The Experiment: Day 57 ~ That Was Then, This Is Now, and Sweet Dreams Dear One…

Gracious me! One minute I was having morning coffee and then the next minute it was time to get the dogs their dinner! And then the next time I looked up it was 10:00 p.m. I don’t remember a day ever going this fast in my life. It all started on the scale this morning.

I had to get up at 7 because I had to take 2 of the pugs over to the vet at 7:30 (It’s just a couple of minutes from my house, it was their bath/nail trim/ears cleaned day.) and that is VERY early for me to get up and get going. I took Delilah and Pugsley over and came back and curled up in the big chair with Tanner and went back to sleep. The phone rang at 9:30, the vet’s office calling to say the pugs were ready to come home and I grabbed my keys and shawl and out the door I went.

When I first got up, as I do, after getting the dogs out and going potty myself I weighed myself. I have a very good digital scale, a gift from a friend. I looked down at the scale in disbelief. I got off, and got back on again. (The scale is very accurate and always the same as the one in the doctor’s office.) I weighed 310.4 pounds! This week, the last 3 days, I lost 3.2#, then 1.2# and this morning another 3.6#. 8 pounds in one week. I have now lost a total of 22.6 pounds in a little over 5 weeks. I couldn’t believe it. Not only does the ketogenic diet work, but it is astounding how much it changes you if you just go all in and commit yourself to it. I am not the same person I was on October 11, the day I started keto. I was just amazed.

I sat with my coffee and attended my 11 a.m. keto meeting and then, well, I spent the entire day until dinner time watching keto videos, excellent ones from both Casey Durango whom I mentioned a week or so ago, and Dr. Eric Westman from Duke University whom she works with. He is an expert in the field. He is absolutely marvelous. I watched several of his videos. I made notes. I was completely absorbed.

The thing you need to understand is that I have been on “diets” since gradeschool, and at 63 I can tell you I was just OVER dieting and yet I weighed 333 pounds. I don’t think there is a diet I haven’t been on and I joined Weight Watchers so many times I lost count how many times I’d gone. So the fact that I have completely changed my life and embraced keto as I have was going to have to have been more than just going on a diet, and I think the magic is in the timing, you’re not ready until you’re ready, and I was finally ready. And I didn’t want to just lose weight, I wanted, as I have written, to turn my mental health situation around and I am doing just that. Every day I see it. It is as though I have been reborn at 63. And I want to learn more.

I am studying the science behind the diet, why it works, what sugar and carbs really do to your body and your health and knowing what I know now, and seeing the changes in my own body and life, I am simply heartbroken to see others around me suffering as I did for so long, and people whose health could be tremendously improved if they would make this change, but I said in a previous post that I hate nothing worse than some person who gets on some health kick and proselytizes like they just got religion, trying to “convert” everyone. I won’t do that. People have tried that with me at various times with various diets and I absolutely hated it. I would eat more junk just because I was so angry about it. I am sad to see how long it took me, but I’m not going to look back, it takes what it takes. But this is not something I can now take lightly for myself. I will read, I will study, I will attend online meetings and Casey’s keto forum — I watch her videos every morning — she makes a new one each day for her patrons on Patreon — and this is my life now.

I have never really become an adequate cook in my adult life, until now. I am shopping very carefully now and making and eating good food. The other night my daughter was here with me for dinner and we ate huge spears of asparagus with beautiful chanterelle mushrooms in butter and garlic. It was divine. Tonight I browned 2+ pounds of organic hamburger so I would have a bowl of already cooked hamburger meat in the fridge to mix with different things. Tonight I mashed avocado in a small bowl, diced up a beautiful roma tomato on top of it, put the browned hamburger on top of that seasoned well with salt, pepper, and garlic, and a good sized dollop of sour cream on top. All keto. I mixed it well and sat down to eat. It was a small bowl but I couldn’t eat half of it. With keto you actually really do lose your appetite. When you are in ketosis which I am (I use test strips and check every day.) your body burns fat for fuel instead of carbs. You gain the most amazing clarity, truly coming out of a brain fog, and the biggest challenge is to eat, not to try to keep from eating. All my life I wished for a magic pill that would make me lose weight and finally came to believe there wasn’t such a thing. I was wrong. The magic is the ketogenic diet. And once you make the switch and get over the hump the first week or so it is smooth sailing, easier every day. I am keto for life, and yes, I’ve said that in previous posts but I cannot begin to tell you what a huge thing that is for me. Eating this way has given me my life back.

I remember once, many years ago, a therapist that I was seeing said something that shocked me to my core, I was so shocked I couldn’t get over it for some time, I was in my 30’s then, half a lifetime ago. I was overweight but not nearly as heavy as I was when I started the ketogenic diet 5+ weeks ago. What did he say to me? He said, “What you are doing (being overweight and not changing my life to lose the weight) is a culturally accepted form of suicide.” He scared me half to death. I went on a diet, lost some weight, but then fell off the wagon, continued to gain weight, and finally quit seeing him and started with another therapist. But what he said has stayed with me for years and it is absolutely true. Obesity is a culturally accepted form of suicide and the obesity rate is over the moon. It will have taken me decades to get around to making the changes I needed to make, and it will take me, I’m imagining, a good 2 years or more to lose all I need to lose, but I promise you this, I will never be overweight again.

It’s not a fat shaming thing toward people who stay heavy and won’t change their diet like I myself didn’t until just weeks ago, it is, well, it started when I started to feel better mentally and emotionally, with medication for my mental health issues finally managed well, with this daily blogging, I really started focusing on the beauty in life, I wanted to be happy, I starting feeling happy, and then I thought, “Oh my God, I WANT to live!” I hadn’t felt that way in decades. Then I was ready to do what I needed to do. I do want to live, to really LIVE, and I have finally begun to do just that.

I didn’t mean to get on a keto rant but you know what? I am going to stop apologizing for sharing my joy and wonder about the ketogenic diet. If people don’t want to read these blog posts they don’t have to, and certainly all the posts are not going to be about keto, but you know what? I bet more and more of them are, because this is a gosh darned miracle and there are a lot of people out there who are suffering like I was and if I can share my journey and help even one other person I will have done something that matters to me. I have always said, “Each one, reach one, and love, always love.” I love enough, I love so much, that I want to reach out to the world. I am rewriting my life story and it is just the grandest thing I can imagine.

I am no longer going to say things like “What took me so long?” I am going to enjoy each day and each pound along the way that I lose. I am not going to wish I could fast forward my journey down the road a couple of years or so from now so I can have all the weight off, because truly, with each pound I lose some new amazing thing happens in my life. This journey is going to be like a Magic Carpet Ride and I am going to enjoy every moment of it.

I really do believe — I am living what I teach — that there is nothing you cannot change, one moment at a time. And oh, let me tell you this, I am enjoying every moment along the way. I wouldn’t miss any of it. There’s no rush. I am going to savor and relish each moment of this journey. Amen and Hallelujah!

And now it is 11:00 p.m., this day has sailed by, it has been a grand day, and I will have many more like it. And oh, I’d like to share this picture with you. It will serve as my “Before” picture because I was at the weight in this picture that I was when I started keto, about 333 pounds. It was taken when I started Weight Watchers yet again, only to quit a few months later. It was actually April 29, 2016, the night before my 62nd birthday. I’m 63 now and I was back up to the same weight when I started keto October 11. I want to track this thing on my blog and I didn’t get a picture a few weeks ago when I started keto and now I’m down over 22 pounds so it wouldn’t be accurate. Anyway, consider this my “Before” picture. There will be many more.

Onwards and upwards I go, and Sweet Dreams to one and all…

 

The Experiment ~A 365 Day Search For Truth, Beauty &
Happiness: Day 1 ~ Introduction To The Project
“Do or do not. There is no try.”
Yoda