Reading & Jumping (ha ~ not at the same time!)

So, I've been hearing about a book written by 2 sisters "Trim Healthy Mama" or THM.  Its advertised as a common sense guide to satisfy your cravings and energize your life.  Sounds good!  This book is 600 pages long ~ and I read it...over 2-3 weeks.

It seems to be a pretty common sense approach to food ~ "God has given us all the food groups and he wants each one to be enjoyed in a balanced way.  Every give God gives is good.  Why should w shun any of his gifts?  Why would we dismiss their value with a 'we know best attitude'? " pg.xvi.

Greg and I both did the low calorie/low carb diet from our local hospital ~ we spent $1000's on the tests, blood tests, office visits, and food & we lost a combined total of 130 pounds.  Awesome results! But you really can't live on 800 calories a day.  And when you transition off the strict, mostly liquid diet ~ you gain some of the weight back. (And I say mostly liquid because we didn't last long on just drinking the shakes, we missed chewing!)  Now, in defense of the program, we did not take advantage of the nutritionist and that probably would have helped us.

We did great keeping the weight off for over a year after we stopped going and we switched to the Atkins plan...much more affordable.  Then we went to Disney last fall and its pretty much been downhill ever since.  Argh, honesty stinks.

I am ready to make changes.  Prayerfully, they will be lifestyle changes and not a "diet". 

The book seems to me to be a combination of Atkins ~ high protein, low carb with more vegetables and fruits thrown in.  I've eaten 2 apples in the last week and enjoyed every bite!  You should eliminate white things from your foods...potatoes, regular flour,  rice, sugar.  Use Stevia or similar products for your sweeteners.  Use xantham gum or glucomannan as thickeners for recipes (ordered the glucomannan from amazon but don't have it yet).  Use almond flour to bake with.

The book includes lots of recipes to get you started.  There are facebook pages dedicated to this book and its recipes.  And of course tons of pinterest boards for ideas.

I am hoping this will not be a big "leap" for us to switch too.  I think we can take the atkins mentality and add to it.

And yes, it would probably help if we weren't doing this in the middle of a huge move ~ retirement ~ job hunt, etc.  But we generally don't do most things the easy way! 

Now I need to purchase my own copy of this book ~ my sister will want hers back!

Back to the title ~ reading the book & jumping on the bandwagon!