People tell me I look like my dad; I don’t really see it, but take it as a compliment.
Dad, I dedicate this website to you.
You left this world way too soon and Mom and I miss you everyday.
You taught me how to love unconditionally,
to always be gentle and kind,
and how to appreciate the small things.
I’m very glad you are here, and I look forward to interacting with you and sharing in your stories. I am very passionate about the Ketogenic lifestyle, and will do everything I can to keep the dialogue going; hence this website. I receive no monetary compensation, nor am I affiliated with any of the entities I might name. If I do name a person, company, or product it is because I believe in them, not because they pay me too.
With that out of the way, Hello! my name is Mike and I want to tell you about the change that happened in February of 2016 that will forever alter the course and direction of my life; I discovered Keto (key-toe) and lost 130 pounds.
I was taught that eating fat is what makes you fat. No one ever said anything about sugar.
As Golden Girl Sophia might say, picture it: Texas, 1982. As my third grade class photo suggests, I was a wisp of a child, no bigger than a twig. You can’t see many of my classmates because I vainly magnified myself, but we all were. I don’t think that’s the case with kids these days. According to the 2003–2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) the percentage of overweight children increased from 6.5% in 1980 to 17.1% in 2004, placing childhood obesity as one of the major lifestyle concerns of the United States.[1] Times were different, and food was different. There weren’t nearly as many convenience foods, and I think people had more time to prepare meals. I ran amok at recess, rode my bike to school, and played outside until mom called me in for supper and homework. Despite all that activity, I became overweight somewhere after 8, but before 10 years of age. There really is no way to know what triggered the change. I don’t think I ate any differently, perhaps that was the problem.
It’s difficult to look at these pictures because they bring back so many painful memories. The one on the left was taken in Hawaii, two weeks before dad died from a massive heart attack at 40. The one on the right was taken on my 11th birthday, two weeks later.
I have specific food memories of rolls of cookie dough, and these triple decker mayonnaise- ketchup-cheese-pickle sandwiches that I often made. I literally grew up in a grocery store; it was the family business. On weekends and in the summer the store was a playground/buffet for me and my cousins. We were allowed to eat anything we wanted, and always went with crap. Hmmm, garbage in=obese child.
She was in the hospital for Christmas, dad was beside himself;
she was so severely malnourished that we thought we were going to lose her.
It was the 80’s and knowledge about nutrition was pretty much limited to eat lots of carbs and protein, avoid fat. They “reversed” the bypass, which is a misleading term, since it is not possible to reverse the damage done by a bypass surgery. After the reversal surgery, she slowly regained the weight. Gastric surgery is only a temporary fix and does nothing to address the problem. It is important to note that she still, thirty years later, has digestive issues. Recently I asked her what supplements they put her on, post-bypass. Surprisingly she said none, not one.
When I look at this picture, I see three things: my dad is gone, my mother is still skin and bones even after her gastric bypass reversal, and my muffin top.
Shopping for husky pants and extra large shirts are what I remember from those very important formative years. From pre-teen to teen, then young adult to grown man, the years of poor eating habits rolled by, without any meaningful exercise, without any concern for living a healthy life.
As I got older, I gained more fat, going from overweight to obese. I’m not saying that I didn’t care, just the opposite; I just thought that this was just the hand I had been dealt, and I had no hope for ever overcoming it. It’s was a helpless feeling to think that I would always be fat and eventually follow my father into an early grave from a heart attack; but I didn’t think there was anything more to be done. I tried popular dieting programs out there: weight-loss pills, meal replacement shakes, eating very low-fat, calorie restriction, and several different diets. None provided any lasting results.. Yup, that’s Lea DeLaria, and one of the very few times I have ever approached a celebrity and asked for a photo. We had just gone to her show in a small theatre in Provincetown, MA, and she was standing outside talking to people.
In 1991 I also started smoking, a horrible habit, mostly to be cool, but also because I read in some magazine that it would help with weight loss by curbing hunger. It didn’t, by the way. In 1996 I even looked into gastric bypass, a very drastic and irreversible measure that my mother had undergone in with an almost devastating result, but decided not to risk it. Eventually I gave up and accepted my fate, I didn’t even bother to start planning for old age and retirement because I thought I would be dead by 40 years of age, specially now that I had two monkeys on my back.
2007. Yup, that’s Lea DeLaria, and one of the very few times I have ever approached a celebrity and asked for a photo. We had just gone to her show in a small theatre in Provincetown, MA, and she was standing outside talking to people.
Fast forward fifteen years to mid-2011. Inspired by a group coworkers led by Barbara, Tammy, and Roberta I took part in the “Commit to Fit” challenge we were having. At 277lbs I went on a diet, and began exercising daily. My company hired a health coach, zumba instructor, and offered some pretty swanky prizes to the participant that achieved the most success. I was still smoking, which made it more difficult, but I pushed through. The diet I chose to go on was protein focused, low fat, low carb, and very low calorie. It worked, and I lost 68 pounds in about 8 months, but there was only one problem–I was constantly hungry. I did win the contest, first prize for losing the most weight, and second for participation.
March 25, 2012: A very proud day for me. It was the Cap10K – The largest 10K in Texas. Though I had been exercising regularly for the better part of a year, and was now down to 210lbs, I had not undertaken something this ambitious. It was great fun, and not nearly as difficult as I had imagined.
It defiantly helped that a large group of coworkers were there also. Little did I know that in less than a week I would meet the man that would change my life.
December 2012, our first Christmas together. Brian and Wendy were sharing a home when I burst onto the scene, and we became fast friends, then family. We love her dearly, and she is a second sister to us. Though we live in different cities now, we are still very close.
“We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness—and call it love—true love.”
-Dr, Suess
One of the happiest days of my life. We tied the knot in a private ceremony on Saturday March 30, 2013 at Moosicorn Ranch, a beautiful piece of property in Eastern Washington.
Though the rite of marriage wouldn’t be recognized legally in Texas until the supreme court ruling on June 26, 2015, it was legally recognized by the State of Washington, and officiated by Esteemed Reverend Erick D.
A month after later, we had a party, it was a celebration of that rite, and of our lives together.
The truth about a prohibitive diet, hunger eventually wins.
The part I haven’t mentioned is how the diet was going, because by mid-2012 , it wasn’t. One fact you might have picked up on is that I love food.
I love to cook, especially bake, and I defiantly love to eat. Sharing a meal and/or dessert with friends and loved ones is truly a wonderful experience.
Another obvious point is that I love my sweets: cakes, cookies, ice cream, candy, chocolate. By mid-2013 I had completely fallen back into my old ways, and stopped exercising. That’s the ugly truth about a prohibitive diet, the hunger eventually wins. For a short time I continued to lose weight, but that stopped and went into full reverse, latter part of 2013, early 2014.
I gained all the weight back, plus some, just as quickly as I lost it. I remember vividly watching the number on the scale climb. For whatever reason, I did not care enough to put the brakes on.
In April 2014 I was 210, August 240. I thought that’s where it would stop because I was 240 for many years and I thought that was my homeostatic weight. I was wrong, by Christmas I was 280. Sugar is my drug of choice, and I am an addict.
I was buying a gallon of ice cream every other day, and ordering take out pizza at least once a week. It didn’t help that my favorite burger stand was in the parking lot of where I worked, sometimes I would eat there for breakfast and lunch. It also didn’t help that I work for a major regional food retailer, and am always surrounded by food.
May 3, 2015. I had stopped checking my weight, but kept having to buy larger pants and shirts, so I knew I was gaining. I was angry at myself back for not only gaining the weight that I had worked so hard to lose, but passing that up by four pants sizes. I never once thought that my diet was successful for a time, and ultimately failed because it was just a band-aid; it didn’t fix the problem. I still had an unhealthy relationship with food, still believed all of the mis-information about nutrition.
September 13, 2015. I was miserable, but didn’t know what to do, and started considering new gastric surgery procedures. A friend had been successful with a lap band, and that seemed like a safer alternative to gastric bypass. I knew I could not do another restrictive diet, and that pills and shakes didn’t work. I knew I had to do something; anything. The larger set of clothes that I had purchased a month before were starting to tighten, and it wasn’t because they shrank in the wash. Out of desperate curiosity, I did finally step on a scale again; 305, the heaviest I had ever been.
Turning point. February 11, 2016. Isn’t it wonderful when you can look back and see the exact moment when something clicks. I remember it vividly, and always will: My husband Brian and I had gone to Colorado for a week long vacation to celebrate a friends 50th birthday. There were about 25-30 friends that all made the trip up to this idyllic mountain retreat in Pagosa Springs. The birthday boy is a chef, so the food was exquisite, to say the least.
Anyway, without diminishing the joy of being amongst all those truly exceptional people, I was most excited to see the mother of the birthday boy, Sara, who is one the kindest, wisest women I have ever met. I remember walking up the path to the cabin she was staying on that crisp February morning, which was no small feat in the thick snow, at that altitude, and at well over three hundred pounds. She was standing on the porch awaiting our arrival, and after hugging and talking for a bit she said to me, of course you know you need to lose weight. Thought she was of course right, it was crushing to hear out loud. I am glad she did though, because it was exactly what I needed to hear.
When we returned from that trip, we started to plan our summer vacation, so now I had a goal and I had deadline. We choose The Cayman Islands and I didn’t want to be embarrassed to take my shirt off. I know, it’s a vain goal, and that I was fat shaming myself, but that’s what I wanted… But I didn’t know how to get there in seven months. I thought I’d give low-carb another try.
new way of thinking about food.
When I started looking at low carb eating, it sounded like another restrictive diet. I hadn’t heard about keto yet. I decided to give low-carb a try anyway, and started looking for recipes. What I discovered was the work of this tiny woman with a giant smile, Maria Emmerich of mariamindbodyhealth. She had cowritten a book with Jimmy Moore, and it was all about keto, and featured her recipes. I also discovered a website ruled.me that had some awesome recipes, one for keto pizza in-particular. I immediately started listening to Jimmy’s Keto Talk podcast, and later others (see resources), and learning everything I could about the ketogenic lifestyle.
One of the things Jimmy and Maria both stressed was a healthy relationship with food. After hearing what they had to say on the subject, and doing some deep soul searching, I found that I had a very unhealthy relationship with food. I decided that for two weeks I would keep a food journal, not calorie counting, just what I ate, when I ate it, how I felt before and after, and what was going on. What I discovered is, I would eat just to eat, not because I was hungry. I knew what hunger felt like from my previous attempts to lose the fat, and I knew that I hadn’t felt it in a long time. I ate to celebrate, or because I was sad ,or happy, or bored; I ate because the clock said to. What I did not do is listen to my body. I would eat until I was literally sick to my stomach. I knew that had to change if I was ever going to achieve my goal for the long term. I knew that keto was part of the solution.
First, let me say that this is what worked for me for fat loss, it might not work for others. This is the reason that there are so many differing opinions on keto, and on how to do keto and live a ketogenic lifestyle. My advice is to not take much of what’s on social media too seriously. It gets confusing, especially on social media. Bottom line is, you have to do what works for you. Also, It does also matter why someone may adopt a keto lifestyle, there are many applications: mental health, diabetes, seizure disorders; each has its own set of parameters. Since my focus was fat loss, I’m not very well versed in the other applications.
The minute I read about keto, I knew it was for me, and after the two week journaling exercise, I was very excited to start. I began by getting rid of all the carb-rich foods in the house like flour, sugar, chips, cereal, candy, milk, condiments. I removed anything with sugar or highly processed oils, which is almost everything. I bagged it up and gave most of it to friends, the rest went into the rubbish. Out of sight, out of mind. Armed with a pretty small grocery list, especially considering that the fridge and pantry were basically empty, I headed to the store, recipes in hand.
In 2016, there were no “keto” products in the grocery isle; no MCT oils, powdered or otherwise, no pills, no potions. No magazines had “lose weight with keto” anywhere on them, and there were no keto recipe books waiting at the check-stand, had to make a special trip to the bookstore for those. Having done Atkins in the past, I did have some idea of the general direction I was going, but this was different, with Atkins carbs are slowly added back into the diet, which is why it does not work for an addict like me. I was excited about keto because I knew it was going to work. I knew that if I permanently removed carbs from my life, I would be successful.
Important point: There is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. Let me say that again, there are essential fats, and there are essential proteins, but no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. Humans can live and thrive without carbs! The liver is more than capable of making the glucose needed to fuel the small percentage of our anatomy that requires it. Ditch the carbs and Keto on my fat-burning friends!
Since I couldn’t get MCT oil at the store, I ordered it from Amazon. There are now divergent opinions in the keto community about the use of MCT oil for fat loss, but then it was standard advice, so that’s what I did, and it worked. Every morning I made my keto coffee, 10oz coffee, 1TBSP MCT oil, 1 TBSP heavy cream, and 1 TBSP kerrygold butter, whipped into frothy goodness with an immersion blender. I still do that sometimes, it is so delicious! Most people do want to know what the point of this elixir is, think of it as a meal replacement shake that keeps you satisfied for a long long time; most days I’m not hungry until 4 or 5pm.
I talked on the welcome page about mindset being key; when I first started keto, I wouldn’t allow myself to walk past the donut case at work for fear of not being able to resist the temptation. Keto is not magic, it does not erase the desire to eat things that are bad for us. Then a funny thing happened, one day without noticing I walked by the donut case and nothing happened, I wasn’t the least bit tempted.
No one would tell an alcoholic it’s ok to have just one glass of wine, but almost everyone will say, one cookie or piece of cake won’t hurt.
For an addict, it’s not one piece, it’s the first piece.
It was summer of 2016 before people really began to take notice of my weight loss many had watched my previous loss and subsequent re-gain; they wanted to know how I did it.
More important than my weight loss, the Keto lifestyle gave me my health back. I no longer have to take prescriptions for high cholesterol, GERD, or ED. I actually don’t take any pills these days, other that a few OTC supplements.
Two years after my journey began, I got a chance to meet some of the folks who helped me along the way. I was so excited to find community. KetoCon was truly a life changing experience.
We returned to the same spot in Colorado, three years after those fateful words and my hair isn’t the only thing that’s different. Climbing that hill was so much easier.
After telling my story about seven hundred times I said I would create a website to tell it, and also share recipes and meal ideas. I enjoyed designing websites in college, and am very creative, so it only made sense.
This website will feature not only my favorite recipes, but also my struggle with weight. If you’re made it to this part of the story, you know I have battled obesity most of my life; and yes, it is a battle. Remember the potato chip jingle, can’t have just one; that is me in a nutshell. I can’t have just one cookie, because that leads to seventeen more; I’m not exaggerating. It’s not just one small piece of cake, its the first piece, and it leads to me inhaling half the cake, or pie, or ice cream; and it isn’t just sweets. I’m an addict, so I just have to avoid it and not have any at all. No one would tell an alcoholic to have just one glass of wine, but almost everyone will say, one cookie or piece of cake won’t hurt.
Loose skin wasn’t even in my lexicon back in 2016
I hope that you will enjoy reading my blog as much as I enjoy writing it. I also hope you will try some of the recipes and let me know how they worked for you, changes you made, and any suggestions you might have.
I know it is difficult to find time to cook when you have ten other things screaming for attention, but take my word that cooking can be an incredible stress reliever. The joy that comes from taking a pile of raw food and turning it into something beautiful, delicious, and nutritious is immeasurable; the laundry can wait.
Anyway, the key is to enjoy yourself
Ketotariat 
I saw your comments to Brenda Zorn I very much enjoyed reading about your journey.
I’ve been slipping a bit and hope this will help me get back on track. Looking forward to trying some of your recipes. Do you do intermittent fasting as well?
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Yes, I do IF. I also dabble with OMAD, and throw in the occasional extended fast.
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I do intermittently fast, as well as the occasional extended fast. I’m so glad you enjoyed the site. It is due for renewal, and I was on the fence about keeping it up. I’m going to! Thank you for reaching out!
Mike
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