Celebration Time!

As usual I'm playing catch-up with basically my whole life right now! We have had a lot going on, but some great things happened lately and I wanted to update you. First of all. please join me in celebrating my 100th blog post on this, my own website! Having my own website was a longtime goal of mine and I'm proud to have achieved it.

Next, our Saturdays have been taken over the past few months by soccer. This was our son's first year on a travel soccer team. They made the playoffs and they won, so they're the champions for the region! That was really exciting, but I'm glad it's over. The championships lasted a month past the usual end of the season, so soccer and swim team overlapped. All these games and practices take time and I've gotten basically nowhere with my planned re-merchandising of the shops. Still, I remind myself I chose this career specifically in order to have the opportunity to give my children these opportunities and it's working out well. I rarely miss these events in their lives and I'm available to ferry them around as needed.

If you've been following me for a while you know I've been on a weight loss and health recovery  journey since 2017. In September of that year our son was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes and I decided to switch the whole family to the ketogenic diet. I lost some weight, around 15 pounds, right away but then my weight loss stalled and pounds began to creep back on. My body composition did change significantly. Part of this journey has been learning which foods I can and cannot tolerate. I found most fruits, vegetables, and grains cause me to blow up like a balloon and experience GI issues, so just cutting them down removed a lot of the bloat I experienced due to inflammation. Then at the end of March I found out Dr. Wade Baskin, who I've been following on Instagram for a while, has a Facebook group. I joined the group and since then I've lost over 30 pounds! I would still have to lose almost 100 pounds to get to my pre-kids weight, but I think at my age that would probably not be the best idea as far as wrinkles go. I can see I'm already getting a stringy-looking neck and before kids I hovered around the lowest BMI range for my height, sometimes dropping into the underweight category. I was also a lot weaker than I am now, with a terrible immune system, and didn't have the amount of stamina I now have, 20 years later, so I guess I was "skinny fat". My goal now is to preserve my muscle mass as I lose weight and continue to improve my health, especially my chronic allergies.

The photos above were taken in 2017 (left) and Saturday (right). I have a goal to lose another 20 pounds by the beginning of July and I actually feel confident about my ability to do it. Dr. Wade's plan is very simple: you alternate 72 and 48 hour fasts until you reach your goal weight. Dr. Wade prefers dry fasting, but if you need it he does allow electrolyte solution and coffee. His goal is to complete shorter extended fasts, so you don't inhale everything in sight when you eat, and to remove your addiction to food. He prefers red meat only when you do eat, one 500-800 calorie meat meal between fasts. So it's simple but not terribly easy. I will write a longer and more detailed post next for those of you who want more information.