#91 Heather – Lost 110 lbs on Keto
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5 Steps to Baby Step Into Ketosis
July 8, 2019
#92 Wade Lightheart – Heal Your Gut
July 23, 2019
Meet Heather:
Hi my name is Heather and I have been morbidly obese since I was 11 years old. I bounced between 260 and 300 lbs all through college. One failed diet after another.
After college I continued gaining hitting my heaviest recorded weight at 378 in 2012. I joined Weight Watchers in 2014 and lost 110 lbs quickly only to immediately gain 80 of it back the following year while going through a divorce. WW worked but it didn’t teach me anything about food or why I used food for comfort & I knew I would not be able to pay a monthly membership fee for the rest of my life so it wasn’t an option long term. I also struggle with binge eating B.E.D and although I still struggle to this day I have found ways to still have weight loss success with Keto.
I have found No other way of eating other than Keto that I have ever been able to stick to and enjoy while also losing weight.
I started Keto on March 1st 2017 at 340 lbs and I have lost 122 lbs eating keto foods. No special products or pills, no membership, no exercise as of yet. I still have weight to lose and goals to hit.
Keto has changed my relationship with food and taught me for the first time in my life how to use food as fuel and what my body needs nutritionally, all of my blood markers are normal now, sleep has improved, anxiety has improved and of course losing this much weight and being able to keep it off for the first time in my entire life has changed my whole life.
I will always be keto/low carb for the rest of my life. The key for my success has been to work on the mental component of why I got so morbidly obese in the first place and I have used the Instagram keto community (@heather_lowcarbs_4life) as my platform to work out all those feelings and emotions and it has been a vital tool. Doing the mental work is what takes it from a diet to a lifestyle.
Keto has changed my life and saved my life. If I could tell anybody anything starting out the keto diet I would say “you are worth it, never give up”
Show Notes:
ABOUT HEATHER
- I have been obese or morbidly obese basically my entire life
- It started when I was a young kid and I was overweight by the time I graduated high school
- By the time I was in college, I was in the morbidly obese category
- From there, my weight just sky rocketed even further
- In 2012, my highest recorded weight at the doctor’s office was 378 lbs. and I still did not do anything about it until 2014
- I had done some dieting through college and had lost 30 to 40 pounds, but nothing ever stuck and I always gain it back
- In 2014, I joined weight watchers and was very successful
- In one year of it, I have lost 110 lbs. but I hit a hard road with paying the membership fee in weight watchers
- They did not teach me anything in that year about food, I just counted points – food was given a point system and it worked as long as you stuck to it
- But I have to cancel my membership
- And at the time, I also went back on birth control, and my weight sky rocketed again
- I gained 80 lbs. in less than 6 months and I immediately got off the birth control
- It was clear that I could not handle that because it really destroyed my hormones
- I went back to weight watcher and it was not working anymore
- A friend reached out to that was in college and was studying keto
- He told me that he has something that could help me especially on my hormones
- When he was describing keto, I remembered induction phase of Atkins and told him that I could do it
- When I started the keto diet, it was just to lose weight and it was a temporary fix
- As my hormones became level and all of the things were improved, I was not only able to lose a lot weight, but I felt great and everything changed – sleep, anxiety, depression and all of these factors changed for me
- Keto has been the first diet that not only I’ve been able to stick to, but it has been over 2 years now and I am still losing and it has changed my entire life
- I always thought that I was gaining all the weight because of the amount of food that I was eat, but it wasn’t
- It was the mental aspect of coping with food to numb myself
- I used food as a coping mechanism in life
- Especially with carb food, once you start putting those carbs or sugar inside your mouth, it is like a never-ending pit
- I was not able to control it and I am a binge eater
- I use food in a way that is unhealthy and I still struggle that today, but I don’t binge on sugar and carbs anymore, I only pick keto foods
- I am working with coping with food as a comfort every single day
- I use to binge on a daily basis and now, I am doing it once a month or once every 3 months
- I can’t prevent life events from happenings and I could not prevent an entire lifetime behavior where I’ve used food to comfort me to not sometimes still happen
- But I am doing it in a way that is so much more healthy
- I did start tracking a year ago along with my period and my cycle
- I have immersed myself on the Instagram community and I have started sharing my story and talking with other females
- I have lost 122 lbs. on keto and it’s really working for me
- Sometimes, I don’t think that we have to cure the behavior as much as we have to accept it until it will get to a point that it is already controlled and no longer causing damage
- As an adult, I’ve lived in the world where it wasn’t really built for me – getting on an airplane, riding a rollercoaster, sitting in booth at a restaurant, going to a friend’s house and being offered a plastic chair that you knew you are going to break or not fit into
- I lived in a world that wasn’t accepting of me and I have to adjust
- There are so many things that you don’t think about. You just assume that people that are obese are lazy or they can’t get it together, and that’s not true at all. It wasn’t my experience, at least.
- I was very isolated for a decade and now I am not
- I have been diagnosed in anxiety and depression, but I don’t experience that the same way that I used to anymore
- Everything’s normal. This is the first time ever, as an adult, that I felt normal and that I fit in into the society
- The Instagram community has really been a vital part of my weight loss and this journey because it’s just a group of girls, we are all free and we are all there with the same goal and supporting each other
- It’s totally a different experience and I am very grateful for the support on Instagram
- I feel like everybody who is going for any kind of goal should find their tribe and their group of people that can support them all the way because it is really a game changer
- My entire family is pre-diabetic and my mom is a full-blown diabetic, and I did not know that going into keto could cure that just by changing what you eat
- I’ve learned so much about food and how it affects and fuels you and why these things work
- When you educate yourself and find out why things affect you and why you feel so good, it’s eye-opening and educating
- I have done keto all by myself. I have nobody in the household who does keto and it can be hard at first
- But once you get fat-adapted, you feel good and you start educating yourself on food, you don’t want carbs, because that’s not food anymore
- I am not a replacement/recipe person, I keep things very simple. If I have a chocolate craving, I’ll just a have a little piece of lily’s chocolate or half a bar
- My husband doesn’t have a health or weight issues, but it is so hard to watch him eat stuff that I know that’s not fueling his body now knowing what I know
- You go through a phase especially in the beginning of keto where you want to sell it, preach it, give it out to everybody or you want to save the world because eliminating carbs and sugar could save the world. Not just for weight, but for general health
- And then, you realize that not everybody wants to hear it
- But, I do know that the world is changing
- Keto is a movement and not a fad diet
- Keto or at least low-carb, will be more mainstream in maybe the next 3 or 4 years
- Keto is whole foods with the absence of carbs, that’s how I kind of break things
TYPICAL DAY OF YOUR DIET
- I usually will start my day with a coffee and I add a collagen and cream
- The next step is electrolytes because I’m a person who needs electrolytes on keto
- I drink about 200 ounces of water a day and even if I have lost weight, I still drink like that because if I don’t drink a lot of water, my body holds water
- I usually do not have my first meal about 2:00 in the afternoon
- I don’t put very hard time windows on myself at all because I have binge eating issues and when I restrict in any way, it will lead to a binge
- I like to have eggs and my current obsession is this eggs and waffle thing that one of the girls on Instagram shared
- It is a shredded cheese in a waffle maker, one scrambled egg and a little bit of shredded cheese on top and you cook it until all the moisture is out and it’s like a little Eggo
- Dinner is always protein and a green
- I batch cook protein, so I always have a protein in the fridge and I pick out whatever I am interested on that day and I usually pair it with a side salad or spinach, green beans or broccoli
- I like to have a late snack. So, depending on the day, it might be a cheese crisps or some pecans or chips
- I am very basic and very simple eating
- I have this side salad which is just diced cucumbers, diced tomatoes, feta cheese and litehouse OPA tzatziki ranch dressing and that is my go-to little side
- In this journey, I did not do exercise, it is just pure diet alone
- When I first started, I had a herniated disc on my back, so I was not able to exercise then
- After losing about 80 lbs. that herniated disc went back in and then, last July, I was getting in and out off a friend’s boat on the back ladder and I tore my meniscus and my knee
- And so, I am still dealing with that now
- Even though I am not a person that is interested in exercising, I know that it is good for my health and probably will be doing it
- So, all of my weight loss has been just from controlling my diet
- Your weight loss starts in your kitchen and what’s on your plate, and yes, exercise is always a benefit, but it is not needed
ADVICE
- My biggest advice would be, don’t over complicate it
- You don’t have to know everything just to start eliminating carbs
- It doesn’t have to perfect in the beginning
- Cut out the carbs, learn as you and as you go, you will learn new thing and apply those things
- I have tracked religiously my entire journey
- I am a strong believer in tracking
- It felt daunting in the beginning, but I put everything I eat on the food scale even when I am binge eating
- And at this point, it is not daunting anymore because it’s just a data point
- The reason that I track is because I am a chronic over eater
WHERE CAN PEOPLE FIND YOU
- Instagram: heather_lowcarbs_4life
