the best way to lose weight. Several times I tried to go cold turkey (eating no animal products), and each time I lasted a month or so but not having the willpower to stick with it. I would fall into temptation of social settings and others around me and then simply give up for a while. But I always came back to the WFPB diet, because I want to be healthy.

Now I have been steadily WFPB since January 2016, and I have lost …show more content…

Did you use any skills like Type 3 (S.M.A.R.T. Goals and Finding Your Purpose/Source Of Strength) or like Type 9 (Focus on The Process). See Type 3 Skills and Type 9 Skills.

The biggest roadblocks along my journey have been the peer-pressure faced by friends and family to give into a Standard American Diet (SAD) diet. (i.e. family functions, traditional home-cooked meals, social settings, etc.) I have also faced a lot of criticism and opinions of others who disagree with this lifestyle, which is probably the most difficult aspect of all for me. It is also extremely frustrating to work in the healthcare field having this knowledge whenever good nutrition based on scientific evidence is neither a focus nor priority in many hospital settings.

I do identify with type three skills often to empower myself to overcome my roadblocks. Purpose has been the most important factor driving me to comply and adhere to this diet, as I have now identified several purposes for following a WFPB diet. I would say I have a spiritual source of strength that keeps me going, as I find that this lifestyle so closely aligns with my most deeply held values. I agree that connecting to the “WHY” is so important. There were many tools, strategies, and resources to help me with the “HOW” part, but the stronger my connection became to the “WHY,” the more motivated I was to actually implement the …show more content…

I think I can now attribute that to the fact that I did not fully embrace the concept of a predominantly starch based diet. I feel like I was still depriving myself of carbs and due to that I was probably restricting my overall caloric intake. I still felt hungry all the time and really battled cravings, which made it harder to resist temptation and sometimes caused me to go back to old habits. By increasing my starch intake with foods that I had previously restricted (i.e. potatoes, pasta, rice, whole grains) it has made all the difference. I now have consistent and reliable success when it comes to following this diet, which now feels more like a sustainable lifestyle for

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