For most of my adult life, I have struggled with weight. I come from a family that has a tendency toward heaviness. I seem predisposed to gain weight easily. Over the years I have experimented with a number of diet options.
In the past, I have successfully lost weight. I have lost weight using the Rotation Diet. It is a 21-day diet. On the first three days you eat 600 calories, then 900 for the next four days, followed by a week at 1200 calories, and then back to the 600/900 calorie week. It is effective, but very difficult to follow (I was hungry all the time).
I have lost weight using Weight Watchers, but going to meetings was not my thing. I have lost weight with Atkins pretty easily. The problem was that after losing weight, I would eat bread just once and then it was over. I found that once I ate bread again, I didn’t have the willpower to go back to the very low-carb style of eating.
I have found as I get older, weight loss just does not come as easy as it did when I was younger. I decided that I would give up on the constant pursuit of weight loss and just enjoy life. I didn’t go crazy, I was still eating reasonable amounts of food which seemed to work fine for maintaining. I did start running but did not enjoy it enough to do it consistently. Basically, I had resigned myself to being who I was.
Then I looked at one of the pictures from my son’s college graduation. Horrified by what I saw in that picture, my mind fast-forwarded to next summer and his wedding. I want to look good in the wedding pictures. I decided to watch what I eat and figured that I should pretty easily be able to lose 30 pounds before the wedding. After all, it was only a few pounds a month.
My plan has not been working very well so I needed to find a more effective solution. I heard about this thing called keto. I read a book about the diet and everything seemed to make sense. It is a way of eating that I just might be able to live with. The basic premise is to eat a low-carb diet. It is simple to follow with a specific list of foods to avoid. I set a weight-loss goal of 38 pounds based on the ideal weight for my height and body type. I chose to wait until the holidays were over before starting, so Jan 1 was the day.
Since I started the new eating pattern I have learned a lot. I started using a free app called Carb Manager to help me keep track of my carb intake. This app makes my life easier as it has a keto report card. As I enter foods it has a grade of A for keto-approved foods, C for foods that are alright sometimes, and F for foods that I should avoid. I don’t have to guess anymore. If I’m unsure of a food, I can just enter it and will know right away. I have also been learning about nutritional macros and am doing a pretty good job of staying pretty close to the ratios that I am aiming for.
The biggest adjustment that I have made is realizing that keto is not a diet, but a way of life. My plan is to follow the keto lifestyle pretty religiously most of the time. Not difficult as it allows for the fats that I really enjoy, but I can not imagine the rest of my life without dessert. I am going to allow for a dessert once a month when we go on our monthly trip. It will give me something to look forward to and hopefully that dessert will be that much more special because of the delayed gratification.
I don’t know if it will work out for me, but I am down seven pounds in the last three weeks without the discomfort of “dieting”. I am enjoying the food I am eating and have not really missed bread that much. I realize that there is a chance that I may not lose all the weight before the wedding, but if I can drop 20 pounds by then I will be happy.
I am off to a good start and excited about the new lifestyle. Follow me on Instagram if you want to keep up with my progress.
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