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My Testimonial to the Dakota Diet
I lost
120 pounds last year!
People
don’t recognize me. When I walk into a meeting, you can
almost hear their jaws hitting the conference table in
unison. “Ka-whump!”
My
friends wrinkle their noses and ask me, “Have you had that
stomach stapling surgery? Hypnosis? Do you have a terminal
illness?” They blink, they stare, they hug me. Then they
add, “Another diet? You’ll gain it all back you know – and
more.”
Just like
before. Like millions of others, I have tried a lot of ways
to lose weight:
The cabbage soup diet. After a
week or so my nose started twitching and I had an
uncontrollable urge to run through the neighbor’s garden
wearing only a fuzzy white tail.
The grapefruit diet. Sometimes
a variation called the grapefruit and hard-boiled egg diet.
It took me a long time to look at either of them and not
gag.
The Air Force diet. If everyone
in the United States Air Force went on this diet, they’d
have to increase the amount of weight allowed on military
aircraft. NO FAT! Plenty of pancakes, pasta, bread and rice.
No butter, no syrup, no pasta sauce.
The tired, old no-carb, low-carb
plan. It didn’t work back in the 1970’s and it doesn’t work
now. It turned me into a sugar/fruit/pasta addict. It made
me buy candy bars and eat them in the car where no one would
see me.
Does all
of this sound heartbreakingly true to you?
It is my
belief that sometimes you have to walk through hell to know
what heaven looks like. When I showed up in Dr. Kevin
Weiland’s office, he was brutally honest. He knew someone
like me had played the diet game for a long time and I was
right in the middle of a medical crisis. He could see high
blood pressure, diabetes, osteoarthritis and premature death
in my future.
I
hesitate to call Dr. Weiland’s healthy eating plan a diet.
Diet has always been an evil word to me and to hundreds of
others who have been designated as “overweight or obese.” A
few years ago I saw my medical record. It said, “Morbidly
Obese.” Talk about a wake up call! I needed to do something.
Unfortunately most professionals offered the same tired old
advice. STOP EATING. I used to always nod and say, “I’ll
try,” but knowing I wouldn’t.
But Dr.
Weiland didn’t say that. He described a diet that’s more
like a total change in attitude rather than just an eating
(not-eating) plan. It’s so simple and easy, anyone can
follow it. He started me out with a daily limit and told me
to get a good calorie guide and provided a chart on which to
record anything I ate or drank. He recommended eight to ten
glasses of water a day…..and to record that along with some
exercise – EVERY DAY!
Okay, so
that was the hardest. But I did it. I parked a little
farther from the supermarket entrance. I walked my energetic
terriers – or they walked me if I lacked enthusiasm.
Are you
sitting forward in your chair yet? Have I teased that little
desire you have to change your life? Please open you mind.
This also could be the answer for you.
Have you
seen photos in displays of Native Americans or Indigenous
People in museums? Or looked at the historical depictions in
history texts? In my mind, it is a photo of a
straight-backed man wearing traditional deerskin clothing
decorated with bones, shells and beads.
Imagine
the Lakota people sitting around a campfire to share buffalo
meat that is both high in protein and low in fat. No
hormones were injected into the meat. This was true of the
antelope, deer, prairie chicken, ducks, geese, rabbits and
other protein sources as well.
The meal
may have included native fruits and vegetables. No one sat
around and watched television or played video games. They
didn’t drink soda pop or eat potato chips. And they did
physical WORK, and worked hard. They followed the buffalo
herds and harvested the meat, then preserved it for the
winter. THEY WEREN’T OVERWEIGHT!
More and
more nutritionists urge people to eat lean meats, limit
flour and sugar; eat fresh, unprocessed vegetables and
fruits; and get moderate exercise. Why does Dr. Weiland’s
diet work when other plans don’t? Because it is
uncomplicated and doesn’t make me feel like I’m suffering
through a long ordeal while depriving myself. I don’t have
to eat sugar – I eat fruit instead. I’ve replace potato
chips with carrot stick I dip in salsa. And when I carve
some protein I drag out my cookbook and fix a buffalo roast
with oven browned onions, carrots, and squash. I give myself
a little pep talk every morning before I step on the scale.
It hasn’t disappointed me all year. Thank you, Dr. Weiland,
for providing a way to make this possible. My life will
never be the same.
P. K.
Rudge
Rapid City, South Dakota |
