I’m Back! Here’s what happened...

[Music] hey guys it's heather the butterfly effect plant-based weight loss and i'm back did you miss me i missed you guys and i'll tell you the truth when i made that last video last october i had no intention of it being like my last video for this long i can't even believe that it's almost been a year and so wow it's so cool to be back you're probably wondering why i stopped making videos and if you're looking at this video you can probably get a clue it was because i had gone from what the original intention was of making this channel which was to get support for my own journey to take off 300 pounds to becoming [Music] somewhat of um a person who thought that she knew what she was doing and people asking me for advice um and that was just making me really uncomfortable because i was struggling um during that time right so i reached my goal weight on october the 18th 2017 and i maintained it for only a couple months before i started going back up on the scale you recall that there was a lot of stuff going on um i had surgery a couple of surgeries um just lots going on then and lots going on now right um so my last video i made i was i you know i had i had gained a lot of weight i had gained over 100 pounds um during that time and i stopped i just handled it really poorly by just stopping telling you guys how much i weighed and um just hoping you wouldn't see you know that would be a flattering angle or i don't know what i was thinking but um i was you know i've always been honest that i am i i still don't have all the answers at all i know what to do let's see if this sounds familiar to any of you i know what to do but i don't always know how to make myself do it and i was able to make myself do it for a really long time right and so i thought i had that down too but it turns out that there's a lovely adage that um i really like that i feel like describes the weight loss journey weight loss journey is like being on a narrow path with a like three or four foot drop on either side of it so there's a ditch on one side there's a ditch on the other and then you're on this narrow path and as long as you are on that path you're great but you're only ever two feet away from begging back in that ditch right like if you take it for granted if you start to allow exceptions basically if you stop doing what you did to take off the weight you find yourself right back down in that ditch right the other side of it though is a beautiful thing and that is you're only a co you know if you've fallen in that ditch you're only a couple of feet from being right back on track right you don't have to sit there in the ditch and cry and think about how this is your life now this is your ditch life right you can choose to get back on that track anytime you want to and if you fall again you have a choice you can again sit in that ditch or you can get right back on track you can just call it an education call it a misstep call it whatever you want to but the important thing is to get back to it and so that's what happened to me i um i lost weight that in a way that wasn't necessarily very sustainable and i'm not talking about the sofas free i'm going back to sofas free that really does work it really is sustainable um i'm talking about the fact that i was doing a lot of fasting i was doing a lot of fasting i wasn't necessarily sharing all of that with you guys on this channel but i did two long fasts i did one that was 21 days long i did another that was 17 days long and i did lots of short fasts i would do you know typically while i was taking off weight i would fast one or two days a week and i do believe in fasting for some conditions um but weight loss isn't one of them so fasting is great like medically supervised fasting at a recognized location that does that like true north in santa rosa or dr gracie's in ohio or dr sabatino's in florida or someplace where it's safe fasting escape i know that there's a place in l.a um dr gershweld there are places you can go to do a medically supervised water fast and those are great for like taking care of hypertension taking care of type 2 diabetes all of those things right um even cancer that's why originally i started the long fast because i was trying to heal the tumors in my lungs i had nine tumors over three lobes of my lungs and i was trying to make them go away and i was guided by a naturopath who believed in fasting and it you know as far as i know it kind of worked i had nine tumors over three lobes of my lungs um now they can only they won't say that they're gone but they say they can only find five of them and the biggest one had been 1.4 centimeters and now it's half that size so it's 0.7 centimeters um so and that was the last cat scan i had which was a long time ago so i'm due for another one in december so anyway i'm just saying i do think it helped quite a few things and the only i just don't think that fasting is a great way from for me anyway to um achieve weight loss it had a lot of benefits um when i did it and um i definitely won't do it again as an outpatient not more than i would never fast for more than like one or two days um as an outpatient anyway i'm going off track here but what i'm what i'm trying to say is i was doing all that fasting and it was um helping me get the weight off because you know it was like fewer calories over the course of a week and i was taking off weight really rapidly if you remember sometimes i take off three pounds sometimes i take off five pounds some of that was water fluctuation but some of that was just as a result of the fasting and i was also losing really consistently week after week and some of that was because of the fasting and so you're probably thinking like if it worked so well why aren't you still doing it that's exactly it you can't keep doing it i mean it's really really difficult to continue to do that right like it's difficult to fight your body um i also don't think it's very good if i look back at some of those videos i look pretty um old and tired to myself like it look more wrinkly but it just i just have this kind of haunted hungry look in my own eyes that i see um so anyway that's why that's why i don't do that anymore and i also read dr greger's book how not to diet and read some of the dangers of fasting that i've beaten the long-term fasts that i did not know um and i realized i was taking some chances with my health and i was doing it for a good reason at the time i thought but um a lot of it was motivated by weight loss and i just don't think that's a good way to lose weight for me it caused me to want to binge again it um it was just a really disordered way of eating and what i needed to do is learn how to just eat healthy portions of healthy foods right so how bad did it get this is the confession time i got back up to 325 pounds 326 i think it was up yeah so my highest weight you guys know was 436 so i'm proud that i kept off 110 i didn't gain back all the weight i sure gained back a lot though a lot 200 pounds is incredible so you know um what was i eating to gain back all that weight i'm sure you're asking yourself or will be asking me vegan junk food i live in portland oregon we have a whole lot of vegan restaurants we have vegan options at almost every restaurant and i'm a really good cook i'm a really good vegan cook and so i was using a lot of the process things and um making them you know using the excuse that i was making them for my family really that's what it was um but anyway yeah that's what that's what it was i no longer paid attention to the sofas i was eating flour i was eating products i wasn't cooking with oil but i was eating products that contained oil without worrying about it you know the fake cheeses the fake um sausages uh impossible burgers are loaded with fat um i was just eating all of that i was that's i was making i was eating a healthy food too and um but i was eating a lot of that fake um like the dairy-free ice creams eating a lot of sugar containing things so that's what happened um they say well if you have a food addiction that or any kind of addiction while you're on plan your addictions in the corner doing push-ups like it doesn't go away it just goes into remission i don't know if i believe that um but i do know that i stopped doing what was working and it stopped working and the weight came back really fast um i don't want it to sound like it's just been a eat whatever you want party this whole time because it has not at all um i never stopped fighting to try to get back on track never stopped i would have two and three and four good days and then i would slip and have a little you know a little period off plan and again and again and again the problem is that when you're eating poorly you put on weight really quickly and when you're eating well you take off weight really slowly and so that's exactly what i was experiencing and i would never um be able to to sustain a good streak long enough to stay on track until very recently which is one of the reasons that i'm back frankly i had to prove it to myself by taking off like i'm like all right when you've got 10 pounds off you can go back and make a video um you know i named my channel the butterfly effect because i think about i thought about caterpillars and how caterpillars all they do their whole lives is just eat they wake up in the morning i think they must think about eating what they can eat that day they eat all day long and that's what they do you know and they crawl around and they live their little caterpillar lives and they just eat and there was a time in my life when eating was the only fun thing i had to do i was broke i didn't really have a boyfriend i didn't um i had friends but they were friends who also like to eat who doesn't like to eat right and so um eating was my entertainment eating was everything to me at one point in my life and i thought of myself as like that little caterpillar like eating is everything and when i um knew that i needed to change i knew it had to be an in-depth change you know when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly they don't just go hang out on the cocoon they have to turn into like a goo they they literally like their bodies liquefy inside that cocoon so that when they come out it isn't just a little change it's a complete transformation and i knew that that's what i needed for myself i needed to change the way i thought about food to think about food as fuel rather than ask fun i needed to find other ways to make myself feel better when i didn't i needed to believe in myself and not give up on myself i needed to stop lying to myself all the lies we say like this doesn't matter or i'll get right back on track tomorrow or all the things that i was lying to myself about i really needed to change at depth i really needed to go take some time go into a cocoon and and get the weight off and be and become a butterfly and become a butterfly be the real be my authentic self that's what i think of as becoming a butterfly is when you're really expressing who you are in your heart of hearts um and i got a taste of having a body that works i got a taste of feeling healthy i got a taste of wearing smaller clothes that were cute and not just picking the clothes that just fit right like you don't have as many options when you're a larger size it's kind of like will this fit on my body and so i got a taste of all of that and i really really really liked it i really liked it a lot um i didn't stay a small size i played probably stayed under 200 pounds further for about a year and even just even just being under 200 pounds was wonderful was amazing i got to do all kinds of things i went to disneyland i got to ride on all the rides i went to universal studios with my friends got to visit california did all kinds of stuff did a lot of traveling it was wonderful all the things that i couldn't really do very easily when i was so large and i got to wear cute clothes and i got to feel good in them i was walking like five miles below in my own mind um just all kinds of things that i never thought that i could do i got to do those and the only thing that i can tell you is uh it is absolutely humiliating to go back up and wait in front of everyone it was kind of as fun as it was to go down and wait and you know have a loss week after week and the attention i got i was in forks over knives magazine um i was in woman's world magazine you know all that attention that i got and then i saw it like this is it's my it's my decision right like i sought that attention because i really wanted people to be vegan i really wanted to tell people that were you know three and four hundred pounds that there's hope that you can do it too that you're not helpless that you're not too far gone and that the right way to do it is to be vegan so that we can save our planet and so that we can save our animals and so you can save your health and that vegan is the right way to do it be a plant-based eater and you will take off weight i wanted i wanted to spread that i sought the opportunities to spread that message because it's really important to me and i really did believe it but because i sought so much attention whether it was for a good reason or it was vanity or whatever it was it was really super hard and i'm not gonna cry i'm not gonna do it i've already cried on camera too many times but it was really super super hard to put the weight back on as you can imagine and to feel helpless um and i'm not helpless i know exactly what to do i just have to make myself do it so i did a lot of soul searching and i decided that what i would do is i would come back out here and i would tell you that i weigh 214 pounds excuse me i wish i weighed 214 that i weigh 314 pounds and that i am back to being sofas free which is no sugar no oil no flour no alcohol i've taken all of that vegan junk food out of my diet not eating it anymore um and i need to come on here and post regularly you guys were my accountability i when i was hiding when i was isolating out of you know just not wanting to face what was going on everything got worse everything got worse it accelerated i need to check in with people and that's how it is so i'm back it's way in wednesday i weigh 314 i'm down from where i was which was 3 26 i think was the highest i you know being very honest with you when i'm not eating well i don't weigh in i don't want to know i just want to go la la la la this is not happening this is not affecting me but um i yeah so that's part of waking up from that nightmare that i was going through i am like what the heck was i thinking i don't know i don't know but i'm awake i'm back um and i'm just gonna be brave and come on here good bad or ugly um i don't promise that i'll be perfect i don't promise that i'll have all the answers or any answers um i can tell you where i'm looking to find answers i can tell you what i'm doing to try to be motivated um and i just want to say don't count me out because i did it before so in my brain i know i can do it again and this time i'm gonna do it in a way that is a lot more sustainable and doable and i'm in it for the long run like i don't just want to get the weight off i really do want to be healthy i really do want to just dial this in and be done with the cravings and all of the stuff that i that i went through um i don't ever want to have to start over like this again right i um yeah at one point i had a calm stable brain i had that feeling that you get when you stay on sofas for a long time and you're off of all the processed food and you don't have the sugar in the flour you know and the oil like making the dopamine go crazy in your brain i had that for a while and it was wonderful and so that's what i'm going for again i want that again i want to be in charge of my own decisions i want my brain to be um able to stop bossing me around and have me be able to do what i need to do i'm laughing because winston my pupper is uh scratching um he rolled around in some grass you'll have to meet you'll have to meet winston maybe i'll have you meet winston on my next video all right i think this is long enough i love you guys i do want to say one thing before i go and that is that if you got off track and you're struggling it's never too late to start over and just like i've always said today is a good day today is a good day to start over today is a good day to believe in yourself today is a good day to eat a salad today is a good day to have some broccoli it's not that hard i love you i'm happy i'm back to everyone who was like heather start posting again here you go you win you wore me down i love you guys and i'm happy to be back and i'll see you in the next video take care [Music]

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Views: 17,573

Rating: 4.9516129 out of 5

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Id: Zmhqg-Bzr7c

Length: 24min 52sec (1492 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 23 2020