By LizF
I recently bought two new kitchen appliances: a beautiful red Kitchenaid hand mixer and a light blue MyMini waffle maker (more about these in another post). As I was trying to find a place to locate my new appliances, I came across a drawer that had all of my old Weight Watcher trackers. You know the kind, right? Before the digital age and apps? Cardboard sliders where you slide for calories and fiber (I even had the ones where fiber was allowed up to 12 grams!) and then another area where you slide for fats to calculate your point values. Strangely, I had about 10 of these (a few were the fitness sliders to calculate points earned). Or, maybe that isn’t so strange.
I stopped and restarted many times on Weight Watchers (and other diet plans) to lose weight. It’s the lifestyle change that I struggled with. I can count calories and points and exercise more, but everything felt like deprivation. And I think that feeling of deprivation was what got me to being overweight. I was trying to feed something in my soul, mentality, or identity. When I was in my 40s, my doctor warned me about my obesity - that it was going to impact me for the rest of my life. And I knew that. I didn’t want to be the weight I was at the time. So I subscribed to a diet, went to meetings, downloaded the app, and made all these resolutions and promises to myself to get healthier.
But I couldn’t lose weight.
And the weight has impacted my health: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, thyroid issues, fatty liver, and then recently a pre-diabetic diagnosis. That’s when it hit me. I have to change something.
As luck would have it, the nurse with whom I check in regularly (through my job’s health plan for benefit discounts) informed me about Virta.
I looked up the information and was intrigued. And scared. But I decided to try it, and my journey with Virta started in November 2022.
It might be too early for me to declare, “We have a winner!” But what I would like to declare is that this has been eye-opening. More so than any other diet. Is it the science behind it? Perhaps. But what is eye-opening is that I’m learning new ways (in my 50s!) to fuel my body. A ketosis approach seems to work for me. Learning about “insulin resistance” and “carb intolerance” suddenly makes sense.
I also feel like the coaching and the community with Virta are making a HUGE difference. Yes, I’ve done the group sessions and online community with other plans, but there is something so …. informative … about our community. I love hearing about people’s journeys because we are all different and have different reasons for our hows and whys.
Volunteering to help with the Virtaworks site and working with Denise and other community members has given me a zeal I haven’t had in a while. It has helped me focus more on the good things to eat and develop a passion for cooking, which I had never had before.
I hope this website helps inspire you to cook! The dishes Denise and you (in the community) have provided are delicious.
Let’s work it!
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