Photos from Nutrition for Enlightened Parenting (not in order)
“I lost fifty pounds!” my friend said to me as I looked at this trans- formed woman whom I had met several years earlier. She and her husband are neighbors of mine for part of the year where I live in an idyllic hidden valley in the Canadian Rockies, the land of the far north surrounded by a circle of tall peaks reaching majestically toward the heavens, with the Columbia River close by, meandering through them. I come here to write and live as a hermit, but my neighbors are a welcome warmth to my solitary ways. I had not seen her for a few months, so I was taken by surprise.
To lose so much weight in a few months is very difficult, but she had to. The doctors told her that she was pre-diabetic and she needed to change, otherwise she would have many complications. She is in her mid-fifties. So she quit her job and started to seriously change her eating habits, to transform herself. She went through a regimented diet to avoid diabetes: nothing refined including sugar, no meat, eggs, milk or cheese, but wholesome foods such as grains, one tablespoon of olive oil per day, and legumes for her proteins. She became vegetarian, adopting a Hindu diet more or less, and the diet of most people in the Middle East, except that they eat lamb and other meat. She ate lots of chickpeas and lentils for protein, and she could eat pasta, bread, and cereal. One can look up this kind of diet in all sorts of books.