From Food Schizophrenia to Placing In Venus Index Contest

Today’s interview is with Elisa Miller, who place fifth in our third Venus Index Transformation Contest.

Check out her pictures:

Elisa at 42 years old, probably at the best shape of her life. Ironically with doing less complex and complicated things.

When you take pictures, make sure you wear high heals. That simple tweak makes a big difference.

Don't be afraid of dreaming. Anybody can be in shape. You just need to do some work and put what you learn into practice.

Elisa has a history of gaining and losing weight, orthorexia, food schizophrenia and now placing in a online transformation contest. Let’s take a look how she managed to get from unhealthy eating to surprising her husband with a body transformation and placing in the Venus Index contest.

Elisa’s History

Elisa is 5’6”, 42 years old, she is a mother and a wife. Not exactly a description of someone you would expect to place in a fitness contest. This is one of many examples that anybody can do it and no matter what lifestyle or responsibilities you have, you can look good. It’s time to put all of your excuses behind and focus on improving yourself.

Let’s take a look at Elisa’s diet history, which is rather unusual.

When she turned 30 a lot of things had changed in her life. Her child was born and her father got sick. She had to take care of them both. This wasn’t an easy task. Having her father now at home and having a baby constantly seeking attention required lot of effort and energy. There wasn’t much time she would get for herself.

At the end of day she was often times resentful and depressed. And as a result she ended up using food to escape from her reality and help her calm down. When everybody went to sleep, it was “her night time”. She took some ice-cream and some cookies and watched TV.

Nobody would see, nobody would know and she would have her few hours alone at peace.

As months went by this resulted in a decent weight gain. She knew that it was wrong and that she shouldn’t be doing it, but she didn’t care. She was caring for everyone else accept her. It was almost her way of getting back.

You might be surprised that she is actually the one that her friends and family see as the “healthy food” expert.

Her mother was a healthy food fanatic, always teaching her to eat only organic and raw food, no chocolate, no chips or any tasty burgers (boo).

And then there was her father who was going behind her mothers back and taking her for ice-cream and chocolate (yay!).

This resulted in developing almost a schizophrenia about food. During the day she was eating only “healthy foods” and if she prepared something that wasn’t on this list she would spit it out. Then at night she would eat all the ice-cream and sweats in the house.

This is a very unhealthy perception of food to always see food as either good or bad.

This lead to several things like weight gain, feeling guilty, social inflexibility with food among others. After this approach she tried several diets including the paleo approach, during those years her weight was constantly going up and down.

What Finally Worked

Elisa was sick of the old approach and decided to try something different. Which probably wasn’t easy considering the way she was raised. But she decided to take it in her hands and take a step out of her comfort zone.

Important factor for her was recognizing that what she was doing was causing her more harm than good and simply wasn’t working.

When she got her hands on the Venus Index Workout and the diet protocols (AGD  & ESE) she found out that this approach was much better and made so much sense. At the beginning she was afraid of having to be even more strict than she was so far. Also she wasn’t sure if she could do this. However, it was a huge relief since to her surprise this new approach was more flexible and enjoyable than the things she was doing her whole life.

Sometimes the simpler things work better than the complex and difficult ones.

She immediately jumped on board and completely changed her lifestyle and her view of food.

No more paleo, no more good food – bad food paradigm. Only calories in vs. calories out and an intense workout on top of that for a more feminine and sexy body shape.

She admitted that what was she was doing before was pretty much a waste of time and it’s a pity that  it took her so many years until she discovered the truth.

She was eating everything like any other person, the only difference was that she felt guilty after eating those “unhealthy foods”. She only showed other people when she ate so called ‘good foods’.

However, she made her decision to end this. She didn’t want to live the way she lived before, under the shadow of her parents and by their rules.

She unsubscribed from all the “paleo lifestyle” experts and “healthy food” nutritionists and decided to do what makes sense and is most logical.

Once she was ready to leave the nonsense behind and  started incorporating all the advice from the Venus Index protocols everything just took off from there.

And she never looked back.

When her husband got home, after several months of being away, he was astounded to see her transformation. Elisa’s goal was to hit the 140 mark when he got back. Not only that but she super-passed it by 13 pounds, her final weight was 127 pounds.

Spectacular result for somebody who didn’t believe it was possible to go from 180lbs to her pre-baby weight, or even further.

Now she is proud of herself and happy with the way she looks.

Take home message from Elisa

• Stop with the whole obsession with the scale. Focus on your shape and proportions.
• There is no bad or good food. It’s all about calories in and out. Food itself is just an form of  energy covered by taste, you don’t need to feel guilty
• It’s possible to dream, you just need to take the required action to make your dreams a reality
• Don’t beat yourself up just because you did something wrong or not according to plan, simply get back on track and adjust your plan
• Take baby steps, everyday do a little to get closer to your goal – one day at a time
• Everybody should enter the contest, it’s extremely motivating and it is so much fun
• Find a nutrition plan or a way to eat that suits you the best and that you can sustain for a longer period of time.
• Don’t restrict your calories too much, because that will result in overeating afterwards
• There are two ways of dieting for the contest, you either lower your calories at the end or lower them at the beginning and slightly turn to maintenance towards the end of your transformation. The second option (aka Reverse Taper Diet) seems to work better for most people since at the end you have little fat stored on your body that will get burned so it makes sense to eat slightly below maintenance to have less deficit compared to having big deficit, which is not sustainable for a long time and often leads to post-contest rebound
• Discover your limits and back off if you feel like your approach is too difficult
• Be clear on what you are doing, use training for building more muscles and shaping your body and use diet to lose fat and lean out
• Don’t blame others for your weight gain, it’s your responsibility, you need to accept it and handle it, because nobody else will
• Don’t use food as a medicine for depression

Programs Elisa used for the transformation:

Anything Goes Diet – “Diet without rules”, forget about carb cycling, macro-nutrients or unhealthy foods. Eat what you like and lose weight.

Eat Stop Eat – Lifestyle protocol that will help you achieve your fitness goals despite the social eating events you have to attend.

Venus Index Workout – Workout focused on building a toned and natural feminine body shape.

Venus Community – What if there was a forum where all the cool girls hung out and were exchanging tips and support on how to get in shape and what works for them to build a healthy, good looking body?

Listen to the interview here:

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