People just don't want to know the truth about my transformation!

[camillarizzoli]

Last year after I developed a chronic health problem I decided to do a lot of research into health, nutrition and so on to try and cure myself as doctors told me to basically adjust to life with constant illness and just take tablets for the rest of my life. It was a lot of trial and error but over time I found that some things really do work and that it is simple really although it did require me to change my lifestyle completely. It really came down to eating really healthy, all home cooked food, loads of veggies, giving up drinking, reducing stress, exercising 5 days a week, getting plenty of sleep, water, down time, and meditation. After sticking with the program for about 12 weeks my health improved, I lost weight, my skin glowed and I felt alive for the first time since my early 20's. It has been great and the results really do motivate me to keep it up. My transformation is noticed by my friends and workmates and many of them have asked me what I did but when I tell them their faces fall and their eyes glaze over its like they just don't want to know. Its annoying for me because it was hard work but everyone seems to want to think it was a medication, or a supplement or shake diet or that I've had work done when it was really just changing the way I live from top to bottom. I feel like they don't really want to know the truth because its just to hard to really change your lifestyle and it is but once you do it you really would never go back because it feels so great. I woner if without my health problems if I would ever have bothered so maybe that is a big motivator.

Why are people so reluctant to make these fundamental changes to their lives, why does everyone seem to want a quick fix and then roll their eyes at anyone who does make the change?

Ginger I am sorry you feel so bad about yourself and your health that you have to be so nasty to someone you have never met. I hope you can make some positive changes in your life, I am sure if you work on improving your health that you might less emotionally reactive. Even if you can't do it for yourself, do it for your baby. They deserve a stable, healthy mother who can help them to grow up healthy and well adjusted

Wtf OP!

I'm not a self imposed guru, why are you projecting on to me like this?

Because you've lost your empathy and that's what your projecting yourself as.

For ages you were exactly like everyone else you now criticise, put down and claim not to understand!

It took for you to have a health scare for you to change yet you're in you're expecting everyone else to have their epiphany without.

Think back to before your health scare to how you used to be. It's also not hard to realise if you hadn't had your health scare you'd not be on the path you are now.

I lost 6.5 stone because of a health scare. I'll not critisise others for not having had their epiphany yet because I've not lost touch with who I was before that time or believe I'm better than anyone else who hasn't got to where I am. I wouldn't have wanted a health scare but it's what worked for me.

You're coming across as everything I dislike, the type that make me feel bad, guilty, inferior before I lost the weight.

Guess what I did when I felt low...?

You're attitude will only serve to make those who have not found their motivation to feel worse, not improve themselves because it wasn't that many years ago you'd have done the same to me

Now tone it down, feel lucky your motivation found you, and remember you didn't find it.

yeah and people wonder why I kicked off, fine I'll put it a nice way.

dear OP,

congratulations on your transformation, the hard work and diet change has obviously paid off. You are a amazing woman who manages to do so much with so much little free time, with two children and a busy family life. You really are wonder woman, I wished I looked like you. So slender and sleek, I wish I could survive on blended carrotts and forget about cardiovascular training and just humm and yoga pose my way to a godess figure just like you. I applaud you, you truly are an amazing woman. Well done. I bow to your amazing bredth of knowledge on nutrition and excersise, your a far better woman than I. You amaze me.

Your ever loving internet buddy,

Ginger. Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

3. Weekly shop is about £100 or their abouts, My diet is vegetarian, lots of salads and uncooked fruit and veg but dinners are cooked. The main thing is lots of veggies and all cooked from scratch. I have a decent blender but I just use the hob and oven for cooking.

To me that sounds like a fairly unhealthy diet. You must eat more than just fruit and veg to meet all of your nutritional needs.

Listening to people's lifestyle tips can be pretty dull. Whenever anyone says "8 glasses of water a day" I just drift off. Or think that maybe they spend all day peeing.

I have a health problem. I eat zillions of vegetables and supplements and 10k steps daily. I spend at least three hours a day trying to be less ill. No one would have time to do that unless driven by need.

Op, you need to just smile and mutter "monkey glands".

If anyone asks me why I don't have wrinkles/lines, I tell them I drink the blood of virgins. I suspect they might actually believe me.

Op I'm with you and I really wonder why people are so nasty.

My cousin was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis last year.
It was bad, her hands swelled up so much she couldn't use a key board, all her joints ached and she was in a lot of pain.
The GP told her he refers several people each week to the hospital with RA.
The treatment is drugs, probably for the rest of your life.

The enlightened GP then mentioned that an exclusion diet may help.
She does the diet and her health is back to normal, if she lapses the pain comes back.

Too many of us want modern medicine to give us a quick fix.
Pills to lower cholesterol so we can carry on eating high fat foods, etc.

I don't think it's necessarily true that people want a quick fix. I know that certain of my health issues would be helped by, eg, not eating wheat. But food is a complex thing. For certain reasons relating to childhood abandonment, I cannot bear to be hungry at all. And I have what might politely be called a carb habit.

So it's great when people have some mastery over their bodies, but it can just throw into sharp relief that the rest of us have not.

All those naysayers here - get a grip. What's wrong with you?

From your point of view, no one should be living healthy lifestyles and letting the world know about it. I guess that's why we have a problem in this world with obesity et al. McDonalds pays millions in advertising money and their message gets blasted into your house whether you like it or not. There is no one big healthy brand that can do the same. People talking about healthy lifestyles is the only thing there is.

And you call such people smug???

FWIW - I am not thin. I would like to be but lack the discipline. DH and I work long hours, and are tired when we get home. We don't eat fast food, but we like hearty home-made dinners. Luckily for DH, he is blessed with good lean genes. I am not. I am hoping to change that this year and started personal training (as many of my colleagues have last year - and they look amazing now). I actually nearly missed my bus because I got distracted typing this - so maybe the unexpected sprint helps, too!

OP - I wouldn't listen to the negative people around you in RL and here on MN. Maybe taunt your colleagues. Play along with their game that you had something done with a glint in your eye. Let them pay for the lipo and tummy tuck instead.

I think the problem is with 'letting the world know about it'. I don't care about someone else's mega-healthy lifestyle. If, IF, they have a similar health concern to mine, it might be vaguely of interest. Unless they did it with homeopathy, in which case I'll stroke my chin. But it's far too easy for the lifestyle-superior person to come over as bloody smug.

One wonders why you joined MN to post this,

I haven't notice anyone on this thread saying we all shouldn't watch what we eat and take care of ourselves.

What sets OP apart is her desperate need to share her "journey" with people who clearly couldn't give a toss. When they ask, they're probably just being polite.

With each new post she demonstrates why her friends and colleagues find her boring.

The thing is, lots of people already do many of these things, they just don't go on about them, nor do they go on about their 'transformation'. I feel much better mentally and physically since I started eating regular meals (blood sugar stable), sleeping well every night and doing mindfulness, but I almost never feel the need to mention these things unless, for example, I was chatting with a friend who was genuinely asking my advice about their sleeplessness and then I might say what worked for me. Even then, I would say it's about finding what works for you.

I can't imagine that every day at the office people are clamouring for details of your 'transformation', I expect a few people said 'wow you've lost weight' and then as you say, they glaze over. This is a social cue telling you that that's the extent of their interest. People might gossip about plastic surgery for fun, and because people do have secret tummy tucks (a la Fern Britten)- one of my friends had her eyes done and people were asking her for ages why she looked so well, she didn't disclose.

I don't think anyone on this thread or indeed in your office doesn't agree sleeping well, eating right and exercising is a good thing. This post isn't about that, it's about how to manage relationships and that's where you could use some work.

I want to know what illness it is. I am awaiting a diagnosis and want to see if its the same thing I might have. Light at the end of the tunnel and all that!

What would you LIKE people to do when you tell them about your new lifestyle? Hang off your every word? Beg you to start a blog? What?

You have unmet expectations about this. Work out why you're disappointed every time someone glazes over.

My colleague insists on coming over to my desk and telling me every time she's been swimming, and how far she swam, and how good she felt, complete with eye-rolling pleasure.

I DON'T CARE

With each new post she demonstrates why her friends and colleagues find her boring

Sorry OP, I agree with this. Not sure why you came on to post, and wonder if in fact you might be goading people as the tone of a lot of your posts sounds made up.

As for saying ginger would be a better mother if she ate better and exercised more, words fail me.

(But maybe that was your intention, to rile people).

What an odd post, with some equally odd responses. Only on MN could it go from a fairly innocuous (yet random) post to accusing others of being bad mothers and having mental health issues!

Just noticed that despite the OP saying part of her new regime is that she now avoids using her computer at night, she actually started this thread at 22.22, so she's clearly so determined to evangelise about her transformation that she has broken her own self-imposed rule to do it.

stareatthetvscreen. I know it has :). I just thought I'd ask again so the OP might not just keep ignoring it.

What illness do you have?

Other than lack of self awareness?

If I were you op I'd be so bloody pleased with the results of my hard work I don't think anyone could dent my happiness.
If they are being sceptical about your explanation and gossiping that you had surgery or whatever then its because they are pissed off that you managed it. In wouldn't take any of it under my notice. I'd wink and say ' I could tell you but I'd have to kill you'. Its nobody's bloody business anyway. I don't go round answering nosey questions with anything more than light hearted responses.
I've been fat and I've been thin and honestly I find being thin really pisses people off, haters gonna hate
The thing is you need to detach from it.