My 'Accidental' Weight Loss Success

A few years ago, I was eating a pretty healthy vegetarian diet with plenty of wholegrains, wholemeal bread, lentils and pulses, nuts, lots of fruit and vegetables, whole milk, eggs and a little cheese and other dairy products.

And I was FAT. Not disastrously obese, but still more than 20lbs overweight … making an effort for weight loss … but not losing any. And I was baffled. The doctor could find nothing wrong with my diet. The health-and-fitness instructor at the local gym said it was fine.

I stepped up the exercise every day, but it made me feel so much hungrier halfway through the morning that I’d binge on toast and peanut butter or wholemeal cookies.

Then I got a new job working in another country in Europe – Germany, to be specific. I was pretty nervous about many things but one of the things I was really worried about was what would happen to my weight with all that heavy German food.

I moved, started my new job, started eating the local food and what do you know? The weight started coming off. Slowly but surely I lost pound after pound until I’d lost more than fifteen of the 20lbs of my overweight. And that was without restricting my food intake!

Recently I spoke to a nutritionist and my ‘accidental weight loss success’ came up in the conversation. She got interested and took some details and then a few days later gave me an informal analysis.

While I was in Germany I ate mostly heavy rye bread (pumpernickel), not my usual ‘fluffy’ wholemeal bread. The nutritionist diagnosed that apart from the fact that pumpernickel is more satisfying, I might be sensitive to the yeast in ordinary bread and switching to unleavened bread could be helping me digest food better which helps with weight loss.

I breakfasted on a brand of German yogurt which was very creamy and tasty. This was an organic yogurt but more importantly it contained several lactobacillus cultures. At the time I just thought this would help ‘keep me regular’ but it turns out that having a healthy community of lactobacillus in the intestine can help with weight loss too.

In Germany I didn’t get so hungry for cookies and sugar. The nutritionist asked if I’d been eating anything with a lot of minerals or vitamin C in it. The answer was that it was summer when I went out there and I’d been eating a lot more fresh fruit – raspberries, strawberries, blackcurrants – and a lot of the local potatoes (which are delicious!) The nutritionist pointed out that locally-produced fruit and veg have more of their vitamins and minerals intact, and fruit and potatoes supply extra vitamin C, which can help reduce sugar cravings.

Now that I’m not in Germany any more I still make sure I’m eating ‘my kind of’ yogurt, unleavened bread and a much wider variety of fruit and vegetables. I take a few vitamin and mineral supplements now and then but mostly rely on an acai-berry capsule to provide some exotic added value to my diet.

Sometimes the first step in weight loss is just about swapping your food around and boosting a few nutrients and your body settles into a happier pattern. My experience proved for me that we all have different dietary needs and sensitivities, and you should experiment a little to find out what suits your body best.