Senso1970's Blog   Thoughts, ramblings, and accountability from sunny Madison, AL

So I usually wait until my monthly update to add pics but today’s weigh in was a milestone so I wanted to add a comparison pic.

So the pic on the right is from Dec. 12, 2013.  My friend Whitney and I were out on a walk in a nearby park and we took this picture before I climbed the stairs, I lovingly refer to as the Staircase of Death, near the end of our walk.  I did get to the top of the stairs but I was winded and had to take a minute to recover to walk back to her place.  I don’t know my exact weight in that picture because I didn’t weigh myself back then, mainly because of the theory that ignorance is bliss.  But I’d wager I was pretty close to 360-370 lbs at that time.  Fast forward to the pic on the left which was taken this morning.  I did my weekly weigh in and my hopes of matching last week’s progress were realized.  I weighed in at 299.2 lbs.  I actually can’t remember when the last time my weight was below 300 lbs, it’s been so long.  That means I lost 3.2 lbs last week brining my total to 53.4 lbs lost since January 1st.  And my body fat percentage went down to 41.5%, from last week at 42.2%.  So crunching the numbers I actually lost 3.4 lbs of body fat so I gained .2 lbs in either muscle mass or water.

The bigger picture is this, although I don’t have access to the Staircase of Death anymore because I live in a different state, I rest absolutely assured I could climb those stairs right now and just keep walking back to her place.  Would I still be catching my breath at the top, you betcha.  Would I have to stop a couple times along the way to get up them, probably not.  The thing is my overall health has improved a lot since that picture was taken because of the keto diet.  Do I know if that means you’ll have the same success.  Nope.  We’re each different.  Would I recommend you trying and sticking to keto to find out, yup.  And sticking to it is the key.  In the nearly 5 years since I took that pic I have tried to lose weight a number of times.  And I’ve had some success.  But I’ve also lost ground and gained some weight back.  Each time though I moved a little forward and didn’t get discouraged.  And then I found keto.  But I wouldn’t have found keto had I just given up because I doubted myself or my ability to eventually get the weight off.  I’m going back to Washington State to visit in August, where the Staircase of Death is, and I’m looking forward to climbing those stairs because how great I’ll feel at the end of that climb will outshine any negative feelings I’ve had along the way to get there.  And that’s why I keep moving forward.

Because this is an accountability blog I will add here at the end that I don’t feel I met my exercise goals this week and kick myself a little bit because if my progress was that good without meeting the goals who knows what I would have accomplished had I done so.  Next week I won’t have to make this admission again I assure you.