You have to pick a day. It’s the first step. If you don’t, you will keep making excuses of why you haven’t yet.

I need to do more research. I need to find the right time. It’s the holidays – are you kidding me? Start a diet now? It’s my birthday. It’s my anniversary. I just started a new job.

Hey, I’ve said them before too. So I pick December 1, 2017. It’s a good day. Why not? So here I am world. It’s December 1st and I’m 259 pounds.

It’s funny how things happen the way they do. It started off a few nights ago when I was browsing through InstaGram stories and Facebook news feed and I saw a good friend from high school, Manuela, tell her weight loss story (I will be posting her links on my “Helpful Links” page). It was pretty amazing and hit home. She has been doing the Keto Diet since May and lost 80 pounds. Talk about inspiration! So I started reading up on it. It’s very similar to other diets that I have done. I like changing things up because it keeps me from being stagnant. So I messaged Manuela and we got talking about her journey. She gave me some great resources. I bought a couple of books and wrote a little FB story to start it off. I woke up the morning to multiple messages about how others wanted to try it too. 

Let me give you a little background to my weight life. I was active in high school – soccer, cross country, cheerleading.

In college, not so much. The Freshmen Fifteen became the Sophomore Twenty, but it wasn’t too bad. My heaviest in college was about 170 pounds. What really did me in was after my first pregnancy. With my son, I went up to 225 pounds. After I had him, I was back down to 180 pounds. But then I went on the oh-so-popular Depo-Provera shot as my birth control. I hated being on the pill because it would make me so extremely emotional. Depo-Provera promised to be the solution. Well, after two months, my weight was back at 225 pounds (and I was breast feeding, so the weight should of stayed off, so they said). After six months, my hair started falling out. I talked to my doctor about it and she said that these side effects had been reported by other women, but they weren’t published officially. So, I decided to come off of it. But the weight stayed, no matter what I did.

My heaviest was in 2010 – I was at 306 pounds. I couldn’t take it anymore. That was just crazy. I saw a picture of myself as I was officiating my best friends’ wedding. Every single picture just made me angry. New Year’s Day 2011 came around and it was time for me to make a change. I vividly remember saying, “God, I need your help,” (yes, I’m a Christian and I pray on a regular basis). I said, “Make me change right now.” And I did.

I started off reading about the South Beach Diet. Low carbs, low calories. Best of both worlds of dieting. My husband and I started with phase 1 of cutting all carbs out for 2-3 weeks. Oh my the headaches we both had detoxing out of that. It was really hard. But we finally kicked the carb habit.

By July 2011, I had lost 50 pounds and was down to 255 pounds. I was so excited. Of course we were now in a different phase of the diet that allowed some carbs like sweet potatoes and fruits. But for some reason I just couldn’t break below that 250-pound mark.

For the next six years, I have stayed between 260-280 pounds. If I stayed focused, I could get lower and if I started to not pay attention, I would find myself back up around 280. It was extremely annoying and very discouraging. In 2016 I was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes. I was devastated. I’ll admit it. That was a low for me. I started on Metformin (didn’t have to take insulin) and really focused on cutting on sugars, but still didn’t cut down on all carbs. I still allowed myself things like sweet potatoes, sourdough bread, fruit, and low fat foods.

In 2017 I saw the doctor for my annual check-up. I did my labs and was again upset about the results. My A1C was still high. My fasting glucose was still high. My liver was overproducing. I cried. Here was my Facebook post from that day:

My doctor reminded me though of how far I have come from 2016. Glucose in 2016 was 276; in 2017 it was 228. Not great, but better. A1C in 2016 was 9.2 and in 2017 it was 8. So things were coming down, and the doctor said I was going in the right direction. But I just felt like I needed to do something more. I was put on another medication (Invokana) to help bring down my spiking blood sugars. I noticed that my blood sugar always spiked in the morning and then would calm down throughout the day.

When I heard about the Keto diet and heard about how much weight my friend from high school had lost in only 6 months, I knew I wanted to learn more. One thing that has stuck out to me the most – the diet lifestyle I have been doing has really just been burning a candle at both ends. If I am attempting low carbs AND low calorie, where the heck is my body getting energy from? This definitely explains not only my spiking sugars here and there but also the bouncing weight, bouncing energy, and my frustration. So not only was I burning myself out in life, but I was burning myself out in food and diet.

So that’s me. Here I am. I’m 259 pounds and hitting the restart button. Ctrl+Alt+Del. Reboot.