HOT MESS TO WEIGHT LOSS SUCCESS: How To Lose Weight Without Willpower

After the success of Hot Mess to Home Success, and losing 60 pounds, the number one request I’ve gotten over the years for new products is to do the same thing we did in Hot Mess to Home Success, teaching you to…

• Work with your unique personality by incentivizing. 
• Do the bare minimum effort on a consistent basis. 
• Master things in the right order so you can skill-build foundational skills to conquer harder skills easily.  

But instead of teaching you to do all of that so you can keep your home clean, stick to your budget, and create a meal plan you’ll actually follow (like we do in Hot Mess to Home Success), you wanted me to teach you how you can lose weight if you have a difficult personality to change. 

I mean, “difficult personality” is a bit offensive, but really, my methods work best for people who: 

• Are chronically disorganized. 
• Are easily overwhelmed. 
• Have ADHD
• Have Fibromyalgia or another disorder that affects motivation levels. 
• Have low willpower and/or high impulsivity. 
• Have tried without success to stick to a new routine multiple times. 

I can’t do a whole program with this because I feel strongly about proof of process and long-term proven results. We have that in Hot Mess to Home Success… I feel very confident that I can teach anyone to manage their home & life regardless of how “bad” they think they are. 

But if I were to create Hot Mess to Weight Loss Success (which I won’t)…

I would have… just me. On a long and lonely (but pretty exciting) health & nutrition journey. While I’ve been successful, I also have a long way to go. 

I’m no expert here guys. 

But despite that, I could save a lot of time by explaining here what I’ve learned on this journey so far, specifically if you have a chronically disorganized personality that’s resistant to change like I do

So I’m just going to lay it all out for you here in what may be the most awkwardly open and vulnerable post ever (which is really saying something considering the things I’ve admitted to you before). 

Because this is the sort of thing that we would talk about if we knew each other in real life. 

Where I Started: Big Macs are My Favorite Food

I first started gaining weight when I worked in law enforcement. 9 months of academy cafeteria food, followed by day shift lunches at Taco Bell were not kind to a job where you sit for the vast majority of an 8-hour shift. 

A hectic work schedule with shifting days off, mandatory overtime, and a messed up sleeping schedule didn’t help any of that either. 

Next, I gained eighty pounds with my first child (who could only account for 12 of those pounds), which was the final blow.  

I had always had the palate of a 5-year-old. Chicken nuggets, french fries, and Big Macs are my favorite foods. It takes me an unusually high number of exposures to decide I like a new food, and I’m slow to even try new foods.

I was a picky eater as a kid and as an adult, I was actually worse. 

I craved brownies and donuts, not green beans and apples. 

When I started this journey, at 5 foot 9 and 258 pounds, I was just shy of being morbidly obese with a BMI of 38.1 (a BMI over 30 is considered obese, and a BMI over 40 is considered morbidly obese). You can calculate your own BMI (Body Mass Index) here. 

(Fun Fact:  BMI scales are under growing criticism for being outdated and not accounting for different people’s body types– but regardless of where you stand on the BMI index issue- I was at an unhealthy weight.)

Let me break down everything I’ve learned over the past 5 years to help me find success that I think will help you on your own weight loss journey if you also don’t have willpower…

You Aren’t Genetically Designed To Be Overweight. 

I believed that it was predetermined that I would be overweight based on genetics.

This is basically a limiting belief that meant I was self-sabotaging any attempts to get healthier. Why avoid donuts if the results are the same either way?

The trash and untrash cycle (and on-budget/off-budget cycle) also happens in weight loss. Like its cousins in home management, It’s basically a cycle of great effort and great abandon.

Believing success isn’t possible for you even with great effort, means that the abandonment periods get longer and longer and the effort periods get shorter and shorter or skipped altogether. 

When I started having trouble with my weight in my 20s, I assumed that I was predisposed to be overweight. I had watched people in my family struggle with weight gain to the point that it affected their health and mobility. 

But the tragedy to me at the time wasn’t that they were overweight. It was that those people who struggled with their weight and had been dieting for literally every year that I knew them were fabulous, amazing people, whose worth was so much greater than their weight, but they couldn’t see that. 

At the time,  it seemed like such a shame to me that they spent their lives denying themselves something they loved (like brownies or ice cream) in a fruitless attempt to change who they were. If decades of dieting never worked, then what was it all for?

Without understanding the ramifications of that way of thinking, I watched that happening and swore to myself that I would accept myself the way that I am and that I wouldn’t waste my life dieting and trying to be someone different. 

You can be sexy and beautiful, smart, and successful at literally any size. 

I was (and still am) way more into body positivity than I am into diet culture. 

How I fixed it: Therapy & Genetic Testing

23 & Me offers biomedical gene testing. Basically for about $99 and some spit in a tube, they can give you some medical insights on your DNA (These are also a bit controversial but I’m a big fan). Usually, people do this test to see if they’re a carrier for a major disease or disorder, or they do it to find ancestors or living relatives. 

One of the things it gives you in your report is what your DNA reveals about your weight. My report said that people who shared my DNA were not overweight. 

It’s kind of stupid when I try to explain it, but this was the first major shift in my thinking. 

That led me to a short stint in therapy (it took me 3 sessions) where we talked a lot about my views on weight loss, where they come from,  and how those views affect my behavior.  If you’ve never done therapy- I highly recommend it for any problem. It’s not something that’s done to you… it’s just someone asking you important questions at the right time for you to figure out the issue for yourself. 

For whatever reason, those two things clicked, and I haven’t struggled with that belief in years. 

Workouts Aren’t Necessary For Weight Loss (But They Are For Lots Of Other Reasons) 

I love reading. I love bubble baths. I consider the sloth my spirit animal. I have never once had to tell myself to slow down. I hate effort and sweating, and anything that hurts or is uncomfortable. I also hate things that don’t have an immediate benefit and get bored easily. 

So, I focused solely on optimizing what I ate for almost 2 years. 

In fact, I lost all 60 pounds without a consistent workout routine and only added in workouts (still fairly inconsistent) after I’d lost that weight. 

I considered workouts “not a today problem”. Once I figured out that weight loss comes mostly from diet, not exercise- I put all of my effort into healthy eating and knew that I’d get to the exercise eventually. 

When I did add in exercise, I prioritized saying yes to every possible form of exercise that sounded fun. I walked with trashy romance audiobooks, I took ice skating lessons, and ice skated with the Cutting Edge Soundtrack in my ear, I did a county tennis program, I did beginner wall pilates, I ballroom danced, I roller skated, and I biked. 

Fun fact: Nothing can touch the Oculus (Now called Meta Quest) for fun workouts- there’s an app called Supernatural on this VR headset that virtually transports you to the Swiss Alps, or the cliffs of Scotland, or other random breathtaking places in surprisingly realistic scenes where you box or break glowing orbs with weapon like batons. You feel a bit like Black Widow doing those workouts. 

Your Chronic Illness May Be Fixable.

I had always believed that chronic illness is something that happens to you, regardless of your choices, and that your actions have almost nothing to do with it. 

My mom and sister both have bouts of Atrial Fibrillation. I was diagnosed with it as well years ago and was told that I have a “trigger” for my A-fib. I only go into a-fib when I throw up, and it comes with ridiculously high heart rates (think 230). My cardiologist warned me that A-fib is one of those things that gets progressively worse as you get older. So while I may have episodes every few years now (only when I vomit), they may be more frequent later on, and may eventually happen when I don’t throw up. 

I got two medications and went on with my life. 

Then, over the years, the medications crept up… one for interstitial cystitis, one for GERD, and one for stomach pains after eating (that eventually turned out to be a simple intolerance that could be avoided). 

I have to give full credit for realizing this to Shawn Stevenson from The Model Health Show (#1 Health and Nutrition Podcast on Apple Podcasts) (this episode of The Model Heath Show is the best place to start). 

He’s got an awesome background where his wellness journey began with a devastating illness at the age of 20 – diagnosed with an incurable spinal condition known as degenerative disc disease that he was able to successfully reverse. 

I think Shawn struck me so much because he’s endlessly inspiring and encouraging while still being very relatable to me (he also grew up on McDonald’s) and he has a way of taking very complicated subjects and condensing them into easy-to-understand action steps. 

Shawn’s a nutritionist who has a USA Today Best Selling book called “Eat Smarter” that’s the best thing you can do if you want to get a crash course in nutrition. He also has a companion Family Cookbook that I was able to snag an early copy of and is so well used around here that it’s highlighted, marked, dog-eared, and covered in questionable (but healthy and delicious) sauce splatters. 

Shawn also led me to a book called The Afib Cure, by Dr, John Day and Dr, Jared Bunch which helped me understand that there’s a pretty clear path already laid out to “curing” afib and the “side effects” of trying to cure your afib, even if you’re wildly unsuccessful are… health and increased mobility and longevity. 

Fun fact: I’ve already seen some early success for “curing” my afib. 

I read that book early last year, and had an afib attack when I threw up from a stomach bug (because my a-fib has a vomiting trigger- I always go into afib when I throw up) about one month after implementing that book’s plan to the best of my ability at the time. After just one month, I was able to convert back into regular rhythm in the waiting room before I even got back to the emergency room, instead of being admitted to intensive care for a day or two until I converted back on medication as I’d always had to do.

Unfortunately (or fortunately?) I haven’t thrown up since, so I’m still waiting for further results. 

(UDATE: 3/12/24 After a long time of waiting to see if Veganism would work (because I have a vomiting trigger, which means I can only find out if all of this is working when I throw up)- I threw up from food poisoning on vacation in Colorado last week and I’m SO EXCITED to say that I didn’t go into Afib!)

Understanding the Minefield of Nutrition: No One Can Agree on What’s Healthy. 

Before finding Shawn,  even when I decided to eat healthy, trying to figure out what is actually healthy felt impossible. 

From misleading labels to different leading experts swearing that their diet is the only healthy diet. Specifically, the most confusing to me is low carb and keto versus low calorie, and whole foods versus sugar-free/fat-free everything. It’s easy to hop from one style of eating to another while you try to figure it out. 

I was lucky in that I could eliminate both keto and low carb easily since both my cardiologist and primary care physician warned me that low carb and keto diets are shown to make AFib worse. 

I did Weight Watchers with a lot of success (I’ll break down what helped with that below). 

Weight Watchers helped me easily prioritize healthy foods and because my husband and our best friends (all of whom are healthy weight and just love me a lot) did Weight Watchers with me, so we were all trying and sharing a lot of new recipes.

It was easy to learn to love vegetables with Weight Watchers as I tried new things and I adore their Greek yogurt-based dips (creamy Mexican is my favorite).

With Weight Watchers, it’s basically just an algorithm and epic database to help you read and condense nutrition labels quickly at scale. 

Meaning, that you don’t need to know a lot about nutrition if you can just understand that most of your meal needs to be built around their zero-point foods that you don’t need to even track (plain chicken breast, extra lean turkey breast, eggs, fat-free greek yogurt, all fruits except avocados, and all veggies (except potatoes) are zero points. You eat those things most and then add in other things to make meals and snacks to get to your daily points. If you go over, you have weekly points that you can use to roll over if you need them. 

This was successful, and I lost the vast majority of my weight on Weight Watchers. But it was super tempting to grab ultra-processed sugar-free or fat-free everything for low or no points. Because it’s free or low and “doesn’t count”. 

The other problem that came up here is that I found out I’m intolerant to both eggs and dairy while on this program (and it took me over a year to pinpoint what my intolerances were because that’s a journey all on its own). 

And zero point eggs were a major part of my diet. When I took out eggs and dairy, I ate more sugar free/fat free ulta processed foods to make up for the point deficit that not eating eggs gave me. 

This would be fine, except everything I’m learning and reading about both my diagnosed conditions and hereditary conditions are better controlled, prevented, or cured when eliminating those. 

I then shifted to eating more whole foods and eliminating ultra-processed foods and certain additives (I’m currently on that journey now). 

Substitutions Without Sacrifice: 

The hardest part of this journey was obviously, staying within the points or guidelines of whatever part of the journey I was working on. 

Similar to staying on budget, incentivizing helped me a lot here. 

The Weight Watchers algorithm worked well for me in the sense that it helped me to understand not to waste points on things I don’t care about. If I have a limited number of points to spend every day. I want them to go to things I really care about.

Which helped me learn to maximize and love those zero-point fruits and veggies and Greek yogurt so I could spend maximum points on chocolate and dessert. 

I also had a lot of success by adopting the habit of eating the healthiest thing on your plate first.

Making full meals on plates (rather than just the main dish and not bothering with veggies and sides) was really helpful for me too. I always start by eating the healthiest thing on my plate, then the next, and then finishing with the least healthy. This meant that I was incentivizing the healthier options for the thing I was most excited about eating. And erring on the side of nutritionally dense if I got full before I could finish. 

Another key point of success was finding my “craveables” (what I called healthy food combinations that I craved and loved as much as donuts and Big Macs. Once I identified them, I’d repeat them as often as humanly possible. 

Finding those food combinations that I loved and that didn’t feel like a sacrifice was a lot of work. Not gonna lie- this was its own journey for a picky eater. 

You know the old saying “You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince”, well same concept here. You have to buy, cook, and eat a lot of foods you hate before you find foods and food combinations that you love. 

I used an 80/20 Rule for cooking. I made 80% of the meals out of my “craveables” and the other 20% was exploring new foods or recipes to find new flavors or combinations that I liked.

I’d use restaurants to try new dishes because I figured that’s the best that dish could taste and it’s a good starting point. (Shout out to the vegan restaurant that made me fall in love with Jackfruit BBQ– you’ve done the impossible.)

Here are a few of the things that were on my frequently repeated meals list: 

• Mexican Bowls: Whether these were bowls or wraps, I loved brown rice, black beans, refried beans,  with chicken, steak, or pulled pork. And I’d top everything with fat-free Greek yogurt (instead of sour cream), fresh cilantro, diced fresh jalapenos, and diced red onions. 
• Chicken chili with Greek yogurt, cilantro, and green onions. 
• Caprese stacks– Beefsteak tomatoes with fresh mozzarella and basil, with a drizzle of balsamic reduction. 
• Eggs- scrambled with salt and pepper or with laughing cow cheese. 
• Raspberries with a dark chocolate chip in the hole- I felt like I could get full on 10 chocolate chips this way. 
• Chocolate banana peanut butter “nice cream”. This is RIDICULOUS. This is so good that it shouldn’t be legal. 
• Smashed avocados and salt and pepper with black bean chips (Aldi’s sells the best black bean chips and they’re high in potassium (which I try to get a lot of for my Afib). 
• Flank steak, pineapple and red peppers 
• Turkey or chicken breast in the air fryer with cranberry chutney. 

Note: Having a similar plan for what you’ll order at restaurants that you frequently go to or having a “healthy option restaurant” in mind for areas you frequent is really helpful too. 

Mine are:

• Chick-fil-A: Grilled nuggets and fruit or a side salad with honey mustard and add the grilled chicken to the salad.
• Chipotle – Rice, Beans, veggies, and chicken with avocado and tons of hot sauce.
• Cava- Half splendid grains, half rice, with lentils, hummus, chicken, avocado, coleslaw and Greek dressing on the side.
• Nicer restaurants: I’d focus on trying new fruits and veggies or healthier food combinations. 

Make Good Choices Easier than Bad Choices: 

Wherever I could, I set up my life so that the “easier” option was the healthier choice. This looked like the following for me: 

• I kept bananas, apples, roasted peanuts, and raisins in my office so if I got hungry, I could snack on them rather than walking downstairs and raiding the fridge. 
• Packing a healthy lunch the night before including fruits and veggies like carrots and hummus (or ranch seasoning and Greek yogurt) so it’s easier than going out. 
• Prepping the next meal at the current meal. If I was eating lunch, I’d prep the vinegar-based coleslaw or a side for dinner so some of the work was already done for dinner. 
• Writing down where I went wrong and avoiding that behavior. No sleep = poor food choices and a spike in points used. That helped me prioritize sleep when it didn’t always “feel” important. 
• Not keeping things in the house without nutritional value. That doesn’t mean my house is void of “treats”, but that I’d rather make a dessert or snack that has some additional nutritional value than down a few Oreos. 
• Keeping healthy craveable’s front and center in the fridge and keeping dark chocolate chips out of the line of sight in the pantry. 

Fast Food Is Addictive: 

 If I eat fast food (even one meal) it resets my cravings. If I go for a few weeks without fast food- It has no particular draw for me. But if I eat even a single meal, I go back to craving it. (This isn’t science- this is just my personal experience). 

 I had to just make the golden arches off-limits to me. It’s easier for me to avoid it altogether than to have it in moderation. 

Your Doctor Works For You: 

We often think because we don’t have stabbing pain or a broken bone that we can’t go to the doctor. But Doctor’s work for you. And you pay for their time. So just like you would book a meeting with an attorney if you had a legal matter you wanted advice on, you can book time with a doctor. 

Even if you just want to touch base and get their advice on the changes you’re making. 

However, all doctors are not created equally. I specifically look for and only work with doctors who are 1. Invested in healthy outcomes 2. Take the time to listen. 3. Believe in medicine as food and are encouraging of trying to control or even reverse problems with healthy eating* and 4. Willing to tell me things I don’t want to hear.  

*I’m a huge fan of medications in all of their forms – I’m not against medicine at all. But I am in whole hearted support of finding and fixing the core problem if possible so medicine may not be needed. 

You’re The Boss Of Your Body. 

My body was over here working overtime to work through the Big Macs and constant influx of Diet Dr. Pepper to not give me cancer and keep my heart beating optimally, and I’m over here hating it because it didn’t also give me a beach body while I abused it. 

You are the boss of your body, but your performance is reliant on your body’s performance or what it can do under your leadership. 

No offense, but you’re probably a crappy boss. I know I was. If your boss treated you the way you treat your body, I bet you’d be thrilled if some terrible ailment came down on him. Every day your body is just trying to keep your systems running and prevent major disease. If you don’t have those diseases- thank your body profusely and tell it you’re sorry you were a jerk to it and you’ll do better.  

Whatever you and your body face, it’s going to be easier to conquer when you work together. Give it what it needs to keep all systems running smoothly and treat it like the star employee that it is. 

This is a Journey. Not a Destination.

You will still have periods of weight gain, you will still have off days or even weeks. This journey is similar to budgeting and home management in that there is no “done”. You don’t get to have success or the accomplishment and then move on. It’s a lifelong journey of learning, maintaining, and adapting to new levels. 

When I started with budgeting, I thought “success” meant just paying off my credit card. As I up-leveled and got better and learned and adapted, success looked like financial freedom and owning my time. 

The same happened with home management, I thought “success” when I started meant keeping the dishes and the laundry from being backed up, but then I upleveled into having a house that’s actually decorated and clean and feels like a magazine to me. I up-leveled into sourdough baking and gardening and things I didn’t even know to want when I started. 

This has been similar in the sense that success has changed over time, when I started, I just wanted to lose weight, but then I upleveled into wanting to control or even reverse my A-fib. This journey feels way more complicated than my budgeting or home management journey though because there are more external factors like hormones and intolerances. 

Foundation: 

If you’re used to Hot Mess to Home Success, We teach you how to set up a foundational routine so it works with your unique personality. 

It’s the base of everything you do. In home management, the foundation is dishes, laundry, and schedule book (we teach you the hacks to set that up here).

Based on where I am now, Here’s the foundation I follow:

Track What You Eat. 

I still use WW to track points though I’ve cut out additives, some sugars, etc. I can still overeat on healthy whole foods (cashew queso is binge-worthy).

Plan out what you’ll eat the next day. Not having to track zero-point foods helps me a lot because rather than calorie or macro counting, I really only need to track about ⅓ of what I eat, since the majority is zero-point foods. 

Move at Least 22 Minutes Per Day. 

This can be walks, bike rides, oculus workouts, pilates, or yoga classes. 

Get at Least 7 hours of sleep every night. 

If I don’t get 7 hours of sleep, I prioritize naps above everything else to get me to 7 hours (this also has budgeting, relationship, and home management positive side effects). 

Side note: Technically, I didn’t need this, but I would also put water on the list of foundational habits. But I’m a big water drinker and that hasn’t ever really been a problem for me. 

Core Principles and how they adapted to my wellness journey: 

I know a lot about how to deal with unique personalities and a/b testing to find ways to work around (or with) my natural instincts to get the results I’m aiming for without needing willpower (which I don’t naturally have). 

Doing this for both home management and budgeting felt significantly easier to me than doing this for weight loss and healthy eating and exercise. It’s still something I’m a/b testing and working through, but here are some of the ways my core principles have adapted to this journey… 

Work with Your Unique Personality. 

• I’ll listen to my favorite playlist when I cook or watch a trashy show when I meal prep. 
• I romanticize every aspect of it. Aprons, candles, flowers, tea kettles… whatever makes me feel like the starring role in my own movie makes me happy to do it. So I double down on those things instead of considering them silly.
• Take photos of meals and send them to accountability partners- this can be your bestie, your mom, or your husband… Anyone who will understand that doing it is helpful to you and that you won’t worry is bothered by the photos. Some people just work better with external feedback, and getting a “looks good!” or “yum!”, may actually help you find more joy in the process.  Can’t find an accountability partner? Start a “What I ate in a day” Instagram page.
• Earn additional points by working out. The Weight Watchers algorithm does this naturally. 

Only Do the Things that Matter. 

The most important thing is foundation. Prioritize this always and don’t do extra unless and until you have foundation done for the day. 

Add in strength training and Cardio when you can, but food and sleep come first.  

*Interesting to note that home management foundation has to come before weight loss foundation or I tend to “lose control” of both quickly as a result. 

Master Things in the Right Order.

This is the order that I had success in but this list grows pretty consistently. 

1. Prioritize sleep
2. Ditch fast food 1st to get rid of the cravings. 15-minute meals were the only successful way I’ve been able to do this. 
3. Tracking (even if it’s way over points.)
4. Substitutions without sacrificing: Stick with combinations you love and overdose on them. 
5. Branch out and try new foods. 
6. 22 minutes of movement a day.

Resources That Were Life-Changing.

Weight Watchers: 

Works with virtually any “diet”- You can be a plant-based vegan and use Weight Watchers, you can be low carb and use Weight Watchers. It’s basically “shorthand” for a nutritional label regarding how many calories an item has versus how nutrient-dense and filling it is. Most foods that EVERYONE agrees are healthy (fruits and vegetables) are zero points. Lean meats like turkey and chicken breast are also zero points. This makes logging what you eat so much easier on Weight Watchers than traditional trackers like My Fitness Pal. 

They give you a set number of points to use based on your weight loss goals, plus additional points to use over the week if you go over. 

I’ve heard a lot about Weight Watchers being the epitome of bad diet culture. Granted, I didn’t use them or pay attention to them at all until 2018 when I started, and most of the complaints seem to be coming from the 80s and 90s. But I’ve seen nothing there that pushed an unhealthy diet culture. They’re really just an algorithm for reading nutritional labels.

I’ll make a note though that I’m not referring to the WW brand snacks and chips and things. I’m just referring to the app. 

Eat Smarter and The Eat Smarter Cookbook: 

Shawn Stevenson (the author of both Sleep Smarter and Eat Smarter, as well as the family cookbook above) has probably been the single most influential person in my entire wellness journey. I’m super grateful that I found him. He teaches healthy science-based nutrition of whole foods including meat and eggs that support your body’s systems. 

You can also find The Model Health Show (his podcast), anywhere you listen to podcasts. 

Supernatural With Meta Quest (Formerly Oculus) 

I can’t tell you enough how fun these workouts are. It doesn’t feel like a workout, it feels like training to be an Avenger. But it’s also very hard to describe, you can see what I mean here.

Important to note that Supernatural is $9.99/month additional even after you buy the Quest. 

Fitbit Sense 2.0

I have no idea how I lived without a Fitbit sense. From giving me helpful stress scores, to easily track my HRV every night (I track HRV overall as a way to get feedback from my heart to see how it’s adapting to the changes I’m making. I love doing this and have seen huge benefits from meditation, yoga, plant-based eating, and anything that brings me joy or makes me over the top happy. 

Full disclosure: I’ve had to replace my Fitbit almost every year for the past 3 years, and their customer service has gone down considerably over the years. But I’ve tried the other options out there and keep coming back to the Fitbit Sense because it has everything I need (including AFIB testing) and I prefer it over the other options. So I just budget to replace it every year and a half, knowing that it will probably die. They do give me a 30% off coupon when that happens. 

What I’ve Accomplished: 

When I started this journey- I started it at rock bottom. I was the highest weight I’ve ever been (258 pounds), and I went to get up from a chair and had to use the strength of my arms to get myself out of the chair, something I’ve watched mobility-impaired family members do before. It scared me. 

Yes, I lost 60 pounds, but I’m still considered to be overweight based on BMI. But the weight loss was just the tip of the iceberg, I’ve successfully weaned off the medication I was taking for GERD (with full doctor approval and advisement), and I’m in the process of weaning off the second medication for interstitial cystitis (also with full doctor approval).

I’m working towards a giant goal of preventing future AFIB episodes for as long as possible and would love ot wean off that medication as well, but we’re a long way off from that.

But I’ve had very early success with converting back on my own within 3 hours last time I had AFIB, instead of spending 2 days in the ICU like I usually have to do. 

(UDATE: 3/12/24 After a long time of waiting to see if Veganism would work (because I have a vomiting trigger, which means I can only find out if all of this is working when I throw up)- I threw up from food poisoning on vacation in Colorado last week and I’m SO EXCITED to say that I didn’t go into Afib!)

In that pursuit of that goal though,  I’ve done things I never ever thought I was capable of. 

I went vegan for just shy of 8 months based on the recommendation in “The Afib Cure”. I started eating meat again on a vacation where vegan choices were limited and non-vegan choices were free and amazing. Once I “lost it”, I found it difficult to go back. 

I’m on my second round of plant-based veganism now but made some adjustments based on what I learned last time. I still track Weight Watchers points (because you can overeat healthy foods too), I cut out ultra-processed foods, I cut out additives and the majority of my diet is actual plants in whole food form. 

That being said- I don’t think you need to be vegan. I wasn’t vegan when I lost weight, and I’m only interested in veganism because of my specific goals with Afib coupled with the fact that I need to omit eggs and dairy anyway due to food intolerance. 

While I don’t think giving up meat is particularly hard (I never had much taste for it anyway), eating this many fruits and vegetables is WILD and a massive accomplishment considering my background. And not eating Ultra-processed food is basically like winning the Nobel Peace Prize of my life. 

I found workouts and movement that I actually crave and enjoy. I get my 22 minutes of movement in almost every day. I feel stronger and don’t need to use my arms to get off a chair anymore. 

I’ve more than doubled my HRV from where I started, (which isn’t something I went into a lot here because it’s more for my Afib goal- but that’s a huge accomplishment). 

I have a long way to go. I’ve felt like I’ve been on the fast track for the past few years and wanted to share with anyone that’s been interested in what I’ve learned.

Help?

This is the largest group of like-minded people that I know. What I’ve seen this community accomplish in their home and budget has been nothing short of extraordinary. Part of my motivation in writing this is that I’m still on this health journey and still have missing pieces. 

A lot of you may be light years ahead of me in your health or nutrition journey and may have figured out things that I haven’t. 

So don’t be shy if you read something I wrote and have input or an idea that may help. 

You can comment below, email me at [email protected], respond to any of my emails if you’re on our email list where I give you personality-based home hacks every week, or tag me on social media (I’m most active on Instagram here, Facebook here, and may eventually get over to Tiktok more regularly). 

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