Beverly and Her Day 1

Hi everyone, I’m Beverly!

I am here because keto has changed my life and because Keto Chow has been a defining element in my personal journey from lifelong obesity and yo-yo dieting to an almost-normal weight for the first time at 50 years old.

This morning, I started my own 100-day challenge that I will be doing alongside Chris as he does his.  I will be sharing my weekly experiences and my story with you along the way.

When I read Chris’s blog last Friday, I said, “OH, I WANT TO DO THIS!!” practically before I read his entire post.  In my excitement, honestly, I did miss a few of his important points.  Oops!  Since I work in accounting, I’m a bit of a numbers junkie so that helps.

My weigh-in weight today for the DietBet challenge was 140.6.  I am overwhelmingly grateful to already weigh 120 pounds less than I weighed at my heaviest weight of 261.  This fact made it difficult for me to determine at what calorie point to start this challenge.  According to the Ankerl keto calculator, my maintenance point is 1300 calories per day.  However, I am a very lazy ketoer who has not recently tracked my food and does not know if that predictive number rings true for me.

Another critical point is that I do not have a goal weight.  Weight charts say that I am overweight but I am so much less overweight than I used to be that I just simply don’t know how much I should weigh.  I have never weighed less than 130 which is a number I briefly saw in May of this year.  Therefore, I will just use 1300 as my starting point (at least for a few days) and see what happens!  I’ll be keeping track in Cronometer.  Maybe I won’t even lose any weight on this venture.  We will find out as we go along!

I started living with a low carb diet (I mean this in the permanent sense of “how I eat” rather than in the temporary sense typically used) in May 2016.  By February 2017, I had lost about 80 pounds with “lazy keto” and leveled off around the weight of 180 without any effort or change in my eating habits.  When my husband started a medically-supervised weight loss plan in November 2017, I matched my efforts to his by using Keto Chow meal replacement shakes to keep my calories low like his.

Whoa!!  What happened?!?  My body, which had never weighed less than 170-180 since junior high, dropped about 50 more pounds in four months.  I was astonished as the weight loss occurred and I continue to be astonished to this day that my body was capable of such change and that Keto Chow was the right tool to help make it happen.

For this 2019 challenge, I am nervously sharing the following side-by-side photos which were taken this morning with a timer in my employer’s restroom.  After the last photo was taken, I hurriedly put my sweater back on before returning to my desk.  I never show my upper arms in public – and rarely even in private – so this submission is about keeping it real so that true progress (or lack thereof) can be seen in the end.

Yes, I have some loose skin after losing 120+ pounds!  Oh well . . . !  Thank goodness for shirts with ¾-length sleeves.

As I write this, I have nearly completed Day 1.  I have had two coffees with heavy cream and sweetener, two iced teas with sweetener, and three Diet Cokes – along with two Keto Chow shakes made with heavy cream (½ Chocolate + ½ Salted Caramel = one of my favorite combinations).  My not-yet-empty bag of roasted & salted almonds from last week sure looked tempting earlier so I promptly gave them to a co-worker.

I am looking forward to warming my third shake of the day in my huge soup mug and enjoying it as I unwind and talk to my wonderful husband about the day.