My Weight Loss Journey... so far

 It's been about six months since I made this pretty drastic life change, so I thought I'd document the experience up 'till now! It all coincides with the whole virus life change too.. so things have been a bit weird around here for me consider both these things. 

There was a time when I said I would never diet. Food is too much a happy thing for me. Being fat is annoying, but food is worth it. And I still kinda think this. As long as you're healthy and all. Right? 

So then what if you are told you aren't really that healthy? When I finally went in for a regular check up and they told me that if I didn't do something, I'd have diabetes, I guess that was enough of a push. I'm not even sure what "having diabetes" means, but in my mind it means having to constantly deal with something very unpleasant and having to take insulin and all that. 

So after having pooed pooed dieting my whole life, I suddenly found myself doing it. Well, I still think of it as not truly dieting, just changing how I look at food. And I really do look at things differently now! Anyway,  they told me to do a low carb diet, so I researched what that meant and started making the changes, keeping track of and counting carbs on My Fitness Pal. I had no expectations except to hopefully go back six months later to see if my number was better. 

When it was three to four weeks later and I suddenly realized I'd lost about ten pounds I was like...seriously? For real? This is working? I had no idea it would really work. It was a nice motivational factor! And it just continued to go down! When this happens to other people I always want to know EXACTLY what they did. So here's what I did:

• counted carbs... trying to stay between 50 and 100 a day. (Keto is more like 20 carbs, so I was no where near close to that.)
• exercised every day (with one day off) alternating every day between walking for 30 min on the treadmill and doing 30 minutes of Zumba
• stopped drinking milk (and this is the hardest thing!) and eating bread, potatoes, rice and pasta, and breakfast cereal. I still have them occasionally... but so very rare compared to before.
• learned to love eggs every day for breakfast. And bacon and cheese. 
• Learned to cook with heavy cream or half and half, and cream cheese, and lots of meat.
• Learned to eat vegetables better. But not corn. Spinach in all the things.
• Perfected salad making. Ranch is okay!
• Avocado is now a staple!
• Almond milk smoothies for a treat! And a rare banana.. .but these are... A TREAT!
• Ice cream is okay, just not a HUGE amount like before, and not every day.
• Lettuce wrapped hamburgers are awesome, but hard to eat. 
• Have a few french fries, just not the WHOLE THING!
• Intermittent fasting (which has gone well with the whole coronovirus lifestyle) is also a thing. This means not eating until noon, and being done eating after 8 pm. 
• Trick yourself regarding bread by making all the variations of chaffles. Chaffles are a beautiful thing! (Cheese/egg  mixture made in a mini waffle iron.)
• Drink flavored water when you are sick of regular water. Drink LOTS of regular water!
• No juice no soda! NONE!
• No donuts, cookies, cake, pastries, pies, cinnamon rolls. This is really hard for someone who finds comfort n baking. Gah, so sad.
• Allow cheat days and make cookies on those days! Hide the dough, and don't eat cookies for a week afterwards. ONLY ON THE ONE CHEAT DAY!
• Figure out how to enjoy cauliflower things... rice, crusts and etc. It's not bad after all! Who knew?
• Did I mention eggs????

Anyway, in the end by doing this I've lost 35 pounds these past six months. I seemed to have stalled at that number... but I've also been slacking a lot lately. Ugh. I need to recommit. I also did have my blood tested again and I went down from a 6.6 a1c number to 5.8. I still need to drop two more points to be within normal range. And I'd like to lose 15 more pounds to make it an even 50 pounds.

So... I'M NOT DONE YET! And, of course, I'll never be done. This is the new lifestyle whether I want to admit that or not. I can up my carbs a bit to maintain (which is kinda what it's ended up being the past few weeks...it's been more like 120 carbs a day.) But still not go crazy on all the awesome things there are to eat in the world. It's sad. But it's also good to be healthy.

We'll see how it goes. Has anyone else had experience in this endeavor? What things helped you? And what did you learn from it all? 

(I know I should show a before and after picture, but I haven't found good ones yet. LOL. And I'm still not sure it's even that noticeable. Which would be embarrassing to show! HA!)