As a baby, I was fat and overweight. Look at my legs in the baby photo.

At 4 years old I had a normal weight. When I was 17 years old (65-68 kilos), I was skinny. I always liked sugary food (chocolate, ice cream and pastries). When I was in college and was studying I always asked my baby brother to go to a small store (called snack) in the neighborhood to buy a candy bar Mars for me.

With pain in my heart, I always gave him a small piece.

But I managed to keep my weight. But when I went to Holland to become a teacher, far from home, now having my own money to spend, to buy what I want.....

Regularly, I bought 1 liter of ice cream and ate that by myself. Now, I cannot believeeee I did that (jakkesss). And pastries (a piece of pie) or other sugary food. I was ignorant when it came to health.

 

This continued for years. I did many diets, yo-yoed all the time. Lose some, gain more. So I know myself in all sizes. When I became a teacher and started to work I was at my heaviest (110 kilo) that is when I started to exercise. But my eating pattern didn’t change, so I was still overweight.

 

In 2005 I returned to Curaçao. I became interested in how to become healthy. Because I was tired and anxious sometimes. So I started to follow some local health experts on the radio. And seek more information about health on the internet.

I found out that I was an emotional eater. I still was eating sugar (binge eating) and doing diets.

In 2009 I started to do a detox program every year. The goal of doing a detox program is that you start to eat healthy foods afterward, but every time after I detoxed my body, I had the sugar cravings again.

After a few years, I started doing the detox program twice a year, which didn’t help. I was still yo-yoed.

But … there was progress, because I had a lot of knowledge on how to detoxify my body and was applying some of these tips also when I wasn’t detoxing: have a clean colon, drink more herb tea, use baking soda.

So my health knowledge was immensely improved. But I didn’t have success in curing my sugar cravings… I kept interested in health, so I kept educating myself on many ways how to become healthy and I kept learning about diets. Like intermittent fasting.

 

In 2019 I had a burnout that was a turning point. I gain weight during COVID 2019-2021.

In 2021 I began to prepare myself psychologically. I did the detox again and tried intermittent fasting for a period. In 2022 I did some personal development programs and worked on a different approach to lose the weight. I decided that I will lose weight another way this time… I made the crucial decision that I will get healthy first. I started with the detox, and after that, I did another program by myself and cured my sugar cravings. 

I was so surprised and thankful. Hereinafter I did mostly Intermittent fasting and stayed committed to exercise. Even though I didn’t have the sugar cravings after completing the program, I repeated this protocol several times that year. A year after, I am still NOT craving sugar at all. But I do the protocol a few times a year, for my health in general.