This is a personal story about how I almost gave up completely after losing 77 lbs using a Keto diet because I struggled to make the weight loss sustainable. I have always been active, when I was in high school I was a wrestler, after high school I joined the army, and in college I became a top ranked competitive power lifter. Power lifting was a sport that I absolutely loved it. Working out has always been something I love. Being extremely active, especially in power lifting, allowed me to eat anything I wanted to and boy did I eat anything and everything.
Not a Question of If, But When…
Sure enough I got hurt. Next thing I knew I couldn’t lift or work out like I used to. But that sure didn’t stop me from eating. Even though I wasn’t working out, I also wasn’t watching my diet, and I started to pack on the pounds and got really heavy. At one point I was 75 pounds overweight. That is when I knew I had to do something.
A friend had mentioned this Keto diet and I started focusing on using a Keto diet to drop the weight. It worked beautifully and took the weight right off. In 5 months I lost 77 pounds using the Keto diet. Despite losing a lot of weight I was still struggling. The only way to keep the weight off was to religiously follow the Keto diet. This diet was very restrictive and while trying to stay true to it I was also juggling my physical therapy practice and my family.
It Was Really Getting Hard
My wife and kids rarely saw me when I wasn’t exhausted. The demands of running a business, trying to stay on the Keto diet, and balance my family were really weighing on me. I was stressed out, I had worked really hard to lose the 77 pounds and I really didn’t want to put the weight back on and end up being fat and unhealthy. How could I be lean AND have the energy to be the husband and the father to my wife and kids that I knew I could be?! It seemed like a never ending struggle.
Finding A Sustainable Way to Keep the Weight Off
All I wanted was to be lean, to look like I did back in high school, to feel great, and be able to wear clothes off the rack and not have to go to the big and tall store. It was a great feeling when I was able to go into like Kohl’s and buy a pair of pants that were 34 inch waist instead of a 42. I can’t even tell you how good that felt. That was absolutely amazing. I didn’t want to give any of that up. I had created this new me and I wanted that to be permanent, but there was this internal struggle. Finally, I had what I wanted but I could not maintain it and I felt terrible and I felt terrible about myself.
This is hard to share, but years ago when I was in elementary and junior high, I never felt like I fit in. I never felt like I was part of anything. I suffered from low self-esteem, low self-confidence and I was bullied. It made me feel like I wasn’t good enough, that I was inferior to everybody else. Those feelings transferred to adulthood and fueled my drive to become big, strong, and powerful. That is what sparked my interest in learning how to lift weights.
Lingering Feelings of Insecurity
I knew I was heavy and unhealthy. I had found a way to get that weight off, but now I was struggling to keep it off. Even though I had a successful career, I was successful in business, and I had lost this weight, I still had these feelings. Still, I felt like I wasn’t good enough and I was killing myself just trying to keep that weight off, trying to juggle the stress of my business and spend time with my family. Finally I had lost the weight, but I really wasn’t a lot of fun to be around at that time in my life. My wife pulled me aside one night and told me I wasn’t the fun-loving enjoyable guy that she married and she was tired of me being irritable all the time. If losing the weight meant that I was going to be like this it wasn’t worth it.
Who Had I Become
This person that I had become was unhappy, didn’t smile, and was really crabby. Moreover, he wasn’t being a good father to my kids. This was killing me inside, I felt like I had hit this wall that required me to choose between the body I wanted or being happy in my life and with my family. The problem was the Keto diet that I was on, I could take the weight off and I could keep it off but it meant that I had to follow the strict diet guidelines. Following those restrictive guidelines meant that I was crabby, tired and exhausted all the time.
In addition, I would get intense cravings for sweets, out of nowhere. Prior to being on this diet I had never had a sweet tooth but after I took the weight off using this Keto diet I would crave sweets like you wouldn’t believe! Those craves would often end in self sabotage. I found myself sneaking treats and I didn’t know how to stop the cravings. I tried just saying no but the self-control really, really wasn’t working. My daughter found me one time, middle of the night in the kitchen, spoonful of Jif peanut butter, just shoveling it into my mouth. I had never had cravings like this before the Keto diet and I had no idea what to do.
The Issues Kept Coming…
Then the physical issues came on, I started getting cramps in my legs. My inner thigh would just seize up and cramp. I would go to stand up, get lightheaded, and almost pass out. I was maintaining my water intake and doing everything right, but something inside of me wasn’t right. Even though I had finally lost this weight and was trying so hard to be healthy, I felt worse than ever!
Everything came to a head when I suffered two major tendon ruptures within two years of each other. First, I ruptured my left Achilles tendon and to have surgery to fix it. Then no more than a year later I ruptured my right bicep at the elbow and they had to sew that back into place. This is when I knew what I was doing with my diet, trying to keep this weight off, it was taking a toll on me. It was taking a toll on me mentally and physically. My family and even my business were being effected. It just wasn’t working.
Then It Happened!
Around this time that I went to a conference for physical therapy and it was as if by chance all these new concepts were introduced to me and this light bulb went off. I was introduced to the secret of intermittent fasting, the use of yoga, high intensity interval training, and the problem that we have with our current food industry. It was mind blowing to learn about all the chemicals that are being put in the food, the preservatives, and the amount of sugar that the food industry is hiding in everyday items. No wonder people have issues trying to lose and keep weight off.
I started reading the ingredients and looking at what’s being put into our food today, it’s absolutely scary. I kept thinking “this is creating problems for people.” I couldn’t believe what I kept finding. We are talking hormonal imbalances, problems with our gut, inflammation, joint issues, all kinds of problems that were all being linked back to things in our food! What is even more bothersome is that I found a lot of this information is not easily accessible to the public community. It’s really not, I mean, you can find it, but you have to look really hard. You know, it’s being hidden from us.
I Realized 2 Things:
1) The struggle that I was facing wasn’t my fault.
2) I wasn’t the only person that needed to know this information!
Alkalized Diet
It was this aha moment. My eyes were opened and it all clicked, I realized that it wasn’t just about exercise or diet alone. Immediately I started researching, I still remember sitting in the conference and it was just like boom, this light bulb went off. This was the piece that I was missing. An un-alkalized diet effects the inflammation in the body and when inflammation is uncontrolled, it messes with your insulin levels. Which in turn makes it really hard for your body to burn fat and keep the weight off. It is so important to alkalize your diet if you want effective weight-loss.
Mindset
Diet is not the only important thing, I also learned how your mindset plays a key roll in the weight loss process. At the beginning of my journey I was so focused on the diet or the exercise I never thought about how much of an impact my mind had on my success. Looking back I realized I was focusing on the mechanics of losing weight, a physical goal. I wasn’t thinking about why I wanted that physical goal and how important that is to have peace, balance and harmony within you. It’s your mind, body, and spirit, the whole body that has to be addressed in order to be successful. That was the key that I was missing. I still get goosebumps when I think about getting on that plane home and feeling like I had a whole new lease on life.
Restructuring My Life
I remember getting home and I sat down for like two and a half hours writing out a new plan for myself. I wanted to implement everything I had just learned. My plan was to start using this new information to restructure my life. On this journey I would learn how to address my body, diet, mind, and spirit. Through the study of intermittent fasting, the timing of how we should eat, the foods that we should be eating, how we should be pairing them together, and the importance of macro and micro nutrients. Meditation, yoga and high intensity interval training (HIIT) became part of my regular routine. I was so excited to implement all these new things I had learned.
But after a few weeks I started having trouble finding time to work out. You know how it is. You start everything guns a blazing you’re just moving and all of a sudden you start to hit a roadblock and you have trouble with time and you have trouble getting your workouts in. This is exactly what happened, I couldn’t find the time for it.
My workouts would take too long, I didn’t know how to structure them properly. After a short time I started skipping my meditation, reasoning that I just didn’t have time for it. My life was so busy I couldn’t fit everything in but I really wanted this to work. So I did what anyone else would do I said, well, I just got to create more time.
I am guessing you are thinking… “How do you create more time?”
Well, I thought I would just wake up earlier. So I started getting up at 4:00 AM, I would work out and then start my day. But I quickly found out, if I am going to get up that early then I have to go to bed earlier. Well, shoot! Now I had to go to bed at 8:00 PM. Once again, I’m missing out on my family time. I’m missing out on that time with my wife and my kids. I remember saying, “All I want is to be happy! This isn’t worth it, I just want to quit and accept that to be happy I will have to be fat and unhealthy because nothing’s going to work.”
I wanted to throw in the towel so many times. But there was always this little voice deep down inside that said, “don’t quit, don’t quit, that’s not going to make you happy. That’s not going to fulfill you inside. You gotta find a way to make this work.”
All or Nothing
At that point, I decided I was going to burn my boats. I’m going to cut off all other avenues. I am going to make it to where I have no other option but to succeed. I’m just going to keep moving forward. Frustrated but determined I started to focus on how do I put this together?
I sat back and I took stock in my life. I about thought what’s truly important and what is the legacy that I want to leave behind when I’m gone from this earth? Someone once asked me, “there’s 24 hours in a day and if you can’t fit everything into your day, is that your fault or God’s fault?” I’m here to tell you, God doesn’t make any mistakes, if you can’t fit everything into your life, there’s a problem. You have too much. For 30 years I had abandoned my relationship with God and through this journey I have started to rebuild it.
I have a whole new outlook on life.
I started to ask how can I fit these things I have learned into my life? You know, if you ask the right questions, eventually you start to come to the right answer. As I asked this question and started to work toward finding a way to make this work I realized I don’t need to work out for 45 minutes. If I have a properly designed, high interval intensity training routine I can get a great workout and burn a lot of calories in as little as 15 minutes.
Intermittent Fasting
After implementing intermittent fasting I realized I didn’t need to worry about planning as many meals. My meals were delicious and full of healthy items because I didn’t have to cook as often. Before bed I would use a short guided meditation which helped me sleep better throughout the night. These bio hacks increased the effectiveness and calorie burning of my HIIT workouts. Once I started implementing the proper micro nutrients things within my stomach and gut settled down, my inflammation decreased. I learned the cravings I had were not because of a lack of self-control, the cravings were because there was a problem in my stomach, once I solved that I realized that my cravings were gone. I realized that your gut is like your second brain. If things are out of alignment in your gut it makes it very hard to overcome the cravings.
4 Week Weight Loss System for Busy Moms and Dads
My journey has not been easy. It has taken me years to get where I am today. But because of the struggles I have gone through I was able to create a system that gave me the ability to lose weight, keep it off, and regain my happiness. It was healthy, sustainable and most of all, it fit into my busy lifestyle. I wanted to share what I had learned. I called the program the 4 Week Weight Loss System for Busy Moms and Dads.
After creating the 4 Week Weight Loss System for Busy Moms and Dads, I not only found a way to lose the weight and keep it off, but most importantly, I found a way to lower my stress levels. I found a way to be more at peace, more present and to be more relaxed with my family and friends. I found balance between the body, the mind, the spirit. This harmony has given me a greater sense of what is truly important in life. I longer worry about my weight. I no longer feel like I am not enough because I’ve been able to create the balance that I need. In the end, I am going to be the husband and the father that God has created me to be.
