After having my baby, the first 10 pounds or so came off on their own just as they said they would. The last 20 or so pounds, not so much.
I was told an added bonus of breastfeeding would be that the weight would literally fall off of me, but it didn’t.
Then I was told wait until she starts crawling, climbing and running around; just chasing after her will take the weight off. Guess what, the weight didn’t budge. I didn’t do anything about it for almost a year because while I would have loved feeling more comfortable with my body, losing weight was not my priority, she was.
The Keto Diet
About a year after having my baby, my husband was talking about some friends who were successful with the Keto Diet and thought he would like to try it. I had honestly never even heard of it, but he explained that it would be low carb (like Atkins and South Beach) and high fat. I’m not going to review the whole diet plan for you here, but I can assure you that you will have no problem finding tons of information online.
Getting Started
My husband and I know from experience that diets in our home are not successful unless we do them together, so I agreed to participate.
This would be my most “lazy” attempt at starting at a diet so far. My poor husband had to do all of the legwork. He led the effort in cleaning out the pantry, shopping for new foods, and patiently educating me on the diet as a whole. He could have just told me to look it up, but instead he was an incredible resource. If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t have had a successful start because I simply was not motivated enough in the beginning to do the work.
Once “we” purged all of the foods that were not part of the diet, “we” began only purchasing foods that were keto-friendly. I struggled with the transition for a couple days getting started because not only did I not have any skin in the game, so to speak, but I was experiencing a snack-attack just before I was in ketosis. I was tearing through the cabinets for snacks and kept coming up short. This was when I officially realized how I could be helpful. I began researching keto recipes.
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Keto Recipe Ingredients
I was amazed with all the options that were out there. Not surprisingly, I found that I would need some new staples in our pantry to be able to make most of these recipes:
Almond Flour- Almond Flour can easily be found at the grocery store, but I added it to my Amazon cart since I would be waiting on some other ingredients anyway. In my experience it doesn’t really matter which one you choose, just a blanched almond flour, and some have less net carbs. I have been selecting the Blue Diamond brand, since I had heard of it prior to the diet and the net carbs were low.
Swerve sweetener– You can easily get wrapped up into thinking you will need several types of sweeteners on this diet, but I have been doing just fine using swerve for everything. I do purchase and use both the granular and the confectioners and I buy these online because they are not available at my supermarket.
Lily’s Chocolate Chips– Great news! There are such thing as keto-friendly chocolate chips!These are also not available at my supermarket.
As I dug deeper into recipes I found there were a number of other new ingredients that I wanted to add to my pantry as well, all of which I had never heard of. These included items like: Psyllium Husk Powder (to make keto doughs and breads), Xanthan Gum (for consistency purposes doughs and breads) , Whey Protein Isolate Unflavored (to reduce carb counts as a substitution for some almond flour in keto bagels and more) and Banana Extract (we use in banana muffins and also add to our pancakes and cheesecakes to change things up). You will see these ingredients pop up again in my favorite keto recipe posts.
In Ketosis
I had a new reason to be motivated after about a week when I confirmed that I was actually in ketosis. Yay! Now I would start losing weight. We used these test strips to monitor our ketone levels. I used them a lot more in the beginning than I do now. Now I am able to tell if I am in Ketosis simply by the way I feel.
I began to lose 1 to 2 pounds each week, on average. Aside from chasing my toddler around and walking the dog, I didn’t add on any additional exercise (until very recently).
I began to notice that once I was in Ketosis, that I was no longer feeling so hungry at each mealtime and I was no longer rummaging through the cabinets for a snack. I hit a plateau after losing 12 pounds and while I kept with the diet, it came off much more slowly after that. Normally, a long plateau would mean that I would take a break from a diet, but I chose to keep with it because for me, this diet is actually pretty easy to maintain.
Less Regretful Eating, More Feeling Better
Sad to say, but my life and plans have always revolved around food. The best thing that happened to me with this diet was that once the carbs were out of my system, I was not craving them any longer! Keto made me FEEL BETTER overall. I was no longer binge eating my favorite foods. I was experiencing less headaches, less belly aches, and no longer had indigestion. I had been popping tums like candy at bedtime before this diet. had more energy to put towards my day. I guess I had not realized how troubled I was before the diet. All in all, I feel so much better now.
I spent the entire summer on the keto diet (with the exception of one cheat weekend) and as of September 2019 I have officially lost 20 pounds from the diet, with what I feel to be little effort or sacrifice. (Update: November 2nd and I have lost 22 lbs +) I am just a few pounds away from my wedding weight now (which I worked much harder than this to achieve) and people are beginning to notice and comment on the weight that I have lost. They always noticed my husband’s weight loss immediately, sigh…
As with anytime you lose weight, you have the annoyance of having to buy new clothes, and I had to replace my favorite bra, etc., so I was forced to focus on myself in those respects, and I have to admit, it was good for me to focus on me! AND when I feel good, it is certainly good for my daughter. She does have to deal with me 24/7 after all. A mom with more energy is a better mom.
Adding Exercise
My next step, which is long overdue, is to finally implement an exercise regimen. My husband is busy carving out a location for a home gym in our basement… I will report back soon with more details on how this goes for us so stay tuned.
If you are thinking about getting started* with Keto, stay tuned because I will be sharing more of my favorite keto recipes that I have tried as well as a list of my go-to Keto products. I have so much keto related information to share!
*As with any weight loss regimen, check with your doctor before trying. I am not an expert on weight loss or the keto diet, and I can only share with you my experience. Please do the due diligence before trying Keto to ensure it is right for you.
