welcome

  I started this blog as a way to keep myself on track as I begin this journey to a healthier me. I have always been overweight, and after decades of pretending that it was just my body's natural state, I decided to do something about it. I have tried so many diets over the years, with minimal temporary successes, and I can't even count the amount of money I have wasted buying diet pills, weight loss meal replacement shakes and bars, even the occasional fad exercise equipment. Not only was I dieting, but so were my sisters and my mother. We all share DNA, and eating habits, and I would watch their efforts and try what seemed to be working for them, or vice versa. The list of attempts is embarrassingly long when you combine all of us, and even more embarrassing was the absence of sustainable success-seriously, a couple of weeks seemed to be the maximum length.

As I continued the yo-yo pattern of losing and gaining over the years, my body went through changes that I was not prepared to accept. Don't laugh, but under this layer of subcutaneous fat, I have a strong core. I have played sports all of my life, and was in a weight-training class all the way through high school that built up muscles- I was benching 180 and squatting 400lbs by the time I graduated. What I wasn't doing was getting any education about proper eating habits, and when you combine excessive muscle with lack of knowledge about how to maintain it, the muscle goes away as the squishy fat packs on. At 35 I still have strength and ability to exercise, but I don't have the longevity to hold my 100 extra pounds in a yoga plank for two minutes. I enjoy yoga, Zumba, walking/hiking, and swimming, but all of these became increasingly more difficult the bigger I got. I held steady at 250 lbs for years, but when I became pregnant at 31 with my daughter, the scale has only gone up as I watched in horror.

In January 2015 I participated in a challenge group focused on getting exercise in daily.  The other members of the group included my sister and a handful of her coworkers, one of whom was working on becoming a BeachBody coach. I was successful at daily exercise, but not successful at healthy eating. After the first week of struggling, I felt settled in a nice little routine that held me accountable by requiring me to log in daily, and I watched a handful of pounds slide off. Yay me! but then came February, March-April-May-June-July and right on into August. Seriously. I celebrated my success by giving up and going back to my unhealthy eating with minimal exercise for the next seven months.

In August 2015, my younger sister started another diet, and I could see that it was working for her. She was still eating normal whole foods, and losing weight by cutting out all the excess carbs and added sugar. I started researching Ketogenic dieting, asking friends and family far wiser than myself who had knowledge of the science behind, as well as the ability to explain it to me. Basically everything I thought I knew about dieting did not fit here. High fat helps move out the stored fat, get rid of added sugar so my body gets to balance itself out with its own sugar production, and protein to keep the body strong.

So here we go.

Me, being rocked in the hammock by my daughter during our last camping trip.

I hate having my picture taken for obvious reasons, but this picture caught me off guard because it showed me as big as I am while still reminding me that I want to be there to make more of these great memories for the rest of my daughters life.