It’s About Your Body

There are usually more ads about shaping up right after the holidays, but they’re out there all year ‘round, on every media platform — fitness models, fashion models, celebrities, all telling you how to get that Perfect Body.

Well, first of all, I’ve worked in fashion and beauty for many years and I can tell you candidly, I’ve never seen a perfect body. I once hired a model with a nearly perfect body. She had a long neck, elegant shoulders and collarbones. Her body was slender and graceful, her waist was small, her stomach flat, her hips were a flawless inverted heart and her legs were long and perfectly turned. And she had severe acne on her back.

I’ve been reluctant to write about the hard part of making the most of your potential because I want this blog to make you feel good about how you look, how you present yourself and most of all, how you feel about yourself.

While I was away on vacation, I thought a lot about the direction I want to take with this blog. I really want to help people, otherwise, what’s the point? I realized that if I’m going to actually help, I would be doing you a disservice if I withhold much of the knowledge I have gained— because, like everything in life, it’s not all about the fun things.

There’s no magic in making the most of yourself. You can’t buy it in a bottle and you can’t make a wish. Developing your physical potential is just as hard a developing your mental capacity.

I hope you’re not rolling your eyes and thinking, “Here we go — Diet-’n-Exercise.” Well, what I have to say is a little more sophisticated than that and I’m going to devote a multi-week series to it.

I’m not going to start by offering you a diet. I’d like to talk about nutrition and my own experience. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions. Then, you can choose to act on it, now or later, or ignore it if you wish. I’ll still love you either way.

As I entered middle age, what had once been easy became harder. Maintaining skin and muscle tone, keeping a good complexion and controlling weight all grew harder. 

I was under no illusions. Getting older meant fine lines and a few wrinkles. I didn’t actually mind (that much). I knew I was still an attractive woman and I felt good about myself.

What I hadn’t expected was rosacea that made red bumps on my face that looked like little pimples that took months to heal, even with prescription medication. Because I’d always exercised, I didn’t expect chronically sore muscles and stiff joints. I didn’t expect never-ending allergies. There were a lot of things I didn’t expect and I hated them all.

Then I started reading about Inflammation and all of the things it does to your body — all of the little annoying things I mentioned above and more, plus contributing to the development of cancer, heart disease and many other serious medical conditions.

I looked into this and discovered that it has been scientifically proven that a diet high in meat, fish, eggs and dairy contributes significantly to this insidious inflammation.

WHAT?!! I like vegetables, but I’m also a huge carnivore. Over the years, whenever I needed to drop 5 pounds or so, I went on a high protein diet. For a few weeks I’d live on steak, fish, eggs and cheese. I maintained a fit weight for years by this method.

I started doing a little research, then a lot, about this matter of inflammation and the harm it does, but I remained unconvinced about the the harm of a carnivorous diet until, as a dedicated animal lover, I learned about heart disease in gorillas and other great apes in zoos. The males particularly, but also the females, were dying from cardiac disease, just like humans.

Because gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos all have impressive canine teeth, zoo keepers and veterinarians had always assumed that apes were omnivores. Without getting into all of the details I read about it, I found that they finally discovered that apes in the wild do not eat meat. Their ferocious teeth are meant for display and fighting, not tearing into meat.

This has all been very recently recognized, most of it in the past five years. Throughout the world, most zoos have stopped feeding meat to their apes. Cardiac disease has dropped dramatically among the younger apes and improved in the older, sicker animals.

Understanding that I, too, am a great ape finally convinced me that what was good for them, might well be good for me. I decided to give a plant-based diet a six-week trial (cutting out all animal, fish and dairy products). Here’s what happened:

The first week, I wasn’t crazy about everything I was eating. I ate the fruits and vegetables I’d always loved and discovered that beans, lentils and other legumes provide satisfying, high quality protein. I also had to sort through plant-based milk substitutes for my coffee. This was a very big deal. I run on coffee.

I was having gas issues because my gut was unaccustomed to the amount of fiber I was consuming. I lost 1 pound (not much by crash diet standards, but a pleasant surprise). And I really wanted a burger.

Week Two: I had settled on my dietary choices and was actually enjoying my food more than I had during week one. Then the pay-offs started to happen. I was dropping a lot of fluid. My gut began to adjust to the fiber and my belly flattened out. 

Like most people, I have overhead lighting in my bathroom. As I stepped out of the shower, my cellulite was always on full display. Then one morning, I noticed that my thighs appeared noticeably smoother. Really? Yeah! It was real and it continued.

In the following few weeks my rosacea DISAPPEARED. It vanished! and my skin got so smooth and even-toned that people actually commented on how beautiful my complexion looked — without makeup.

By the sixth week and beyond, my thinking got clearer, joint and muscle pain steadily and significantly declined and the persistent muscle cramp in my lower back has disappeared. 

My frequent afternoon headaches have gone away, my dry eyes are moister and the whites are whiter and my nose has stopped running. Rough, dry patches on my arms and legs have healed and been replaced by the skin I had years ago. And I’ve slowly but steadily continued to lose weight.

I’ve decided to stay on my plant-based diet. I continue to notice benefits to my health and appearance. I haven’t had a physical check-up since I began my new regimen, but when I do see my doctor in a couple of months, based on what I’ve observed, I expect my blood-work to show improvements in several key areas.

I know that all of this sounds a little fantastic, but it’s all true and I’m not selling anything to anybody. I’m just sharing what happened when I started this new way of eating.

I’m not going to lie, I still miss fine cuisine and meat, ice cream and all kinds of tasty junk food. I probably always will, at least a little bit, but the payoff has been worth the self-control.

Next week I’ll delve a little deeper into the specifics of this type of nutrition. I hope you’ll stay with me. Just like you, I hate it when people start band-wagoning me, so I’m not going to do that. 

I’m not going to preach. I’ll just tell you about my own experience and give you some information about what has been scientifically proven.

- Gabrielle