Keto Diet Before and After Photos – Proof Keto Diet Works
*** Disclaimer – Always study and research anything before trying. With diets like the Keto Diet and other health changes always consult a medical professional and seek your doctors advice with anything before you try it. The information here is my own, results may vary. ***
My before photos
These are some of my photos of me around 225 pounds. At one point at the doctors I weighed 229 on their scale. Not sure of the time frame compared to one of my photos but you can guess I was still pretty chunky. At the time I never really thought I was that heavy. In my earlier post, How to start Keto Diet – Foods to eat and how to burn fat, I mentioned I put the weight on slowly. When we first were married in 2000, I weighed 203 pounds. Almost seventeen years later, actually 10 days before our anniversary the day I started the Keto Diet I weighed right around 225 lbs. And if you are a exact numbers cruncher, that was butt naked on a scale. TMI?
Why did I start the Keto Diet
Well I started for a couple reasons. First I was taking a lot of medicine. I was 42, and on half a dozen meds. I had very high blood pressure. At one point while working at the hospital I checked it and it was 223/188. I have also had Psoriasis since I was around twelve. And in my early twenties I developed leg pain associated with psoriasis called Psoriatic arthritis. From my ankles the pain gradually increased up to right above my knees. And the last couple of years both of my wrist started hurting. All my life I was a leg bouncer. You know those people who can’t stop bouncing their knees up and down. So do it due to nerves, I did it because while it moved my pain was numb but as soon as I stopped it returned.
Personal Reason to start the Keto Diet
Outside of my medications and my conscience and being over weight, there was another reason. I want to get my pilots license. I have wanted to fly since I was a little kid. I wanted to join the Air Force and fly! I didn’t actually join because back then you were transferred about every 2 years, and I knew I was wanting more of a stable family life for my kids. Looking into pilot schools, aircraft vlogs and websites I found some issues with my health lifestyle. To get a private pilots license I needed to get off of the pain medicines I had taken for years. I went to the doctor and we tried some biological meds to see if I could wean off the pain meds. They helped some but I just couldn’t get off completely.
August 1st was go time!
We had just got back from my wife’s sisters home in eastern Idaho around the end of July. Her husband had just lost about 40 lbs doing the Keto Diet and looked great! I was impressed. And that started my research. For about the next week I went all in! I read websites, and watched just about every Keto Diet video on the internet. One channel on YouTube by Dr Eric Berg really made sense. He went over all kinds of in’s and out’s and showed all of the medical details I needed. So August first came around and I decide to have two fried eggs over easy with 4 links of sausage. I drank water all day, ate light and didn’t even realize I had actually started. It was the next morning I looked back and said to my self that it was an easy day and that I could do this. So that is when I announced I was going on the Keto Diet.
Two weeks into the Keto Diet
After starting the Keto diet our family went on a vacation to a small mountain town in central Idaho. At this time I had lost about 10 lbs. Right at that same time I noticed something, my legs didn’t hurt! I wasn’t sure if it was the distraction of being away and on vacation or if the pain went away. So I stopped taking the pain meds I was on. Two days later I was still not needing my pain meds! I was amazed! Once I got home I started checking my blood pressure. And in the next week or so I started decreasing my blood pressure meds. As a nurse I felt comfortable doing this but you should always follow your doctors advice.
Vacations are hard to maintain diets
With one trip under our belts I had maintained my weight loss while on vacation. It was only one pound of weight lost but loosing weight on a vacation with all of that food around is tough. I mentioned before in my post Keto Diet or low carb diet and why your cravings for junk food go away, that is was actually much easier to avoid sugars and sweets on the keto diet. Sure I took a chocolate cover raisin once or twice while playing games at night but it was just one. And yes I actually looked at the nutritional value too.
I weighed myself every day after fasting
I continued weighing myself every mid day once I stopped fasting for the morning. I would eat an early dinner and then only have no calorie drinks like diet soda or water. In the mornings I would wait till around noon to eat my first meal of the day, after I weighed in. Loosing a pound and half a day was almost the norm. It became easy to maintain the diet when you get results like that! Weigh in’s were almost routine. I would see what I weighed in the night right before I went to bed. Then in the morning after my intermittent fast around noon I would weigh in again to see if I could guess how much I lost the day before. Remember at night you will always we more because you have been eating and drinking all day. Then the fasting allows your body time to burn it off and then some extra too.
Do you get hungry on a Keto Diet
Cravings are reduced quite a bit on a Keto Diet. Sugar and carb cravings were basically gone after the first week. For me the munchy cravings, where you stand in front of the pantry or fridge and graze went away as well. Mentally it can be difficult because we are used to putting our hand to our face through out the day and eating everything around us out of habit. So I would just keep busy and stay occupied as best as I could. When they did come around I just thought to my self, are you actually hungry? Almost always it was no. You actually feel full longer when you are on a high fat diet.
My After Photos on a Keto Diet
These are my after photos on the keto diet after 8 weeks of actual dieting including 3 vacations. My immediate incentive was a cruise in the Caribbean we were going on. I lost over 34 pounds. It was 34.7 pounds to be exact. I had to buy all new shorts for the cruise and new pants! The week before I started the diet I was going to go and buy some XXL shirts because I was getting too big. I wore size 38 waist pants. Now I’m down to the same size I wore in high school, size 34 waist. My shirts are still XL because of my broad shoulders, but they are baggy now around the mid section. When I went on the cruise I weighed 187 lbs.
Can you tell the difference?
Check out below.. Left side Before – Right side After
Now technically I’m still not fully off the diet. I modified the diet, which is normal once you get to the weight you want. You add a few more carbs into your daily percentages. One thing I did notice is on the days I went a little too high on my total carbs, especially around Christmas time, my pain returned. I even gained about 6 pounds over the holidays. Main Christmas and Thanksgiving are always tough. If you noticed in my post Keto Diet – What is it and what results can you get and pros and cons , I talked about how one of the issues with sugar is its relation to inflammation. The days I ate more sugar the more I hurt. So as of this past week, I have started back up on the intense Keto Diet. I still have about 15 pounds I would want to loose to get to my ultimate weight. So I will continue to keep you updated how things go. With a trip to Hawaii and a trip to France to see friends, I want to surprise myself and our friends.
