Since 2007, I have lost over 12 stone (76 kg) without dieting. I often get asked how I lost weight, so here is my story…
As a child and then into my teens I was always very skinny and acutely conscious of that fact. After I joined the army at age 16 I started to put on weight and from then I have always had an issue with both controlling my weight and sustaining any weight loss I did have.
There were periods in my life where I was at a healthy weight but for the most part I was overweight.
At around the age of 40-44, I was at my heaviest and weighed over 27 and a half stone (175 kg).
Up until that point the diets I had tried to control my weight (and there were many) never worked. Yes, I would initially lose weight but it would always come back on because I couldn’t or didn’t want to sustain it. I wasn’t willing to let go of the foods, like bread, pasta, chocolate, alcohol, cakes etc. that I knew to be the cause of my weight gain.
In 2007 things started to change. I began to attend the presentations of Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon and there I gained a better understanding of:
- How food truly affects my body,
- Why I choose to eat these foods,
- Why I choose to eat the quantity of food that I was eating,
- When I choose to eat these foods.
I had never been presented with this knowledge before and so with this understanding I was able to start making changes that truly supported me.
It wasn’t easy at first as I had to undo over 30 years of neglect and abuse. One thing that really helped me was to use ‘bridging’ as a tool. I knew if I came off a certain food ‘cold turkey’ it would be very hard to continue so, for instance, with something like coffee (I loved my cappuccino with chocolate sprinkles). I first started with decaf coffee, then after a while I went onto soya milk, then no chocolate sprinkles and then eventually no coffee at all.
Apart from alcohol, which I stopped straight away, I found that I could substitute all of the foods that didn’t support me and eventually come off them altogether. Trying to control my weight loss or sustain it wasn’t even a consideration at this point, it was more a choice to start to love and support myself in a way I had never contemplated before. Naturally, as a by-product of this new change the weight started to fall off.
What was also a big revelation for me was the fact that because I had started to express more and say how I truly felt I was losing even more weight. I wasn’t holding onto stuff as much so therefore my body could let go of it.
It has been 7 years now and when people find out that I have lost all this weight they are very surprised, mainly because I don’t have any sagging skin that is associated with a large loss of weight. I am able to share with them that the way I lost weight and kept it off it has been done gradually. I also share that if I had seen it as a diet then it would have become goal orientated and as soon as I reached my intended weight I would have wanted to celebrate, which would have resulted in going back to the foods that put the weight on in the first place.
I also share that I lost the weight without having to go through any rigorous exercise regime. My only form of exercise was walking at a normal pace for a minimum of 15 minutes and occasionally I went to the gym for weight training.
My weight at the moment is just over 15 and a half stone (99 kg) and the weight loss is an ongoing process.
So when I am now asked how I lost weight, I can express that I feel diets do not work, and that only by making it a ‘way of life’ can you truly succeed in controlling and sustaining weight loss.
By Tim Bowyer, Age 51, London Bus Driver
You may also be interested in:
How to Lose Weight (Unimedliving.com)
746 Comments
I wonder if we hide our sensitivity behind being overweight as we live in a society where being sensitive especially for a man is a sign of weakness not a strength. So we eat comfort food to put up a barrier between us and the outside world to somehow lessen the pain we feel.
It is never to late to make choices and change this life around, this is an awesome example.
“So when I am now asked how I lost weight, I can express that I feel diets do not work, and that only by making it a ‘way of life’ can you truly succeed in controlling and sustaining weight loss.” So true Tim. I know many who through making dietary changes a way of life have sustained weight loss for ten years or more. I also know those who ‘diet’ lose a lot of weight and then reverting to their old way of eating, put back the pounds and often more than they started with.
12 stone!! this is extraordinary and whats even more amazing is that this is for real, no yo diet here.
There is a huge difference in your gaze between one pictures and others. What I can see in your current pictures, Tim, is a sparkle in your eyes that is not found in the other ones. It seems that you have addressed your approach to food along with much more stuff in your life that has taken you out of the initial density you were living by not expressing yourself as you are.
It’s not only what food we eat, but how we feel while cooking, eating and living, as it is our whole way of living what nurtures us or not.