Keto Journey

About one year ago I started having medical problems.  After a few months my sister suggested I try the Keto Diet to see if it would help with regulating my hormones.  I tried it and it did help.  The good results my husband saw led him to try it a couple months later.  After 6 months I have gotten a lot of attention from people about my weight loss and I get a lot of questions about Keto.

I am going to give you a review and some tips and you can do your own research if you want to know more or try this out for yourself.  Also I will be doing another post on what I used to track my progress.  I called it my Body Recovery Record.  A big part of my success came through the mindful approach to changes in how I treated and thought about my body.

#1  Is it hard?  Yes and No.

Every diet with restrictions is hard.  Before Keto I had done low carb before and it was hard.  I had done Mommy without Pounds and it was hard too.  Any time where you are going to be vigilant about what and when you eat is difficult.  Any lifestyle change where you establish new habits and veer away from what is considered normal is hard at first.  But when you find a groove that works for you it gets easier too.  When you focus on the benefits of the new habit you find enjoyment.  When you decide to get creative and innovative you find new ways to make it work for you instead of against you.

It WAS hard doing it alone.  The timing was a blessing though.  In the 2 years previous to this one I have been teaching my older kids how to cook simple meals and my husband supported me immediately by getting some freezer foods the kids could prepare for themselves as well.  So instead of cooking 2 meals for dinner everyday I was just cooking a family meal a couple times a week and my personal meals were either single servings or something I made in a batch and could reheat easily.

It was hard giving up some of my favorite carbs like french fries, rice, beans and especially popcorn.  If I wasn't motivated by my health issues I might have given up after a few months.  But then my husband joined me too.

He has been the innovator and creative thinker.  When you try to get creative and have to eat your failure literally, by yourself, for a week it can be discouraging.  When you have another person to help you it makes it so much easier.  I was timid.  I was only trying recipes I found online and I ate it and decided I would make it a staple or never eat it again.  With my husband at the helm, we started experimenting with the sugar substitutes because each of them leave a slight aftertaste on the tongue.  But in Utah I got to try Virgil's sugar free soda which used a "proprietary blend of erithitol, stevia, and monk fruit."  It made me believe we could do better.  Eventually we found a blend that we love and use in our sweet treats.  It was a lot of work pulling from each source so I did the math and now we measure it in cups and blend them together to use as our sugar substitute.  After making a few treats with this sugar blend I had the fortitude to look sugar in the face and say "I don't miss you, you don't treat my body right.  I don't need you anymore because I have a better option."  That was when Keto got a lot easier.

Day 1 picture

 246.5 lbs 43 inches waist

#2  What do you eat/what is a typical meal?

This is tough to answer.  Keto confuses people because it is a HIGH fat LOW carb diet.  Really low carb.  Really, REALLY low carb.  It cuts out a lot of typical foods so it is easier to tell you what I can eat instead of naming what I cut out.  I CAN eat nuts, seeds, a small portion of berries, proteins like meat and fish and the greenest most cruciferous veggies plus avocados, also coconut milk and almond milk and heavy cream are good too.  I have to be careful of tomatoes, onions, garlic and peanut butter etc. but I can have them in small amounts.  So my goal for each meal is to have 70% of my calories from fat, 23% from protein and only 7% from carbohydrates and this is based on a calculator I use from Keto Karma.  I began with looking up keto meals and read from websites and picked stuff that looked good to try.  I started shopping for ingredients at the stores and built up my pantry with my new diet staples.
One of my favorite breakfasts is a waffle made from eggs and almond flour topped with fresh berries and whipped cream.  Another one is a cereal I made from toasted nuts and seeds with homemade coconut yogurt.  I like eating leftovers for lunch so for dinner we make a variety of things and eat them throughout the week. This week is cheesy, bacon wrapped chicken tenders and coleslaw made with an apple cider vinegar dressing.  I also got some asparagus spears from Costco and cook them with coconut oil as an alternate side.  Lucas adapted my favorite mug cake recipe to make donuts last night in the microwave with silicone baking mats.  That was my dessert after lunch today.  We have some taco meat with all the favorite toppings in a bowl or cook some Italian seasoned meat and add fennel for the sausage flavor and Rao's marinara sauce and eat it on spiralized zucchini noodles (zoodles, or zuddles?) for our keto spaghetti.  Cream cheese is another staple for us because we make creamed spinach, alfredo sauce and my favorite, keto cream cheese danishes (where we perfected our sweetner blend the first time).

14 weeks later

220.5 lbs 38.5 inches waist

#3  Is it healthy?

This is also tough to answer.  The long time Keto eaters have been keto for 10 plus years and look fit and healthy so I want to say yes.  But you can do this diet in an unhealthy way too.  I have had to pay a lot of attention to my body and how it is affected.  I take supplements, I take probiotics.  I look for ways to include veggies with my meal in reasonable portions.  I know I am doing it right when I don't have cravings between meals.  Typically, I feel full after a satisfying meal and don't need to eat for hours.  I like that a lot about this diet.  I have had to watch carefully to make sure I was getting the macro nutrients my body needs and not letting the sweet treats take the center stage.  I also use intermittent fasting which is another aspect of keto dieting.
The biggest indicator of the benefit to my health besides the weight loss of course, is my hormones have improved drastically.  I don't experience PMS to the level I used to and my periods cramps are barely discernible and I saw a big reduction in bleeding (which was the major problem that came up in the last year).  I have hope that when I achieve a healthy BMI I will see a big improvement in that area.

18 weeks later

190 lbs 35 inches waist

#4  How much weight have you lost?

So far I have lost 50 pounds.  It is very noticeable.  I have also been doing exercise, mostly Yoga and a some cardio like walking and Zumba.  I also started a Body Recovery Journal.  I measure and weigh myself 2 weeks apart and every 8 weeks I check in with myself on how I feel mentally, emotionally and spiritually.  I made a goal to take a picture every 16 weeks.  An interesting thing I noticed was that I did lose the same number of inches in my bust, waist and hips in the first 20 pounds lost.  I thought my waist and bust were going down faster than my hips but they all shrunk pretty evenly.  Measuring was helpful because some weeks I weighed in and lost 1 or 2 pounds but had shrunk half an inch.  My 2nd picture day I had gained 1.5 pounds but I was an inch smaller in the waist!
Lastly, I made sure my goals were not outcome focused but SMART focused.  Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, Timebound.  For example, I will drink 64 oz of water a day.  I will do one yoga video when I get up before breakfast.  I will use veggies as my main carb for lunch and dinner.  I will go to bed by 10:30 pm.

2 weeks later:  Time for a new Day 1 outfit since the old one is too loose!
This was taken 3 days after Thanksgiving ;)

187.4 lbs  35 inches waist

I will be sharing our Ultimate Keto Sweetner Blend recipe on a new tab called Creative Keto Recipes.  When we come up with something new that we don't see posted by long time Keto Bloggers I will post it in that tab.  By the way the biggest complaint I have about recipe blogging is the huge story I have to scroll through before I can see the recipe.  No need for that since my blog is and will remain ad free.  If you want to support me financially go buy a printable in my etsy shop *wink, wink.  My husband created his own pancake recipe that isn't cream cheese based and we may be close to a hot chocolate recipe as well.  My sister is trying our sweetener blend in some regular recipes to see how it does with regular baking as well. 

My biggest encouragement is for you to do your own research and decide what you can reasonably do for yourself.

Pinterest, Pie and Pounds... Oh MY!

So I have some thoughts to plunk down before I lose them in the wind with homemade confetti from scissor loving 3 year-old and laundry filled baskets and homework detail.

Thanks to Pinterest my blog has gotten a lot more hits.  It is fun to see over a 1,000 views and most of them not my own.  I don't have anything against other people sharing my posts, I feel flattered actually.  I also don't plan to advertise.  I am not against extra income, but I don't like a lot of those belly fat ads that use the same picture to sell another scam gimmick diet.

Speaking of diets, I had a couple posts a while back (a couple pregnancies ago) about weight loss and such.  Jean Antonello is not alone in publishing that it is possible for a healthy person to lose weight naturally by eating normally.  I purchased her book How to Become Naturally Thin by Eating More and it basically instructs you to listen to your body and eat when you are hungry and stop when full.  Choose the best foods and you will get thin because your body will function better on healthy food.  She also recommended not weighing yourself.  It took me a while to accept that idea.  In fact it took 3 different people saying that.  I can tell you that I did go through my fourth pregnancy carrying far more weight than I wanted.  I had not lost all the weight from my previous pregnancy so my starting point was higher than I wanted.  I went to the doctor's office dreading my weigh in and praying that it would slow down.  But here is the amazing thing:
A week after my baby was born I weighed my pre-pregnancy weight!  
I was waking up one night and letting go of so much water.  I knew I had not drunk that much water but it was draining from me and I could see my ankles again.  It felt so good to see the pounds just drop in a few days.  I showed faith in my body and it had responded well.

Then a couple months later I was at a day for women sponsored locally by my church.  I attended a wonderful lecture about body image and what we are doing and teaching our girls in our everyday language and actions.  (Even sucking in the belly can teach your daughter something :0 )  She encouraged us to stop treating the scale like a god.  The real kicker was another lecture by a personal trainer.  She had 2 kids and no scale.  She never weighs herself.  I never had a scale until I started "dieting."  So I let go of the scale.  Today I do not know how much I weigh.  I want to get rid of the scale because sometimes I am tempted to check.  But I have not convinced my husband we don't need it so it still taunts me a little in the bathroom.

Instead I pay attention to my clothes and how they fit.  In the last 6 months I have gone from 1X tops to XL tops to L tops.  My pant size has diminished slightly too.  This has all been without regular exercise.  There have been spurts of exercise scattered here and there.  I also pay attention to how I feel when I am exercising.  How hard am I working?  Is it easier or harder than last time?  I can feel an improvement and measure it by how much easier it is to run or sprint or even when I do pilates, I can lower my legs to the 45 degree angle without my back arching.

So do I feel guilty when I eat?  No.  I just ate a piece of pie before I sat down to write this.  Hence the title includes pie. :D  Do I feel guilty when I don't finish everything?  I am still working on letting food go in the trash.  Especially stuff like french fries or toast that really don't taste good when reheated.  My body image still fluctuates.  Sometimes I look in the mirror and I see a beautiful, healthy woman.  Sometimes I see flab and stretch marks and dark circles.  What I find most interesting is when I look at pictures.  Some pictures look great and some I just see the parts of my body that I struggle to accept the most.

This pictures was a couple months after my second baby was born

This picture was not even a month after I delivered my third baby.

I have noticed a difference in how I feel emotionally.  For a few months I was having a hard time making it to the grocery store for fresh fruits and veggies.  (Would you want to take 2 almost potty-trained girls and rush over to the store between baby's naptime?  This is a store that does not have carts that hold 3 kids by the way.)  I noticed it when my period finally came.  YIKES!  I was so depressed.  I was not getting the nutrients I needed to combat that.  The depletion was supplemented well with vitamins but I didn't want to just take vitamins and eat carbs the rest of the time.  I went through 2 waves of depression and when I felt the next wave coming and I decided to walk a mile with the double stroller and get the good veggies and what a difference I felt the next day.  (Could have been that double high five I made mentally... Exercise and healthy food victory!) But when you are relying on your body to tell you what it needs you can get a pretty clear picture.  So trust your body.  Get the good foods and stop weighing yourself.

I want to add that you can keep trying until you find what works for you.  If you have a system that is working for you and you can maintain the goals you have using your system then don't try to fix it.  My sister-in-law has her own system.  She eats 3 meals a day and she does not overeat.  To quote her, "If I feel like having a piece of cake I can make a cake and eat one piece."  She is down to a size 8 and I am inspired by her.  My father-in-law was barely recognizable when we visited this year.  Healthy eating and exercise and has gotten his weight down and his health has improved vastly.  I am so glad to see people succeeding and maintaining their goals.

A month after I wrote this draft I learned that I am pregnant again.  I have gained 6 pounds in 16 weeks.  This is the lowest weight gain I have ever had in the first month let alone the first 4 months.  I continue to have faith in my body.

Oh yeah, and one more note, the morning sickness came and I also was nursing.  I started taking iron in the morning, right away because of my previous experience with anemia in my last 3 pregnancies.  I added multivitamins in the afternoon and vitamin D3 at night.  It is hard to establish new habits so a couple times I forgot my iron and I felt so sick the next day.  When I added vitamin D3 to the regimen my morning sickness diminished more.  So to me that proves that your body is trying to tell you something with nausea.  My best days during morning sickness have occurred when I got a good night's sleep and good nutrition.  I also learned that when I had a good day if I tried too hard to catch up on housework, I would feel sicker the next day too.  So I have learned to listen to my body when it is tired too.

Breaking Out of Food Jail by Jean Antonello (book review)

Now I realize that I seem to be a little obsessed with food in my last 2 posts and here I am posting about a book that I recently read about food. Oh well. It definitely merits reading and I just happened to pick it up off my mother's kitchen table when I was visiting and it didn't even belong to her! Her friend was loaning it to her and I am eager to let her read it and hear her thoughts about it.

So far my pregnancy is progressing fine. I have gained weight of course, and it is more than I would like to gain (of course). I have been trying really hard to be good and eat healthy and not too much, but it is really hard to avoid the sugar and fat as I stated previously. So I was surprised when this book promised that you can eat to your satisfaction and live naturally thin. A lot of the principles made sense.

It focuses a lot on dispelling the notion that eating less will help you lose weight. The reason that makes sense is that our bodies are adapted to survive and if the body does not get its predetermined quota of nutrients it will (on its own--without your permission) begin survival techniques which involve storing fat. If it does not receive enough calories to store fat with it will canabalize your muscle tissue and slow down your metabolism in order to burn less calories. Then it will send messages to your brain to stock up on high calorie foods. You may ignore these messages for as long as you can, but eventually your will to starve will lose or you will die. So you give in and eat brownies, cookies, cakes, ice cream, bacon, cream cheese, and other high fat, high sugar (high calorie) foods like your stomach is a bottomless pit. The book calls it a famine/feast cycle. Some bodies are not very good at sending the signal for more food and are better at starving to death than others. Those people tend to be anorexic. Other bodies have a much stronger hunger sensation and refusal to starve and those people tend to be bulimic. I would have to be the in-between, because I don't starve myself intentionally, but I do occasionally binge on sweets or fatty foods without throwing up (except when I have morning sickness). So I end up storing most of it as fat.

This made a lot of sense to me. The cure makes a lot of sense too. If you are not eating enough nutrients then your body will tell you by sending cravings for sweets. So you should respond by eating more healthy food. How do you know that you are feeding your body the right amount? This is the most simplistic part: When you are hungry eat a healthy well-balanced meal until you are satisfied. Your body tells you when to eat and when to stop eating and that is pretty much it. It has more details than that and the book includes a list of "Real Foods" which is pretty much any normal healthy food that is high in nutrients and low in fat. But that means you can still have bread and pasta, along with your vegetables and fruits and lean meats. It still includes bacon and sausage, but recommends that they be used sparingly (more like once a month as opposed to every day) and keep the butter, mayonaise and salad dressings on the teaspoon level.

The best part about it for me is that I can do this while pregnant or not. My body is the one in charge of telling me when more nutrients are required. I don't have to calculate anything. It really makes sense when you think about the beginning of a pregnancy. You feel so sick all the time that you don't want to eat, but your body still needs food so it insists you better get some high calorie contents in there or you and your baby will starve. So my curiousity is piqued. If I had been listening better to my hunger signals before the nausea started, would I have avoided it completely? Would I have avoided eating the extra sweets and fats at the beginning if I had been eating as often as my body asked for it? Well I can't be sure for this pregnancy, but I will be better prepared for the next one! If you are someone who has tried dieting and ended up gaining back more weight when you went off your diet, I recommend this book. It just makes sense.

Post Script:  Since writing this post I have had two more pregnancies and gathered more information that supports what Jean Antonello wrote and put it into practice in my life.  I am so glad I read this book.  I have written follow-up posts about my experience so no need to re-hash it here.