Keto — Page 2

Starting Keto October 2017 at 333 pounds

July 2018 down 46 pounds, and, sigh, these are just
dreadful pictures, sorry, and I wasn’t able to pinch
the dress in on both sides on the bottom so you could
see that I NOW have a WAIST, but I do!

On July 11, just about a week from now, I will have been on the ketogenic diet for 9 months, and I can truthfully say that I have not had ONE bite of anything not on the ketogenic diet since I started. I have been disappointed that I have not been losing weight faster but I guess I am losing weight at the rate my body wants to lose it, but there have been a number of “Non-Scale Victories (NSV)” including no longer being in the diabetic range — after being pre-diabetic for 3 years but blood sugar is in the normal range; my blood pressure is now normal — I would soon have been on blood pressure meds had I not gone keto; an amazing, unexpected thing was that when I had my teeth cleaned a few months ago the hygienist said, “Wow, your gums aren’t bleeding, your mouth looks great!”; and probably the biggest victory for me of all has been that after decades on psych meds I am off all of them, nothing short of a miracle. The research on keto and the brain and psychiatric issues is amazing and, though I had a lot of weight to lose, what got me on this diet. And oh there is so much more.

I am now keto for life which I knew just weeks into it. The health changes and the new lease on life this diet (and I hate that word because it is not a diet in the sense of doing something to lose weight, it is a whole lifestyle change) gives you are something so phenomenal there really is no going back. Go back to what? Being sick and overweight and on multiple medications? I am on no medications of any kind and I feel better than I ever imagined I could feel. And I don’t know how long it will take to lose all the weight I want to lose but it is coming off steadily and I have come to accept it. I saw something funny on Facebook this week that I shared with my keto group, it made me laugh and it is spot on, “Your body is not Amazon Prime. It is not going to show up in 2 days.” Amen.

And the thing about the ketogenic diet is that it is not, despite what some people think, a “weight loss diet,” though you will surely lose weight if you follow it correctly, the ketogenic diet is a diet wherein your body changes from burning glucose for fuel to burning fat for fuel. If you overeat even perfectly ketogenic food you are not going to lose weight, you have to watch how much food/calories you consume. But more than the weight loss issue is the tremendous amount of healing, in more ways than you can count, that your body goes through. From brain fog and inflammation that go away very quickly in the first weeks to all manner of serious illnesses and ailments the ketogenic diet is nothing short of a miracle.

And I really urge, in fact, I’ll say it, beg you to watch the documentary, free on Netflix, The Magic Pill. It is not just a “Here’s what you eat and here’s what you don’t eat” kind of film but shows everything from aboriginal people whose lives and health were terribly impacted when white flour, sugar, coca cola and such were introduced. All of a sudden they had diseases they had never ever had, and when health researchers came in to help them turn their diet back to their natural way of eating the diseases started to go away, to children with autism whose lives were changed dramatically on this diet, to people with serious asthma, diabetes almost off the charts, even a woman with cancer whose cancerous tumors shrank and disappeared with no chemo, no radiation, only the ketogenic diet. Cancer feeds on sugar. I can’t properly discuss the science behind it all but if you see this documentary you will learn things that are mindblowing.

What I want to say is this. In my lifetime I have eaten primarily the standard American diet and it made me fat and unhealthy and contributed to a lifetime of serious mental health issues in a devastating way. I have also been a vegetarian, a vegan, even a raw foodist. I have been a member of Weight Watchers so many times I have lost count. I did Nutrisystems and just about every diet you can think of — I COULDN’T STICK WITH ANY OF THEM! And even when I lost weight I did not get healthy. That is a huge huge HUGE issue. Most weight loss programs are centered on losing weight, NOT getting healthy. Have you ever lived on the cardboard food Nutrisystems sends out for example? I actually lost a good bit of weight on Nutrisystems at one point but I didn’t get healthier or reduce my psych meds or any of the other things I have achieved now. And these diets are not sustainable, not for me. The fact that I have stayed on the ketogenic diet for 9 months and never had one bite of non-ketogenic food is nothing short of a miracle. That I have stayed on it and committed to it for life is something I have never been able to do with any diet in my 64 years. I will repeat, this is nothing short of a miracle.

Okay, this is not a blog about the ketogenic diet and there have been and will be very few of these type of posts, and there is nothing, I repeat, NOTHING, that I have hated more in my life than someone who got up on their soapbox and proselytized about the diet they follow, it made me crazy, especially when I was nearly 400 pounds at one point and in terrible shape. I didn’t want to hear it. Well I’m going to tell you what, I could not live with myself if I didn’t share, from time to time, the ketogenic diet with you dear reader, because it is not just helping me lose weight it is saving my life, it is helping me be saner than I have in decades, it is giving me a life I never thought I’d have. And the ketogenic diet is not focused on a destination, X number of pounds lost, it is a journey for the rest of my life to be as healthy as possible.

I will check back in with more pictures in another 3 months or so. Until then, please do watch The Magic Pill, just to see an interesting documentary if nothing else. And if you, like me, are on the ketogenic diet I will say what we all say, Keto On! There is no other life but this for me.