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    The Possible Diet
    The Possible Diet
    The Possible Diet
    Ebook86 pages1 hour

    The Possible Diet

    By April Capil

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Do the thing and you will have the power.
    -Ralph Waldo Emerson

    The problem I’ve always had with diets is they are IMPOSSIBLE. Either the foods required are ridiculous, or expensive, or hard to make or hard to buy or hard to keep eating over and over and over. If a diet isn’t prescribing impossible food choices, it’s prescribing impossible eating schedules - forcing you to starve yourself for hours, or carry Tupperware containers everywhere, or avoid potlucks or restaurants.

    When I found myself in Dr. G.’s office at 204 pounds with a BMI of 34, I was ashamed of the corner I’d eaten my body into. Despite the success stories on her website, I had little faith that she could help me. In addition to my own hang-ups about diets not working, bodies being beautiful at any size, and a simmering resentment that I was only changing my lifestyle to conform to societal norms, I knew I would be fighting an aging metabolism, a serious sweet tooth, and a lifetime of bad habits.

    Dr. G. laid out a plan to lose 50 pounds that she said had worked for dozens of her clients, to help them reach their weight loss goals safely ad sensibly. It didn’t require crazy food combinations or hours at the gym, just a commitment to achieving my goals and a willingness to keep trying, because the solution to my dilemma was going to be simple, even if it wasn’t always going to be easy.

    I considered my favorite Japanese proverb:
    When is the best time to plant a tree? 25 years ago.
    When is the next best time? Today.

    Looking back, I realized the biggest gift Dr. G. gave me wasn’t a diet.

    It was the idea that I could do something that I had never been able to do before.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherApril Capil
    Release dateSep 1, 2020
    ISBN9781005169466
    The Possible Diet
    Author

    April Capil

    April Capil is a breast cancer survivor and author. She holds a Green M.B.A. in Sustainable Enterprise and lives in Northern California.April has been a guest speaker at the First Descents Annual Gala (2010), the Life Beyond Cancer Conference (2011), the OMG Summit for Young Adult Cancer Survivors (2013, 2014), and the Conference For Young Women (2014).

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      Book preview

      The Possible Diet - April Capil

      The Possible Diet

      The Possible Diet

      Simple Strategies for Healthy Weight Loss

      April Capil

      The Possible Diet

      Published by April Capil at Smashwords.com

      Copyright © 2020 April Capil

      All rights reserved.

      ISBN: 9781005169466

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

      This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

      Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      for Dr. G.

      and Super Nova

      Thank you for helping me believe -

      in myself and my capacity

      to change my story

      and change my life.

      Contents

      The Impossible

      1. The Crack

      2. Simple, Not Easy

      3. Five Habits

      4. How to Think

      5. How to Eat

      6. How to Move

      7. My Food & Fitness Plan

      8. Snags and Plateaus

      9. The Great Eight

      Favorite Foods & Grocery Lists

      APPENDIX: My Go-To Recipes

      About the Author

      The Impossible

      That can’t be possible.

      I was staring at a number on a scale, and I could not believe it.

      Only moments before, I had watched with increasing alarm as a nurse moved the 1-lb weight further… and further…. and then even further to my right, doing her best to balance it with the the three 50-lb weights that were already there. It still wasn’t balancing, so after an almost apologetic pause, she moved the 1-lb weight back and replaced it with a fourth 50-lb weight.

      Then she moved the 1-lb weight another four spaces out.

      I weighed 204 lbs.

      How was this possible?

      Just six months before, I’d had a bilateral mastectomy with reconstruction - what I thought would be the most important thing I could do to reduce my chances of a breast cancer recurrence - but despite a surgeon cutting off my muffin top to give me new boobs, I had somehow managed to put on six pounds.

      In that moment, I knew I had to change. I didn’t know if I could, but I knew I had to try.

      As a woman over 40 in America who’s had a BMI over 30 for most of my life, I have been on a dozen diets. My weight over the last 30 years has slowly crept up 2 or 3 pounds a year, but I’ve always managed to hover somewhere between a size 12 and a size 16 (mostly a size 14) since I was in my 20s. I had the requisite suitcase full of clothes in my closet I hoped I would someday fit in, but I had honestly given up on the idea of ever being slim or athletic. I dreamed about it once in a while, of course - maybe this plane will go down in the Pacific, and I’ll survive, but be stranded on an island like Tom Hanks, which will force me to adopt a fish-and-coconut diet that will make me look like a South Beach Crossfit Goddess just in time to be rescued by a crew of Navy Seals! - but I didn’t really believe it was possible, so I had just… stopped trying. I’d accepted that I was always going to be a "Big Girl" and simply refused to let it stop me from accomplishing BIG goals - competing in an Olympic triathlon, running the New York Marathon, climbing Kilimanjaro, and walking the Camino Santiago. As far as I was concerned, I wasn’t going to let society’s unrealistic body image standards dictate what I could and couldn’t do.

      But there was that number, staring back at me.

      At 204 pounds, with a BMI of 34, I wasn’t just overweight. I was flirting with Severely Obese (which starts at a BMI of 35). And I knew - I knew that obesity was a contributor to not only cancer, but other life-threatening conditions, like metabolic syndrome and coronary heart disease. Was this what I wanted?

      When I saw that number on the scale, all my rationalizations that a person can still be big and beautiful or fit and fat flew right out the window. I knew I was being dangerously naive about the consequences of carrying all that extra weight. What’s worse, I was lying to myself, because in that moment, I wasn’t okay. Not with my body, not with my choices. I was scared. I knew the road I was headed down, that was lined with positive body image slogans and stretchy jeans, could end in diabetes, or not being able to take the stairs without my lungs burning or my knees throbbing. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not even this year, but someday, and probably within a decade or two.

      I had to do something, even if it seemed impossible.

      Two days later, I was in a doctor’s office, filling out a form for a medically supervised weight loss program, despite firmly believing that diets just wouldn’t work for me. What I also believed, though, was that thirty years of trying and failing to lose weight meant that I wasn’t capable of doing it without help. If I was going to make a healthy, permanent change in my life, I was going to need a professional. I told myself that Michael Phelps didn’t make it to the Olympics without a coach, and I wasn’t going to be able to lose 50 pounds without one.

      Dr. G. had the air of someone who had the same conversation a dozen times a day. Her tone was matter-of-fact as she talked about the things I’d need to do to lose the weight: reset my metabolism by stabilizing my blood sugar, get on a regular eating schedule, and cut back my

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