How to Get Skinny for Good, Diet Without Sugar to Shape Up

I titled this article, How to Get Skinny because I know that this is the way most women go about improving their appearance. I am not a believer in fad dieting, and doing unhealthy things to "get skinny." Number one, looking skinny is not what I consider the ultimate in looking beautiful, especially after reaching that certain age, and number two looking better should go hand in hand with being healthier.

I hate seeing a woman unhappy with her body. I know how painfully all consuming body obsession can be. Over the years I have assisted my friends and co-workers in getting in shape and feeling better about themselves. I guess one might say that I have it easy as far as keeping my body the size and shape within an acceptable range as far as what our society accepts as a good size. I learned a few things many years ago that completely took the mystery out of dieting and trying to maintain a size 4. However, It took a serious and painful journey to get to this point.

A few years after high school I started to gain weight. Like many people, I was no longer walking to school every day, and participating in PE for one hour every day. The past two years of inactivity combined with the eating at all hours hours of the day due to a new work schedule had changed my figure from naturally slim to something else. It is rather hard to describe what I turned into, but, I had no waistline, just some early signs of love handles, shapeless legs and the earliest hint of a double chin. I was depressed about my appearance and did not like going to social events.

But the depression what not just about how I looked. I hated my frame of mind too. Whenever I saw a girl in her mid 20's, (that was old to me at the time) I would think, how is it that at 25 she can still look like that, and at 21 I look like this? These are the things I remembered hearing middle aged, overweight women saying whenever they saw a woman who looked relatively slender. Now here I am at 21 sounding just as unhappy and jealous as they! I started to have visions of my frame of mind growing even uglier by my mid 20's and then ....30. Yikes!

It was on a trip to San Francisco that everything changed. I was so tired of feeling inadequate, and just did not want to go through life feeling uncomfortable in my own skin. Nursing school had just begun and through my researching nutrition, I had come to the conclusion that I was going to workout and stop eating sugar. I completely gave up candy, and checked the ingredients of mayonnaise, mustard and absolutely everything. My diet was as close to 100% sugar free as I could reasonably control. I began walking hills and even designed a workout routine for myself. At 21 this was the first time I was deliberately exercising.

In the 1980's working out was not as popular as it is today. Only a few women were lifting weights, and some gyms had designated areas for women. I decided that if I wanted a life I would have to follow my plan of staying away from sugar and not allow myself from becoming discouraged. After two months my appearance began to change. I had a beautiful "S", shape again, and my face tightened up. I had forgotten that I had cheekbones. One of the interesting side effects was that I actually looked younger.

This was not an overnight transformation. It seemed as though I looked the same for over one month which was frustrating because I was sweating hard on power walks every day. But, sure enough after two months the changes where happening daily, it seemed. I continued to see improvements week after week. It seemed that every time I looked in the mirror I looked a little better.

To this day; more than 20 years later, I have never gone on a fad diet. I now refer to this as The Pin up Girl Diet and My Pin up Girl Workout because later became a 1940's style pin up model, and without the things I learned in my 20's, I would not be a pin up girl in my 40's today.

The only diet I will ever do is the one that works. I believe it works because it represents living in a natural way, as we were intended to live. No buying expensive prepared meals, popping unhealthy pills, or disrupting one's life for the sake of a "special diet". In short, it is effective because it means eating normally, and the changes are gradual, just as when gaining the weight happens.

I realize that most of us want a quick fix, but if you really are serious about looking better, not just being thinner, it must be done by eating well. Avoiding the bad food helps, but by all means eating all of the good food will keep the unsightly bulk off, while keeping the skin firm with essential vitamins, and antioxidants. I could write a book on the details of what I have done to get in shape and keep this way for more than 20 years, but in a nutshell, the way to look good is by avoiding sugar, and doing moderate exercise. The fad diets, special things to be purchased, crash diets are just distractions from what really needs to happen to get the look you want.