#93 Julie Smith – Lost 65 lbs in 10 Months on Keto

Meet Julie:

Julie Smith is the creator of the popular, fast-growing Instagram blog, @ketomadesimple. She lives in Utah with her husband Cameron (@ketomadman) and their 4 insane children. She has a passion for helping people feel beautiful. Julie struggled with her weight for years and had no explanation of why. She was working out five days a week and eating super clean, only to find that she still continued to gain weight. After many doctor visits and tests, in early 2017, Julie was diagnosed with PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome), which is basically a hormonal disaster that affects millions of women. She was so happy to find a reason why – but was eager to find a solution. After doing extensive research on ways to combat this disorder, all things pointed to keto. She immediately jumped right in. Julie began living a ketogenic lifestyle in February 2017, and she’s never looked back. She has lost over 60 pounds and has gained her life back in ways she never imagined. She continues to inspire others through her social media influence and believes that living a ketogenic lifestyle can be a way of healing yourself from the inside out.

• I am a mom, I have 4 children and my husband and I have been married for 3 years, so we are a blended family
• What me and my husband do together is, we both have an Instagram account and we just kind of show our daily life and what we eat on a daily basis
• I try to provide fresh new ideas for what to eat because I am a foodie and my husband has turned into a foodie since he’s married to me
• We really love good food and we don’t feel like keto has to be very restrictive and taste like diet food
• It’s my main focus to come up with delicious recipes and I love to share them with people
• I just recently launched my brand-new cookbook called, Keto Your Way
• The Keto Your Way cookbook is a compilation of all of my super easy recipes and the title of the cookbook kind of translates into my philosophy on Keto
• Because I do believe that everybody is totally different and you need to take a different approach to keto to fit your lifestyle

WHAT BROUGHT YOU TO KETO

• I was a single mom for a few years
• I worked a job that I totally hated, but needed and over that course of a couple of years that I was working at this place, I just kept slowly gaining weight and I thought it was just because I was stressed
• And then, I got married and I became a stay-at-home mom and all of my kids were old enough to be in school full time and so, I took that opportunity to really focus on myself and help better myself
• I was at the gym 5 days a week and eating very clean meals, and still kept gaining weight
• At that point, I was thinking that there was something wrong
• I started feeling depressed and anxious which was something very new to me so, I knew that there was a deeper issue
• Long story short, I went to the doctor and found out that I had PCOS
• At that point, I realized that maybe there were some things that were beyond my control
• Maybe I need medication, but I don’t want to be put on medication
• I hate having to rely on something. So, I just took it upon myself to do some research and figure out how can I manage my weight safely with PCOS
• All the research I found pointed me to keto
• I did not know what keto was, but I had done the Atkins diet in the past so I kind of know that I had a good understanding of the basics of what I should be doing
• And I literally just started keto the next day and that helped me to really understand what I should be doing with my body
• Since February of 2017, I have lost 60-65 lbs. and I lost that in the first 10 months and I have been able to maintain that weight loss ever since
• I am super happy with the weight, but more so with how I feel
• Because at one point in my life, I really did not think that I could ever lose weight
• I started keto with all the intentions of how can I not gain more weight
• This whole experience has been completely mind blowing to me and how it reversed my PCOS symptoms and balanced out my hormones
• I did have a struggle getting pregnant with my second child, but I did not know that I had PCOS
• I did not know these things that I was struggling with until I actually went to the doctor
• I don’t understand why people still talk badly about keto because there are so many healing powers to it, if you just open up your mind and really take the time to learn about keto
• People were taught this specific way of nutrition and how we should be feeding our bodies and it took me a really long time to realize that whole thing I have learned growing up about the food pyramid is absolutely not true – for my body at least
• The hardest part when I started keto was really training my brain to be okay with eating the things that I was always taught not to eat
• I just needed to be okay with upping the amounts of fat and switching the quality of foods that I was eating and the progress that I have made was insane
• It took me about 10 months to lose 60 lbs. and I’ve just kept it up ever since
• The majority of people can lose 50-60 lbs. within 9-10 months
• So, if you are somebody who is stuck in your weight loss and you just can’t progress, you should commit to 10 months of keto and your body will  be completely different
• You have to allow yourself that time. You just have to be patient.
• When I first started keto, I found a couple of Instagram accounts who really spoke to me on a level that I could understand
• So, I did not track macros, because I did not know what macros was when I first started
• I remember one time I was sitting on the couch googling what is a macro and how to track it
• It got to a point where I realized that I can’t do it. Like, I can’t be a slave to this every day of my life because it is not realistic for me
• So, I kind of just jumped in without tracking anything and to this day, I have not tracked one piece of food that has been in my mouth, but I mentally track my carbs
• I like to take that intuitive eating approach and it works for me

TYPICAL DAY OF YOUR EATING

• When I first started, I ate very dirty keto
• But to me, at the beginning, I was just searching for anything that would help my cravings
• And overtime, you start to recognize that those things aren’t making you feel the best
• I recognized that I feel better when I am eating whole foods
• Now, I am pickier with my ingredients
• I am a breakfast eater and not a late-night eater which is difficult sometimes because kids want to eat dinner and so sometimes, I skip out on dinner with the family
• I typically will have a coffee with heavy cream and I try to wait until I get hungry and that is usually at 1:00 in the afternoon
• Then, I’ll eat one huge meal with some sort of protein
• I eat high protein keto because I am anemic and my body just loves red meat
• I try to get vegetables in, but I do not do great with vegetables
• Vegetables do not do great with my gut

• I feel like keto and intermittent fasting work so well together because when you eat a huge meal and then, you’ll let your body digest and do its thing and get hungry again
• When my brain is operating in an empty stomach, it does its best thinking which is strange, but I think that’s what fasting is for – to open up your brain, be in tune with your body and to realize what will nourish you
• Fasting is such a huge factor in having mental clarity for sure
• I do not fast intentionally, because I am not in a rush to lose weight because for me, I feel great almost every day and so, I don’t feel the need to do an extreme fasting
• But, what I do is that, I stop eating at 4:00 in the afternoon and then I do not eat until the next morning

ADVICE

• Just jump into it
• You need to commit even if you do not know everything, just start and you’ll learn as you go
• The beauty of doing it that way is that, you don’t really know what to expect, you do not know what’s coming and then, you are more prone to be able to listen to your body
• You just have to experiment to find out what works for your body and what your body responds to

FAVORITE RECIPE

• My fathead pizza crust
• Because it can be made into so many different things
• My way of cooking is to replicate things that I can no longer eat
• For me, some of my favorite recipes are the things that I can no longer eat like orange rolls

HOW CAN PEOPLE FIND YOU

• Website: ketomadesimple.life
• Instagram: ketomadesimple
• Cookbook: Available in Target, Barnes & Noble and also available for pre-order in Amazon