This week, I am so excited to share a very special post. If you aren’t already following @juliaafowler on Instagram, you should. Julia is amazing. She has lost over 200lbs naturally, and has candidly shared her story and journey with us. You will so appreciate her spirit, her thoughts, and the inspiration she provides. She is real and often shares on Instastories about how things are going and her reflections. If you are like me, you want to know more and understand how she has accomplished all she has. Graciously, Julia was willing to let me pick her brain, and I just know you will enjoy reading what she has to say. So, here it is:
Tell us a little about yourself.
- I’m 46 and I live in North Mankato, Minnesota. I own a Digital Marketing Company called Cre8ive Options and spend the majority of my time these days designing brands and websites for online retailers.
Can you describe your history with weight, how long has it been an area of concern for you?
- Oh my goodness, my history is my history with weight. I’ve almost always been considered ‘chunky’, thick, curvy, full-figured, etc. I can’t recall a time in my life that my weight wasn’t somewhat of an “issue”. Probably around the age of 7 or 8 it started to become noticeable that I was more developed, we’ll say, than the other girls in my class. I was athletic, and a very active child/middle schooler, but my weight started to catch up with me a bit as I entered my teen years. At the age of 13 I was involved in a crisis situation that left me being diagnosed with PTSD, High Anxiety, Severe Depression and an ulcer. Yes, age 13. From there, my emotional attachment to food and its false ability to mask my pain grew.
Had you tried to lose weight before? What are your reflections on past experiences?
- Gaining and losing, gaining and losing has been part of the rhythm of my life. I think my first official “diet” was around the age of 15. My weight became a ‘concern’ to my parents around age 14-15. I was still active and frankly by today’s standards, I probably wasn’t all that heavy, but I was overweight and off to Jenny Craig we went. I lost 50 lbs on that first ‘try’ but that didn’t last long. Without going into every attempt, let’s just say I’m among those who would summarize my “dieting life” by saying I’d tried everything. Bottom line: the problem with my past “dieting” experiences is that none of those methods were set up to either teach or prepare me for life long sustainable success. The habits and principles required for sustainability didn’t exist in those previous methods, so once I stopped following “the plan” whatever weight I might have lost, would come right back on and bring a few friends along with it.
What got you started on this weight journey? How did you get started?
- I don’t know anyone who ‘wants’ to be 400+ lbs. It’s miserable. It’s lonely. It’s shameful. It’s a kind of silent pain that everyone can see and yet no one wants to talk about. It was the way I satisfied my need for control when there were so many other things I couldn’t control. Obviously, another falsehood because clearly my food addiction was out of control and my life and health spiraling with it. Honestly, I’d reached a point that felt like no return. Either I was going to continue down the dangerous path I was on (literally eating myself to death) in which case I would accept death at whatever point it arrived, or I need to choose life.
What do you think were contributing factors to having extra weight, and how have you addressed?
- Point blank my choice are to blame for my extra weight – I changed my choices and changed my life.
What are the key things you attribute to your success? (You refer to mind, body, soul on your Instagram — what does that mean to you?)
- I attribute my success to the combination of three essential factors: Clean Eating, Moderate Movement (exercise) and Healthy Mindset.Clean Eating: I eat as close to nature as possible the majority of the time, but I do not eliminate foods/food groups, deprive or starve myself. Instead I am sensible and mindful about what I eat. Notice I said I CHOOSE – I do not believe in cheat meals, or cheat days – why in the world would you need to cheat when you can just choose. My approach is now just to own my choices being simple and sensible and that is why it is sustainable.Moderate Movement: plain and simple a body in motion tends to stay in motion. Exercise is important for the health of the body, but we have to fuel the body properly for it to have the energy required to do all the things a body should do. I believe nutrition and food make up 80% of the healthy weight equation and that exercise is the other 20%, but Mindset dominates it all.
Mindset: At the root of my mindset switch is a morning practice I started doing called a SAVERS routine. It comes from a book written by Hal Elrod titled, The Miracle Morning. These practices consist of starting your day with (6) core habits: Silence, Affirmations, Visualization, Exercise, Reading and Scribing (journaling). I do them all each and everyday (almost without fail). The body will only go where the mind leads, BUT the mind does need to be fueled to run the system well. It’s a bit of a chicken and the egg conundrum: which comes first. For me it’s Nutrition/Food first and that’s where I started. I focused entirely on food, “going clean”, tracking and learning from my tracking about my body and which foods worked best for me the first two months of my journey. In my third month I added exercise. Journaling I started at the beginning but the miracle morning practices came in next (lots and lots and lots of reading lol). It all works, continues to work together.
What does a typical week look like for you?
- My weekday schedule pretty much looks like this: wake promptly at 5:00 am grab a glass of water/brush my teeth hair head down to my favorite chair and start my Miracle Morning with Silence. I spent roughly an hour / hour and a half depending on my schedule getting myself fueled up mentally / spiritually for the day. Around 6:30 I shower, get dressed and try to be at my desk working by 8:00 am. I typically pause for a mindful breakfast around 10:00 am, back to work and depending on my current exercise program timeframe, I stop to workout between 11:30-12:15. I eat lunch next. Back to work at 1. I have alarms set on my phone to remind me of various things throughout the day. One of which is an alarm at 3 pm asking me if I’m feeling energized. If I feel hungry or weak that’s the time to eat a quick snack. I try to pause working around 4:30 to start supper and in our household we are Dinner and Done by 6 pm (meaning after 6 we choose not to eat). In the evening’s it’s typically time to catch up with my Health Coaching groups, get in any extra movement (yoga/stretching), check social media, having some hot tea. I try to close down the “noise”; tv’s / computers at 9 and I close the day typically by reading, quick bullet journaling, and then fall asleep listening to some meditation or visualizations from youtube.
What helps you to keep a positive mindset?
- Reading and connecting with others who inspire me. When a person consults only with herself, she only has her limited knowledge to draw from. By consulting with others, we add their knowledge, energy, mindset to our own. Helping and encouraging others is a double blessing: we get to bless them, AND most of the time I’ve found we are blessed in return.
What have you learned through this process that you might not have expected?
- Oh my goodness so much!! I mean I had no idea the journey would have developed in such remarkable ways and yet here I am, -200 lbs lost and what feels like an entire life gained.
What are your thoughts about maintenance, is it something that scares you?
- For the first time in my life I have ZERO fears about maintenance. I’m not depriving myself, I’m not starving myself, I’m not missing out on anything at all. It’s the fellowship in life that makes it worth living, not the FOOD and I always, always have the power of choice on my side. One of my favorite author’s Andy Andrews wrote, in his book, The Traveler’s Gift, “God did not put in me the ability to always make right decisions, but he did put in me the ability to make a decision and then make it right.” At any point and time I can choose to change my mind and THAT is the most powerful gift there is.
In what ways has your life changed since living a life of weight wellness?
- I think it might be easier to answer in what ways hasn’t it changed. What hasn’t changed is that I am still me: the old me is still here she’s just learned to make different choices. The old me is the one who took the leap of faith to try again. She is the courageous one. She is the hero in my story. Despite the pains of the past, she is the one who when faced with the choice to either choose to get busy dying or get busy living, choose life. She is the one who deserves the cheers, and accolades and the true credit for what success I’ve finally come to create.
What else would you like us to know?
- I’d like you to know that I am not special. There is nothing about my process, my approach, my philosophy that is new or unique in fact I think that’s what makes it so exciting. What I have come to learn to know and do, experience, share and understand now is entirely achievable by anyone. It is not easy, no, but it is SIMPLE, so simple and when something is SIMPLE and it’s sensible and it’s sustainable then it can change your life and THAT is worth trying again for. Never underestimate or undervalue the power of choice. We all have it; some of us just need to remember it’s ours and put it to work for our good.
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