It’s not often I come across a blog and am immediately endeared to the person. After being a part of the community and knowing so many amazing people, even crazy awesome success stories lose a bit of their “magic” to me. That’s why it caught me off guard when, just several days ago, I stumbled upon Joshua’s relatively new blog – SlimPalate.com – through Pinterest.
I was going through each recipe and skimming the lovely photos and lists of clean ingredients when I found this post on Mom’s Chicken Soup. It blew me away, the loving photography and sentiment the recipe had… then I realized the author was young.
I was then inspired to find and read Joshua’s story. And I got immediate goose bumps. I started scouring his blog, reading every single blog post. So inspired and in awe of the talent he had, the accountability to reclaim his health, the transformation he underwent and the wonderful family dynamic of supportive parents was doing for his life – all at the age of 16 (he just turned 17 yesterday – happy birthday!).
Immediately I contacted Josh in an effort to spread the word of his wonderful blog to everyone I could. This is what you all have been asking us for since our first comments and inbox questions – how can a teenager successfully transform their eating habits to a whole-foods approach? What can you as a parent to do help and encourage? How can you ease the teasing they may experience from “funny” lunches?
Joshua is here to answer all of that for you today. He is the next “big thing” in this community. I’ve had the pleasure of spending over an hour on the phone with him and can tell you he is humble, kind, sincere, talented, and the absolute real-deal. Please, go visit his blog. Pin his recipes. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter. Do what you can to show your support for this young man making his mark in our community.
Drastic Weight Loss from a Real Foods Eating Teen
Recently I was contacted by an incredibly nice and sincere person. That person being Stacy. I had already known about Paleo Parents before so I’m sure you can imagine I was really excited to be getting contacted by Stacy. She said some very inspirational things about me and to me that really made me feel happy and proud of myself for what I accomplished.
So that brings me to my guest post on here. And what I really wanted to share with everyone was my story and my journey on losing my weight and becoming fit and healthy.
First I will start of by explaining who I am. My name is Joshua Weissman and I’m 17 years old, well 17 years old as of yesterday actually. I was 16 yesterday, but then all of the sudden it was my birthday and boom, 17. Anyway, continuing on. I’m 17 years old and I recently overcame a huge obstacle and journey in my life.
At a young age I was at the typical body type and ate fairly healthy. But then at around age 8 my health began to decline. I was eating junk food and was eating more and more of it daily. I had no idea it was bad for me. Why would anyone put anything on the market that could be harmful? But that was obviously an incorrect assumption. So with my rapid health decline I also started having rapid weight gain and was severely overweight for several years. And it got more and more severe over time.
I used to get made fun of and pushed around at school all of the time. Literally every day kids would make fun of me, push me, laugh at me, call me names, poke me, and spread horrible rumors about me. And this occurred every single day on a regular basis for over 5 years. And as I got older the kids got meaner. [This gave me goosebumps full of rage and sorrow – Stacy]
So after all the ridicule and depression I, at the age of 15, I decided I had dealt with it enough. I was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired, and of being pushed around. So I made a lifestyle change on that very day and stuck to it. And after a little over year and a half I lost over 100 pounds and am now fit, happy, healthy and am well respected at my school for what I did.
When someone that is underage has a problem like this, it can be very difficult for them to deal with it is because of others around them. Especially their parents. I cannot stress enough how important it is for parents to be supportive of their children with healthy eating. Parents can’t be eating junk food in front of a kid who’s trying to eat healthy. It’s simply not fair.
With a little help from parents a child can do pretty much anything they want. I know that because I have really supportive parents who help me through so much, and I would have never been able to do what I did if it wasn’t for their never ending love and support. [Such warm fuzzies from the synchronicity this family now has – Stacy]
I am currently not “fully” Paleo but I do respect the Paleo community the most. Specifically because eating Paleo is so close to how I eat and how I view health. But I still do eat grains on occasion, specifically because my body can handle them. Although, they are all sprouted so I am still careful with that.
I believe that people should eat the way they want to eat for the rest of their lives and in a way that they feel good about. And to me its important to eat things in moderation, excluding sugar. Because to be honest ever since I eliminated refined sugar I don’t miss it whatsoever. But one thing everyone should know is that I still love food.
I’ve learned to love food “properly” now. I love real food, I love whole foods. Which is what got me back into cooking. I have been cooking my whole life but when I made this change for my health that’s when I decided to really develop my interest into a skill. I watched cooking shows that used whole foods, found recipes on Foodnetwork.com and started cooking my own real food. And after tapping into my cooking interests, I decided to start a food blog, which so far I am enjoying a whole lot.
I have learned even more about health and fitness online and through other blogs and that just goes to show how many resources we truly have to look to.
Lastly, here’s 5 really great tips if you want to help your kids get fit, lose weight, or just eat healthier. They are great ways to help your children lose weight and keep them motivated:
- Comment on how well they are doing/looking.
- Buy more whole foods.
- If they like TV get them to watch cooking shows that tend to use more whole foods in their recipes.
- Show them great websites with recipes and other healthy food blogs and they will naturally want to eat more like that. Aesthetically pleasing pictures bring a postive mindset on food that is healthy!
- Pack their lunch full of healthy food.
Now obviously that last one may cause some problems, maybe people ridiculing them for having a “strange” lunch. And to be honest there is only one way to deal with it. Because really those people are just self concious about the way that they eat and it makes them mad to see other people trying to eat healthier. So there is no way to stop them. But you just have to think of it like this, they are dumb for eating unhealthy and you are the smart one.
So no matter what they say or do it doesn’t really matter because you’re going to live 25 years longer than they do anyways. Don’t dread the fact that they might say something; be happy about the fact that you are eating healthy while those poor saps aren’t.
Joshua Weissman is a 17 year old food lover with a love for health. Joshua always loved food but his love for food led to an eventual weight gain. And after years of ridicule and physical harassment he decided to change his life and lost over 100 pounds through healthy eating and exercise. Even after this, he kept his strong love for food and now runs the blog Slim Palate, a food blog where he posts his recipes and other recipes that he likes to make along with fun stories and just general food talk. You can also find him on Twitter and Facebook where he shares his daily life and his love for food and health.
