Katherine Kyle Bsc, PGCE, Certified Vegan Nutritionist
How I Lost Weight With Fruit
(Katherine’s personal weight loss story)
I lost 56 pounds on a diet consisting mainly of fruit and vegetables. Read my story and find out how you can reach your ideal weight with fruit.
Yo Yo Dieting
Until I got married I was always fairly slim. Although I was always on a permanent diet of some sort, with my weight fluctuating up and down a couple of dress sizes. I lost a lot of weight for the wedding in quite an unhealthy way. I was trying to eat ‘free’ food on a popular diet to fill myself up such as fat free jelly, egg white omelettes, hot chocolate, meringues, chips and sweets.
As soon as we got on our honeymoon I became very ill, and ended up in hospital at the airport with such agonising stomach pains, I couldn’t walk. I felt ill all honeymoon and for the next couple of years my health went downhill. I piled on about 50 pounds, became quite overweight and felt really bad about myself.
Regular Diets Didn’t Work
I tried every single faddy diet on the market but I always felt worse than I did before. For me a diet that didn’t contain any fruit and vegetables in it wasn’t good for my body. A lot of these diets included a lot of processed foods which I now think is extremely unhealthy.
Focusing On Health
The turning point for me came when we were fostering a teenage boy. I was feeling so ill and run down and decided I needed to take action and get well. The doctors couldn’t work out what was wrong with me so I started reading books all about health. I came across a lot of health books that explained how certain foods could be making me ill and that a lack of nutrients wasn’t helping my body to heal.
I discovered I was intolerant to dairy and gluten which were making me feel very ill, and even though it was so hard I knew I had to give them up or I’d have no quality of life at all.
I decided I was going to give a healthy diet a go, so I gave up dairy, sugar and wheat which was hard but I was determined. I then started just consuming fruit, vegetables and a small amount of nuts and seeds.
6 Month Detox Diet
I decided I was going to go on a detox for as long as it took to feel well again. So I gave up all processed foods and mainly ate just green smoothies, fruit, salad vegetables, and nuts/seeds and avocados. I put myself on a fruit based diet. The very next day after starting the diet my digestion was massively improved and the first week I lost 7 pounds. I stayed on this diet not deviating from it at all for 6 months as I was determined to get rid of my health problems once and for all. I did go through a major detox but my health problems were improving all the time so I knew this was doing me so much good.
I Lost 56 Pounds
I got down to my ideal weight, felt the best I’ve ever felt in my life, almost all of my health problems were gone and I was running for an hour a day and weight training. I was determined to stay on the fruit based diet a while longer before deciding what my long term diet plan would become.
Pregnancy Weight Pile On
I then fell pregnant straight away and had cravings for fattier, richer warming foods. I found it hard to stomach fruit and vegetables so I wasn’t able to eat as healthily as I would have liked. I didn’t feel so good for a while and I ended up eating much more junk and piled on loads of weight again.
7 years on a green smoothie diet
After having my first baby, I had gained pretty much all of the weight I’d lost back again. I wasn’t devastated though as I knew I could lose the weight again. I didn’t fancy going back to my fruit based diet as I had done previously as I was nursing my baby and needed to get more healthy fats in my diet.
Even though I no longer followed the fruit based diet, I still loved the idea of getting lots of raw and healthy food in my diet.
When my first baby was born, she demanded a lot of my time and took a very long time to feed. I didn’t have time to sit down and have filling breakfasts anymore and my green smoothies made with just fruit and leafy greens didn’t fill me up enough. So I came up with my own invention – the Green Thickie!
A Green Thickie is a green smoothie which is a complete meal. It contains fruit and leafy greens but also healthy fats, healthy forms of protein and more filling ingredients that make it much more substantial. One of these Green Thickies would keep me going all morning and I could sip them in between attending to my baby. The perfect solution!
Green Thickies Are Born
Although green thickies may contain more calories than traditional green smoothies, they fill you up for much longer so you end up eating less food and thinking about food less often than you would do if you were to get hungrier sooner. I find one green thickie can fill me up for about 5 hours from breakfast until lunch which is great when you don’t have much time for eating. I found I could also drink them while I was feeding my baby or doing another job which made them the perfect food for a busy parent.
I set up my first blog, Green Thickies after inventing the Green Thickie. You can check that out here. Green Thickies helped millions of people to lose weight and improve their health, and I’m so happy my message has reached and helped so many people.
Controlled Weight Loss
Weight loss wasn’t the only benefit of being on a green smoothie diet. I
also feel amazing eating this way – so full of energy and I can survive on very little sleep when my babies keep me up at night.
After my first pregnancy I lost all of the weight I put on in just a few months. I was back to feeling slim again and I lost the weight in a healthy and controlled way.
I have a green thickie for breakfast and sometimes another one for lunch too and I find they give me so much energy and totally stop any cravings for unhealthy food which is fantastic for someone who just loves their food. They also taste amazing too so I actually really enjoy drinking them. My kids and my husband both love them too and I can relax knowing we’re all getting at least one really healthy complete meal a day.
I now follow this 7 Day Detox when I’m in need of a detox and to lose weight. It works for me every time.
How I Maintain My Weight
Like most people, I love to indulge in (vegan) junk food from time to time, and my weight does go up during these times (I’m not someone who can eat what I like and stay skinny. I am short in height, LOVE my food, and my brain doesn’t seem to register when I’ve eaten enough).
I’m also not someone who would want to eat a mound of salad every day just to convince myself I’m allowed to eat tons of food. I’m not really a fan of all that chewing. I don’t mind a salad from time to time but it’s not something I want to eat every day. I prefer hearty, delicious food most of the time.
But as soon as I’ve gained a little weight, I just go back to eating my nutrient-packed calorie-counted meals after that and bring my weight right back down again.
Sticking to a calorie limit per day has been the only thing that’s worked for me when it comes to weight loss. I am not one of these people who can just stop when I’m full, as I never seem to know when that is. If you gave me 2 dinners I’d easily eat them both.
That’s another reason why weight loss systems with “free” food never seem to work for me either, as I tend to take that to extremes. I’m the only person I know who has gone to diet clubs, stuck to the rules exactly, and actually gained weight.
Adding the exact amount of food onto my plate (or into my glass) and stopping when it’s gone has worked so well for me. That’s why I plan all of my meals in advance so that I make sure I’m eating the right number of calories for weight loss.
All of the complete meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) on my website, Magial Life Of Fruit are around 400 calories because this makes it so easy to lose weight.
Just eat 3 of these 400 calorie meals per day, find out how many calories you need to eat for weight loss, and then add extra snacks to bump your calories up to your daily calorie limit.
How to find out more about the Green Smoothie Diet
If you’d like to know more, please subscribe to my FREE 12 week e-course where I show you how to get started with green smoothies, lose weight and improve your health.
WHAT IS MY DIET LIKE TODAY?
After 7 years of eating a lot of Green Thickies, but also a lot of standard meals out in restaurants, my health started to go downhill.
I was then diagnosed with celiac disease. I was pretty relieved to finally have a reason for my lifetime of health problems which had been caused by the gluten I had been eating. I had found going vegan pretty easy, but being completely gluten free AND vegan certainly made life a lot more restrictive.
After going on a strict gluten free diet for a year, I still was struggling with my health.
So I decided to go back on my beloved fruit based diet once more. I stayed on that diet for 10 months and it gave me a great detox. It was during this time that I started my Magical Life Of Fruit blog and YouTube channel.
When I came off that diet, I went back to eating a 100% vegan, gluten free diet, and have never felt better. I still eat fruit, but just not as much as I did, and I now eat a lot of cooked vegan meals too.
I share all of the recipes on my blog that help me drop the pounds, and feel full of energy in the hope that other people can receive the same benefit that I’ve done from a nutritious, and delicious plant based and gluten free diet.
Being vegan and gluten free is actually pretty easy when you prepare all of your own foods. It’s eating out that is the challenge, but I tend to take some of my own food with me a lot of the time as this makes life a lot easier.
Needless to say I make a lot of my own food from scratch, especially as both of my kids have the same allergies to dairy and gluten that I do, plus they are very fussy. So I end up making a lot of different recipes to try and find something they will eat.
After all this recipe testing, I’ve come up with some clear winners that my family love, and these are the recipes that I share on this blog in the hope it will save you time and money too.
The recipes I create all use standard, cheap ingredients and I find that when I make meals from scratch, the cost of my meals is very very low. What costs a fortune is processed “free from” foods that kids love so much!