Rochelle Hanson/ARDEAN PETERS

By Rochelle Hanson

Are you a perpetual dieter? Most people I know have been on a diet at some point in their life. Some will achieve success, but most will not. Even if they do, most people who lose weight on crash diets will gain it all back. Sometimes they will even be worse off than when they first started.

So why even bother? Why go through the hassle of counting calories and restricting portions when you don’t have to? Aren’t there better things we could be doing with our time? I am not a nutritionist. I am not a doctor, nor am I a dietician. I have no gimmicks to sell and there is no catch to what I am about to say here. My name is Rochelle, I am a regular person, and I know that diets don’t work. The solution people need is a lifestyle change.

I was never the type of person who obsessed about my weight. I’ve always been on the thicker side of life, but I was OK with that. I wore Size 14 for years, but it never occurred to me that my weight was an issue. I’m 5’9″ so I carried the 185 lbs. very well. I was happy inside, and people liked me.

When I went away to school, I started dating, I had a sweet smile, I was talented. Life was good. In fact, life was so good that ice cream was a side to every meal in university. Although I was mostly vegetarian, McDonald’s Fillet-O-Fish was my sweet passionate addiction. Exercise? Truly a foreign concept. I was one of those people who never even bothered to get on a scale. I also avoided going to the doctor to get regular checkups once I left school. I honestly had no idea about what was going on with my body and it never occurred to me that this was a negative thing. I’m sure you’re nothing like me, but maybe you know someone who is.

It wasn’t until my aunt died of breast cancer that I started to think about my health. And I didn’t even start to take action until a few years after her death, when I realized I had a sizeable lump on my body in the same place. It was a good two inches wide. Not something to be ignored. Now please, don’t be alarmed. I got it checked out, and I do not have cancer, but I definitely don’t ever want to get it.

Besides the fact that my free spirit could never be restricted to the typical starvation diet, I knew good and well that dieting would not prevent me from getting diseases. One day I was at my friend Karen’s house. She had some information on free radicals and cell damage. Her mother was promoting some products that are said to help with these things.

After reading that information I wanted to know more, so I started searching on YouTube to find out what people were saying. To make a long story short, I came across a video by Sean Croxton from Underground Wellness. He was talking about coconut oil, its benefits, and how it has been given a bad rap for no good reason. This video totally peaked my interest. I went out and bought a book entitled, “The Coconut Oil Miracle” by Bruce Fife. That is the book that changed my entire concept about dieting, health and wellness. If you want a review of the Coconut Oil Miracle, Watch me speak about it in this video.

Starving yourself in order to lose weight is not going to work. If you are hungry, your body is trying to tell you something. After adding coconut oil into my diet, I was introduced to raw foods by Natasha St. Michael. We don’t know each other in person. She also has a video on YouTube about coconut oil. At the end of the video, she plugged her monthly raw food challenge. I decided seven days on raw foods probably wouldn’t hurt, so i gave it a shot. This is what completely changed my world. With the coconut oil and the raw foods combined, I lost about 30 lbs in three months.

And I know it was the food because all I did for exercise was walk. I felt like a new woman, and everything in life was sweeter in every way. This may sound like an exaggeration but it’s the truth. I have nothing to gain here!  At some point after the third or fourth month I started adding regular cooked food back into my life on the weekends, simply because I wanted to. I’m not a complete vegetarian, I’m not a die hard meat eater, I just eat a lot of raw living food, and I try to give my body what it seems to be asking for. This journey began in May 2010. It’s been over a year now, and I can’t see myself ever going back.

If you are at all interested in this simple, practical approach to natural health and wellness, you are more than welcome to connect with me on my new blog for Simply Natural Ideas.  If you take nothing else away from reading this, please remember, dieting is much more stress than it’s worth. A balanced healthy lifestyle change will take you on a journey you will definitely not regret.

Rochelle Hanson is a freelance writer and natural health enthusiast, offering practical tips on natural health and wellness. For recipes and practical tips connect with Rochelle on Facebook or her blog at Simply Natural Ideas.

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