Home > Gwinnett > Rick Badie / My Opinion > Archives > 2005 > December > 14 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USLearn to eat to live, not other way around
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
She excuses herself, and comes back with a gray, two-piece pants suit.
Three years ago, it barely fit Martina Desgouttes. Now, the size-16 outfit doesn’t fit at all. If she were to put it on, she’d look silly. Like a clown.
Martina Desgouttes used to weigh 200 pounds. Now she’s down to 125 and wears a size 4.
The suit’s her souvenir. It’s also a reminder of an unhealthy lifestyle, a time when she overate and didn’t exercise. When she could barely walk up the stairs in her Duluth home. When her blood pressure boiled and her cholesterol skyrocketed. When nearly everything ached.
“As you can see, the pants had been fully extended,” she told me Wednesday as we sat at the kitchen table. “And trust me, the jacket was so tight I couldn’t button it. Unbelievable.”
It’s that time of the year again. Many of us will resolve to get fit in 2006. Gwinnett gyms will be bombarded with dozens of newbies waiting their turn on the StairMasters and free weights.
Old habits die hard. Stick-to-itiveness falls victim.
Desgouttes’s been there. In January 2003, she pledged to do whatever necessary to change her lifestyle. She made the promise, then put it off. “There are a lot of goodies left over after Christmas,” the 51-year-old Jamaican told me.
“Waiting until Jan. 11 to start would give me enough time to finish all the sweets and breads. I’m not that crazy about sweets, but I love bread, especially garlic bread with garlic butter.”
A month later, Desgouttes was chowing down on some curried chicken and rice. Suddenly, her throat tightened. She had difficulty breathing. Her brow dripped with sweat. Relatives wanted to call the paramedics, but Desgouttes talked them out of it.
She knew what was going on. She’d stopped taking a medication for acid reflux.
“That was my turning point,” she told me. “I prayed and said, ‘Lord, whatever I need to do, I will.’ It wasn’t just about losing the weight. It was about wanting to live.”
So Desgouttes adopted an organic diet. Out with the sugar. In with the cactus honey powder. She stopped eating poultry and steak. She started using soy products.
Today, she’s a new person. More energetic and happier. She exercises twice a week — water aerobics. She can walk up the stairs without huffing and puffing.
The about-face has led to a new profession for the former information technology expert. One purpose of her nonprofit, Miracle Production Ministries, Inc., is to raise health awareness. She’s written a book, “How I Ate My Way to Good Health,” that includes her story, recipes, and a journal to track progress.
And she wants your New Year’s resolution to last a lifetime, not just a few months.
“I’ve become an advocate, pretty much, for getting the word out to people to think about what they put in their systems,” Desgouttes said. “When it comes to food, we put almost anything in our bodies.”
On Jan. 28, Desgouttes is hosting a conference — You Have the Power — from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Metropolitan Club in Alpharetta. Healthy eating is the topic.
Desgouttes will talk about how changing her diet saved her life.
And may save yours.
Comments
Commenting is now closed for this entry.
By Michael H. Smith
December 14, 2005 09:54 PM | Link to this
Eat to live - live to eat?
Did I come to the wrong place?
What kind of question is that, of course I do. Southern style. Is there any other way than Southern fried everything, as in SOUL FOOD!
Fried Chicken, fried okra, fried squash, fried green tomatoes, and lots of GRAVY all over everything, except the holy loaf – Cornbread. The secrete to making good holy loaf though, is first, having a sanctified cast iron skillet baptized as you might have guessed by now, in shortenin’, fired under heat in the oven until thoroughly blackened. Listen close here y’all, don’t repeat this, cause, Yankee spies might be listening in. Once you got the batter made accordingly from the encoded recipe writ on the back of a package of corn meal, specially marked for Southern eyes only, use beacon drippin’s in place of that gal-dern Crisco as so-called for in the bottom of the sanctified cast iron skillet. But…. but, whatever you do, don’t defile our Southern manna by adding sugar to the blessed batter, cause then blasphemy of blasphemy hath you committed, by making the unforgivable – Johnny Cake.
Say, anybody gotta’ recipe for fried turnip greens and collards, y’all?
Oh yeah, one last departing thing before my Northern counter-phart gets here(gotta love ol’ Bruce). Now just in case, if you actually want to live long enough that is, to eat all of this SOUL FOOD, then “do all things in moderationâ€? and as they say in Jamaica,
Don’t worry Mon’, be happy.
By Deborah Lee
December 15, 2005 09:57 AM | Link to this
Congratulations to Martina Desgouttes for recognizing the she is an addicted to food. The American culture is partly responsible. One day, sit in front of the T.V. and put two columns on a piece of paper, one marked drugs and one marked food. Everytime you see a commercial put it in the appropriate column. Americans are taught from day one that two things will cure all of your problems, drugs or food. Just like a drug addict who takes one day at a time so does a food addict. If she does watch commercial television I suggest that she stop. It would be like a drug addict stopping by a crack house, too much temptation.
By Georgia Babe
December 15, 2005 01:23 PM | Link to this
I’m 30 years old and 220 lbs. I was 250 five months ago. A lovely summer trip to London opened my eyes to the reality of the world we are living in here in America. We are the land of plenty and the home of big waistlines and the FAT induced, high fructose sugar infused, and gravy ladden world.
For some reason in this country we have begun to accept that everything on the menu in restaurants is fatty and in order to have a healthy meal it has to have a salad. That is just not true! We don’t have to live off of salads and brown rice to be healthy. I am not partial to brown rice and salad - I am however partial to fresh baked/broiled/grilled fish and fresh vegetables not baked in butter and put over a hot light for 10 hours. (However - I msut admit that my standard lunch is plain lunch meat, fruit, soy yogurt, and a slice of cheese.)
And don’t get me started on the traditional side of coke or sweet tea. HIGH FRUCTOSE SUGAR is the cause for much of the obesity in my little world.
Baby steps - Baby steps is all it has taken to open my eyes. I don’t want to die from diabetes and high blood pressure or heart disease. There are too many places I still need to visit in this world and too many people I need to meet!
Hurrah for those of you that are getting on board with the reality of our diets and demanding more choices be put in our grocery stores and on our restaurant menus.
I think choices are delivering a changing environment - choices that are not only a side of green salad!
By Bruce Wilcox
December 15, 2005 01:29 PM | Link to this
Michael, I thought a collard was something a Southern put around their dawgs neck? Don’t mean to disappoint, but a Hellman’s jar of bacon grease was common in Northern fridges. Sliced taters or Home Fries up home were not the same without a good glob of bacon grease and it works wonders on turnip greens.
Back in 98’ when my pants kept shrinkin on me I decide to give up beer and all fast food, I dropped twenty pounds faster than a rabbit being chased by a pack of hounds. At first it was a little rough, but when those pants that shrunk started to become loose again, you realize you didn’t miss the beer or fast food all that much.
I didn’t become a health food fanatic, I still enjoy a chili dawg or two, but on a limited basis. Beer I completely lostthe taste for and enjoy differnt wines now.
I’m now down to the weight I was in high school, if I could only get my hair back to the color it was it high school I’d be fine.
Once you start seeing the results, the pain isn’t all that bad.
By Michael H. Smith
December 17, 2005 11:28 AM | Link to this
Our cannibalistic Congress is in direr need of comprehensive diet reform — one that doesn’t consume human beings?
How many ways can illegal immigration be renamed in avoiding kindness to the truth? From workers program to guest worker program, now it’s the agricultural guest worker program. Somehow Democrats who need votes to get back into power and Republicans who must serve their corporate masters to maintain power, have to convince the U.S. American public human labor is merely an industrial asset. Like any other commodity it should be traded openly on the world’s global market. Then a year’s crop of Mexicans can be pitted against a year’s crop of Chinese to obtain the most economical labor force possible to supply the greed. Seems a bit tedious this process. Yes, reforming the agricultural guest worker program is in order to make the old complex flesh trade far simpler, more efficient, and less cumbersome.
Perhaps Georgia’s Senior Senator has forgot how once this country had an agricultural guest worker program that offered no man or woman U.S. citizenship, when men and women were considered merely industrial assets, then traded openly on the world’s global market valued as 4/5 human, in his attempts to expand the plantation of old into the now continuum temporary.
Are there any jobs “transient slaves� won’t do Mr. President?