Welcome to Real Healthy Keto

First, let me introduce myself. My name is Debbie Gates and I live in western Pennsylvania in a beautiful Appalachian Mountain valley. As of this writing, July 21, 2019, I’m 57 years old and am an Urban Transit Operator, which is just a fancy name for a city bus driver. I do pet rescue, please spay and neuter, and own my home.

I’ve been heavy most of my life. I can remember being in grade school and my mom putting me on a “diet”. She had good intentions, she really did, but that set me up for a lifetime of yo-yo dieting. I’ve done the English muffin diet. High protein. Low protein. High fiber. Low Fiber. Soup diet. Low carb diet. Mediterranean diet. Readers Digest Diet and the list goes on and on. But you get the point. My life has been an endless diet……Then I discovered Keto!

The ketogenic diet, or Keto as it’s most commonly known by, is a diet that, to put it simply, teaches your body how to burn fat instead of carbs, or carbohydrates. Sounds kind of strange doesn’t it. We’ve been taught for most of our lives that we NEED carbs. Now we’re finding out that this may not be quite true. Through Real, Healthy, Keto I hope to teach you how to eat real food in a healthy way that is keto-friendly. And yes, you really do get to eat bacon and cheese. Doesn’t that sound wonderful? I promise it will be. Once you learn the secrets of healthy keto, your life will change. I know mine did. Anyhow, back to my story.

So I reached my highest weight around 2008. I wasn’t working. I was depressed. I was binge eating. I weighed myself one day and just about fell over. I weighed 299 pounds. Just one pound shy of 300 pounds. I was devastated. I had no idea. I didn’t feel like I weighed, basically, 300 pounds. I didn’t think I looked like I weighed 300 pounds. I knew I was heavy, but 300 pounds! I didn’t even know where to begin. It took a few weeks for the shock to wear off and then I set my mind on losing weight…….again. Why couldn’t I stick to a diet and just lose weight like all the stories I read about other successful people? Why did I have to be such a failure at losing weight?

I pulled out all my diet books, cookbooks and even bought a few more diet books of the latest and greatest guaranteed to lose weight if you just follow this simple plan books. I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on diet books, diet shakes, diet bars and diet plans. If only I had know about keto 30 years ago, I would have been so much happier and had a lot more money too. I even went to a Biggest Loser audition in Philadelphia once. I didn’t make it onto the show, but I did meet an amazing group of women and we are still friends today. We keep in touch via a FaceBook page and encourage each other and build each other up. I love them all.

Needless to say. I would lose 20 or 30 pounds and then put it right back on. I did manage to stay below 280 pounds for quite a while. Then I went to see a “diet” doctor. What a joke. It was a complete waste of money, so much so that I stopped payment for his program because I followed it to a “T” and still didn’t lose weight. It didn’t take me long to figure out that I knew more about nutrition than he did. It was one of those low carb, high protein diets along with “special” water…aka mineral water. I knew it was a farce when after about 4 months and being stalled for over a month, they kept adjusting my diet and my weight just wouldn’t budge. Finally they had restricted my diet so drastically that they had me on under 900 calories a day and I was sick and tired, literally. Well, that was the end of that.

Next I decided to start working out. I found a local, nationally known gym. Joined. Had a trainer. And stuck to it pretty well, then tragedy struck. I was working out on a tread mill, at a walk with a steep incline and injured my foot. I had no idea what I had done and just figured I pulled something. So after a few weeks and no improvement, I went to a walk-in clinic only to be told that there was nothing wrong with me and that I should go home, stay off of it for six months and lose weight. Really!! How does one stay off a foot and still lose weight? I was angry, to say the least. I was hurt that this doctor would even suggest that it was my weight that was causing the problem. So after six months, and no improvement, I went to see a specialist. He sent me to get an MRI and then told me I had a torn Achilles Tendon and that surgery was the only option to repair it. He didn’t understand how the first doctor had missed this, it was a pretty significant injury. I had a bump on the back of my ankle the size of a walnut. So within a month, I was headed for surgery. Complete bed rest for a month. I had to use crutches and a walker to get around. Absolutely no weight on that foot at all. It was awful, but I survived.

In late2013 I got a job managing a Bed and I love it…mostly. If you ever decide to open a B&B I strongly suggest you go to work for one for at least a year before you make that decision. It’s wonderful meeting people from all around the country and even some from across the sea, but it’s a lot of work too. I made healthy(er) options for those who wanted it. Creme’ Brulee French Toast was on the menu quite often and much enjoyed by the guests. I made a nice breakfast with toasted bagel thins, salad greens, heirloom tomatoes, Canadian bacon, a drizzle of olive oil and an over-easy egg, or dippy egg as we call them here. People loved it. And I thought it was healthy….and it was compared to Creme’ Brulee French toast. But there was always homemade muffins, fresh from the oven, an assortment of breads and bagels to toast. Fresh fruit, fruit juice, coffee and all the trimmings like sugar, sweetener, half and half, butter and real maple syrup. I was in my element and loved it. Food was my passion.

About a year later I was offered a very well paying job as a city bus driver. It had great benefits and it was a good fit for me. No boss standing over me at every turn. I was in charge of my bus and had to make decisions on my own. I’m good at this and I loved my job. The hardest part was the physical part of the physical. I knew I could pass the blood work and urine test, but the physical part of it had me a little scared. They said it would take two hours to complete and I was just healed from my surgery from a year ago. I was not in the best of shape and I weighed close to 280 pounds still. It was only by sheer will and determination that I passed that part of the exam. I honestly did around 200 squats during that time. As a bus driver, in Pennsylvania, it’s expected that you will squat quite a bit as you secure people in wheelchairs, get in and out of your seat, pick things up off the floor, ect. So I had to do numberous repetitions of squats….25 at a time. 25 just plain old regular deep knee bend squats. Then 25 squats holding a 10 pound weight in front of me. Then 25 more holding a box. Then 25 more getting up and down out of a chair without using my hands. It was torture, but I did it! Boy did I pay the next day though. I don’t think my thighs have ever hurt so badly in my life.

Fast forward five years and now I’m a full time bus driver and a full time college student. Did I mention that I’m a pastor in training? No? Well, I’m a Mennonite pastor in training and I go to class once a month in eastern Pennsylvania….all the way across the state. I do my homework online and of course have to be active within my church community as well as my city community. I also prepare and present sermons. Visit the shut-ins and people in hospitals. My plate is pretty full and I don’t have a lot of spare time.

A few months ago I started searching online for a new diet and ran across keto. My mind immediately went to bacon and cheese. How could a high fat diet be healthy? I then started researching this “diet” only to learn that it’s not just a diet, it really is a lifestyle. I also learned that there are several different types of keto diets. I’ll touch on each of them with links in case you would like more information. This is only a few of the different keto programs that are out there. We’ll get to more of them as the blog progresses.

• Strict Keto: This is the one I follow…mostly. I do have cheat days. I’m not Wonder Woman, I’m human. Plus if it’s a special occasion, a holiday, or I just need a break, then I want to eat that bacon cheese burger, or eat the birthday cake. I know I can not follow strict keto 365 days a year. Maybe you can, but I know I can’t. I love good food too much. I expect to have on cheat day a month, and I plan that day accordingly. We’ll get into that more in a later post.
• Strict keto means you will log and adhere to a strict diet consisting of 75% fats, 20% protein and 5% carbs. These numbers are goals and you will often miss the mark. But what it teaches you is how to successfully figure out what you can eat and in what portions. It will also teach you what you can not eat. I was surprised at how many hidden carbs there were in foods that I would consider keto friendly. This link will tell you more about Strict Keto. https://www.carbmanager.com/article/keto-for-total-beginners-59775152-672d-dea4-b877-9d145c73c14a One of my favorite apps is Carb Manager, you can download it here. https://www.carbmanager.com/
• Lazy or Dirty Keto: This type of keto allows you to eat foods that may be keto-friendly, but may not be exactly healthy. And many people who do this type of keto do not log, or track, their foods. They simply eat higher fat, moderate protein and low carb. They might eat highly processed foods like nutrition bars. Artificially sweetened “low calorie” drinks. Fast food minus the bun, wrap or other carb, but still eat the protein, condiments and lettuce, tomato, pickles, ect. or they eat a lot of bacon, cheese and processed meats like deli meats. I am not a fan of this type of keto simply because I prefer whole foods, and I don’t think this is a healthy alternative. Nor do I think it’s sustainable over the long term. I would use it as a cheat day maybe if I were in a pinch, but not as a lifestyle. You will lose weight, but sometimes I wonder what the cost will be. You can read more about Dirty Keto here:https://www.carbmanager.com/article/dirty-keto-do-you-dare-84a92936-1764-907f-1939-0c8c0cf46758
• Speed Keto: Speed keto is a very strict diet that incorporates quite a bit of fasting. I’m currently doing a program that suggests over 60 hours of fasting at one time. You do get to drink broth and Bullet Proof Coffee, which is a high fat coffee concoction that I absolutely love, and you drink lots and lots of water. I’m not so sure about the 60+ hour fast, but the rest of it seems to make sense. Fasting 12 to 18 hours a day seems doable. By the way, I did manage my first 60+ hour fast. It wasn’t easy, but I made it. I’m one week into this program, so I’ll know more in 3 weeks. Plus the recipes they give definitely need some tweaking. The people who put this program together may be nutritionists, but they are definitely not chefs. Speed keto is a great way to reset your metabolism though. I will be working out a Speed Keto plan in the future. But for now, I’m experimenting with what I can find online. There isn’t a lot of information about speed keto online, but basically it’s a very strict keto diet used to increase your metabolism and jump start your weight loss. It is not sustainable for a lifetime though.

So, with that being said, I started my keto journey April 1, 2019 weighing 277 pounds. As of July 6, 2019 I weigh 244 pounds. I have made a lot of mistakes while trying to figure this keto thing out. Cheese and bacon are nice, but I need veggies and other foods to keep my interests so I can succeed at this. I’m not getting any younger, are you? I can honestly say I’ve lost over 30 pounds without being hungry. I can honestly say I’m happy with what I’ve learned so far. I can see myself being keto for the rest of my life. I know there’s a way to transition from keto to lose weight, to keto to maintaining weight, I just haven’t come to that place yet. But I will and then we’ll figure it out together.

Please, come join me on my journey. I hope to post recipes, bits of information, the good times and the bad. This is real life. I want to be healthy. I want to live…..really live.

Sincerely yours,

Debbie G.