My nutritional journey has also transformed into a spiritual journey. Over time, I’ve experienced that every food we consume affects our souls. The healthier our diet and lifestyle, the more peaceful our souls become. My inner peace increased proportionally with my improving health and diet.

I continued with the diet I described in my previous post for years. After a while, when I craved sweets, I started making simple desserts for myself and using sweeteners instead of sugar. Back then, I didn’t have the awareness I have now. Now I absolutely do not approve of these sweeteners, but as I said, this is a journey, and I made some mistakes unknowingly along the way. Even though they aren’t refined sugar, sweeteners are chemically produced additives that send signals to the brain indicating that sugar has been consumed. In fact, some studies say that sweeteners cause a reaction in the body similar to that of refined sugar. After a while, I became dissatisfied with this artificial taste. When you consistently eat clean, your body naturally rejects artificial substances.

My check-up intervals, which used to be every 3 months, had extended to 6 months. All my test results were excellent. It was during this period that I met my husband. This marked the beginning of a whole new adventure for me. Like many Turkish women, I experienced the weight gain of the first year of marriage. My husband has that kind of physique we all envy – he doesn’t gain weight no matter how much he eats. Even though I ate healthily, the changes in my lifestyle caused me to gain 8 kilos again in a year. I weigh myself every morning. In the first few months, I didn’t gain weight. My blood sugar was also stable. I spent those months indulging in this indulgence, and for 7 months, there was almost no change in my weight on the scale. At the end of 7 months, it was as if all the food I had eaten combined, and the number on the scale increased every day for 1-2 months. I couldn’t stop it. There was an increase every day, until one day I said, “Stop, Sema!” I stopped following my husband’s advice. I returned to my own routine. I set my alarm for 6:45 every morning and started my walks again. I started cooking separate meals for myself and my husband because if I continued eating what he ate, my hard-earned health would be jeopardized again. Pizza would arrive at home in the evening. The pizza would come through the door, and I would be out the window. Before the delivery even arrived, I would have already put on my sneakers and gone for a walk. I would return home after finishing the pizza. This became a very good habit for me. Whenever there was unhealthy food at home, I would go out and in three months I was back to my wedding weight. I didn’t adapt to my husband’s diet, but he adapted to mine. In four years, there were very significant changes in my husband’s diet as well. He became more conscious and started eating real food along with me, and he gave up sugar.

The image above shows the before-and-after of this period. This taught me that even with healthy food, if the quantities increase, especially if dinner is eaten late, the body simply can’t tolerate it. The weight comes back, and health deteriorates.

I started spending a lot of time in the kitchen cooking for both my husband and myself. Ideas for new recipes kept popping into my head, and while I was working on one, another was forming in my mind. During this process, I became much more familiar with all kinds of vegetables, fruits, nuts, and legumes. I saw how each one worked when combined with other foods. If healthy eating is a lifestyle, I needed to add some fun to it. My cooking started to become delicious. Not using sugar and flour didn’t mean eating tasteless things. Instead of dwelling on the 3-4 things I couldn’t eat, I created my own kitchen using the hundreds of foods I could eat.

I’ve tried almost every type of diet, taking aspects from each and creating the one that suits me best. Just as everyone’s fingerprints are different, so is their metabolism. I couldn’t stick to any diet long-term because we are social people. We have our desires and our environment. Plus, life throws different things at us every day. Balance is key. If we establish the right balance in our diet and only send natural and healthy foods as fuel to our bodies, our bodies will thank us by making us very happy.

I wish everyone healthy, happy, and sugar-free days.

This article was originally published on www.hthayat.com on December 16, 2016, and is a quote from the site.