Getting skinny – it’s a billion trillion quadrillion dollar industry the world over.
Our lifestyles are not making us fit or healthy they are making us fat. Routines and boredom, lack of time and stress, low self-esteem and unhappiness, the sheer abundance of junk food and hormones (oh those hormones) all conspire to make us fat. Our lives make us fat. To get skinny, fit and healthy you have to go to Italy.
I say Italy because that’s where we went and that’s what happened to us. I guess the same results could be possible in another place but I only know what I know from experience. I’m pretty sure the same thing probably wouldn’t be possible in America or the UK where the quality of food is low, the quantity of food is high and activity levels are miniscule. It probably wouldn’t happen in Australia for the same reason. I really think it needs to be a country that doesn’t have a franchise, take-away culture. It also needs to be a country where there is an obsession for local and high quality food.
You also need to be completely out of your routine and your comfort zone. Distracted from your habits.
Italy doesn’t do takeaway food. It doesn’t have any of the standard addictive grease/sugar/fat franchise burger or chicken joints that dot Australian street corners, shopping malls and service stations. It may have one in a large city and the occasional servizio may have one amongst the busy panini and pizza outlets where Italians will shun instant gratification for a salami and cheese roll. Otherwise, none. Italians don’t embrace the grease and calorie culture that has taken over elsewhere There is little to no takeaway food advertising – television adverts or billboards. Combine that with the fact that Italians eat consciously ie they don’t eat and run – they sit down, enjoy the food and enjoy the social event of dining and you have a society that’s slim and healthy.
The Italian diet is fresh and local. Unlike our food which has been frozen or refrigerated, shipped, and stored for long periods before being priced at twice what it’s worth, Italian food is fresher, cheaper and bursting with flavour. It’s the flavour that makes you want to eat slowly and indulge in the joy of eating.
And when you have eaten you don’t crave more, you don’t feel heavy and lethargic and best of all, you don’t crave dessert.
Italian supermarkets don’t heave with shelves of sweets and chocolates. Even the largest supermarkets have an area of sweets less than the length of my arm. There are chips and biscuits but even they are less sweet, less flavoured and less addictive than we are used to.
We lose weight eating liqueur chocolates, fresh cheeses, salamis, bread, crackers, pasta, rice and olive oil every day and local wine and beer every night. In short, we didn’t diet but the food we ate was fresh and local. We were busy and happy. We felt vital and alive.
I exercise every day at home and I have for years. I alternate between high level cardio and yoga/pilates for strength and flexibility. I also eat badly and often, and blame hormones. Hormones may have had something to do with how much of my food I stored as fat, but hormones are not responsible for how much fat I ate or how frequently I ate it.
I took my hormones to Italy with me and still lost weight.
I was bored at work, unhappy with my life and eating for comfort. This is a recipe for disaster and if I didn’t accept my errors and change them, I was going to end up obese with all of the health issues that come with obesity. I didn’t go to Italy intending to lose weight but I knew that a change of lifestyle would be a great starting point.
We broke our routines. We hiked five days out of seven, varying between pushing ourselves a little and idling along. I did yoga or pilates for flexibility on every floor in every accommodation we stayed in. I used bedspreads as a yoga mat and spent my hour trying not to have my feet slide so far backwards that I split in half on the slippery floors. On rest days we sat around and worked on our laptops, read or just looked out at the view. Some days we hardly got out of bed before lunch and wasted the rest of the day having breakfast.
We didn’t become exercise junkies whilst in Italy but we did take advantage of having the time and the desire to be out enjoying the scenery.
Neither of us in in absolutely perfect physical shape but we managed our issues and didn’t use them as an excuse.
All in all, it was the easiest and most enjoyable weight loss we have ever achieved. I know that anyone no matter who they are or what condition they are in, could achieve some weight loss living this way because it’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle choice,
