My name is Kenneth Russell, I live in Richmond, Virginia. Essentially I learned the technics for low-carb eating back then. But I learned how to diet, I learned how to go on a diet, get the weight off, go back to eating “normal food”.

I slowly but surely gained it all back, but this time I learned about it as a lifestyle change and started educating myself, because I was planning on doing this forever. I knew that I had to make a lifestyle change.

The hardest work of this lifestyle change was the first five months. Everyone has fits and starts trying to get going and just not eating their normal stuff every day. But then I would always go through a phase where the food I was eating was really boring to me.

I’ve always listened to the advice, “What you need to do is take diet breaks and give yourself rewards and all that.” That was exactly the wrong advice for me because avoiding it and depriving myself of it until I was no longer deprived was the key I was looking for.

One thing that changed medically along the way is I learned that I was reactive hypoglycemic and by testing my blood sugar I was able to eliminate those foods and learn how to eat. And then almost as soon as I figured out all of that my insulin resistance resolved and it didn’t matter anymore.

Those same foods that were causing me problems in the first nine months didn’t cause me problems in the second year. My blood sugar would just go up and down like a normal person. This photo here was taken five months into the diet. I could never stand longer than 30 minutes on my feet, just five months earlier.

And two years later I went to the same bench. Basically I am a completely different person. That’s just two years. I feel like I am 25 again. And I actually feel better than I did in my 30s and 40s. I am no longer on the sidelines of life, I am participating with my kids and I found that was the reason I went on.

It was for my family. But now I am going to be here for my grandkids. That was part of the decision here. I was like, “I’m not going to be here for grandkids, much less see them graduate high school.” This is going to be it for me if I don’t do something.

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