After reading so many success stories and being encouraged by them, I wanted to share a little about my journey and give back a bit. Wall of text incoming!
Last August I was approaching 300. After nearly 10 years of a desk job and crappy eating, I knew I had to change. I had tried some diets previously, but inevitably I'd fall off the wagon, never to get back on. I'd been reading about Soylent and stumbled upon a ketogenic version - KetoChow. I have friends that'd had success with low-carb, high-fat diets so I decided to give it a shot.
I've replaced my usual morning duo of Pop Tarts and fast food lunches with Keto Chow shakes during the week, with Keto-friendly "real food" dinners and on weekends. The owner at the local diner where I eat Saturday breakfasts even tailored a meal for me, getting rid of the hashbrowns and toast. My snacking has been greatly reduced and replaced with good snacks: meat sticks, cheese, nuts, pickles, etc. I've gone from drinking 50+ ounces of soda daily to about a can a week or less. Sometimes I’ll have a day (or a month… screw you, Christmas) where I stumble, but with Keto I’ve found it much easier to get back up and back into the swing of things.
Over the past 6 months as the weight has melted away, I’ve found my clothes getting progressively larger and larger. The belt tail that never made it to the first loop on my shorts began to extend far past the first loop, approaching the second. I’m down a size and a half in pants and had to buy new ones - only a few as I didn’t want to go hog wild only to continue shedding the weight, needing to do it all over again in 6 months. I also had to switch to the S/M band on my watch, too.
A big watershed moment came in October when I went in for my physical. I explained my progress and diet, showing my doc the nutrition label of the KetoChow. He decided to do the usual lipid panel along with A1C and a metabolic panel. I’ve been on a cholesterol med for a dozen years or so and it’s kept things where the docs have been happy. He said he was expecting to see my triglycerides spike “by several hundred points” (they’ve been bouncing around the 110-150 range with a spike to 180 a few years back). Even before the tests, he told me to start cutting my pills in half and is on board with working toward getting off the med completely (and my CPAP, too). When the results came in, I almost fell over. My triglycerides were down to 55 - lower than they’ve ever been. Other numbers were within normal ranges, save for HDL which has always been low for me.
This morning was big. After a month and a half of flatlined progress, last week I finally got back onto a downward trend. I got on the scale and saw 249.5. I can’t remember the last time I was below 250. When I graduated college and started working 10 years ago, I was in the 260s.
Nothing I’ve done previously has netted me these types of results. I’m going to keep going and get down to 200 (or less). The key for me is to keep reminding myself that this weight was put on over 15+ years and it’s not going to come off in 6 months or even a year. I’m starting to get a little more serious about tracking food and with Spring around the corner, getting exercise.
I will continue to KCKO and hopefully this can provide some encouragement for others out there.
TL;DR: Been on Keto since August. I’m down 45+ pounds in 6 months, finally breaking below 250 for the first time in well over 10 years. My clothes have started falling off me and my cholesterol numbers are better than they’ve ever been. KCKO!
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