The keto diet: “Eight months later I weigh less than I have in 15 years and I’m doing great!”

Michelle was trapped in a vicious cycle of overeating the wrong things, and she couldn’t see an end in sight. But a friend mentioned that his roommate had lost weight by indulging in cheese and meat. Could this so-called keto diet be something for her?

Although reluctant at first, she decided to give it a try. And eight months in, it sounds like she will stick with it for a while:

Hey!

It took a bit to come up with how to say this but, here it is. Hope it works!

Moving overseas was great in terms of work, but it came with its own set of challenges, including food. I was pretty sure that most people found me to be extremely obese, and every year my checkups would have doctors asking if I wanted literature on how to lose weight. I tried doing a gym routine but it failed due to how far the gym was from where I was living, how long it would take to walk there and back as well as the workout, and wanting time to just relax or do other things I needed to do. Meanwhile, I was getting worse in terms of eating, often just buying fast food or pre-made food because I was too tired or busy with other things to cook for myself. Days I would cook it would just be really fast and easy/high-carb things like fried potatoes. Over time, I realized I was eating two-three peoples’ worth of food, only stopping when my stomach was too physically full to put more food inside. Even then when I stopped feeling completely stuffed I would try to eat more if I had anything left. I had little control and was feeding into a perpetual cycle of being too tired to make food, so I’d just eat so much processed food I wasn’t getting anything good out of it so I’d just be tired all the time.

Offhand, I was talking to a friend and he mentioned that his roommate had been on an interesting diet, where she ate meat and cheese and didn’t have to go to the gym and yet still was able to lose weight. She had been advised to go on this ‘keto’ diet as part of a way to manage her PCOS, and it had done wonders for her in more than just that. I wasn’t sure, since it sounded a lot like Atkins which was an odd, amusing fad I remembered from earlier times, but I was intrigued enough to start to do some research. I came across a few sites and read what they had to say, and started to learn more about food and eating and just how my body was responding to what I was putting into it. For once, something actually made sense. Starving myself in an attempt to lose weight wasn’t doing anything, I had to address how and what I was eating in order to rebalance the chaos that my body had become. There was actual science behind it. The hardest part would be to give up all the foods that I loved, the ones that I enjoyed the most, as they were all extremely high in carbs, sugar, and starch… a sign that something had to change for sure. I decided that the weekend after my birthday I would attempt the two-week trial I had seen on the Diet Doctor site, and depending on how it went and how I felt, I would decide if I wanted to continue. I ended up having to put it off for a couple of weeks due to friends importing some expensive snacks for me, but in the beginning of August I finally decided it was time to begin.

The two weeks were rough, but at the same time I had a lot of great food and constantly found myself being stuffed full. Was this really dieting? The first week I had the normal starting issues, keto flu and feeling tired. Sometimes recipes would call for ingredients I didn’t have access to, or things that were a little expensive but I still kept trying, making substitutions given what I understood about the foods I was making. The second week started to pick up, and by the end I felt as though I had started something magical, something that was going to help untangle my disordered eating. I decided to keep going for another two weeks, to give it a solid month. After a month of good fats and protein I felt better than I had in years, a lot of my aches were much reduced and for once I didn’t feel tired as soon as I came in the door and sat down. I found myself with more energy, wanting to do things and able to just keep powering on through hard work days. It was an amazing change and at that point I knew it was something I was going to stick with.

Eight months later I weigh less than I have in 15 years and I’m doing great! Now that it’s not winter and I’m not bundled up all the time, my coworkers and friends finally have been able to see just how much weight I’ve lost and the reactions have been amazing. Overall, my health has gotten so much better, I’m looking forward to this year’s health check to see just how far I’ve progressed in terms of taking back control of myself. I’ve found a new love of food, but this time it’s food that is good for me rather than just whatever junk I could cram into my mouth until I was too full to do anything else. I enjoy making my dinners and lunches, and have even started working IF into my days as I find I don’t even need to eat as often now. Every day brings new possibilities of food, of how I can spend my time now that I have the energy to do things, and a general sense of well-being that I haven’t felt in years.

I owe a lot to this lifestyle change, and to the literature and sites that helped me to understand the changes that I needed to make. Here’s looking to a year of keto, and many more years after! Thank you so much for all the work you and yours do!

Michelle

Comment

Thank you for sharing Michelle – and best of luck with your continued keto lifestyle!

Get started

Do you want to try what Michelle has done? Sign up for our free 2-week keto low-carb challenge!

More

Keto for beginners

How to lose weight

Share your story

Do you have a success story you want to share? Send your information, plus before and after photos, to success@dietdoctor.com. It would also be greatly appreciated if you shared what you eat in a typical day, whether you fast etc. More information: