I Lost 200lbs With a Simple Diet That Anyone Can Do

I am a mother of nine children. And I’m a dancing mom. Most of my children dance. So when I started my weight loss journey, we were a very busy family, and we still are. Life is chaotic, but that’s exactly what I like. I’m a human and I like to talk.

I have had 8 pregnancies and 2 miscarriages. I also adopted one of my children. I married young, and my girlfriend was either pregnant or breastfeeding for almost all of her 20-plus years as an adult. I love it. I love babies and being a mother. It’s gratifying and rewarding.

But I didn’t take too much care of myself. With each baby, I gain 25 to 30 pounds, maybe more. And even after giving birth to my child, I continued to gain weight. After my pregnancy, I never lost any weight. It’s gotten really big.

With my last baby, number 9, I decided to get pregnant even if I couldn’t lose weight. I kept trying to get my weight under 300 pounds to feel healthier, but I just couldn’t do it.

That’s what I thought. “I’m already 40 years old. If she wants another baby, this is her last chance. I’m just going to hang in there and hope everything goes well.”

It was really scary. I bloated and gained so much weight that by the time my son was born I was up to 374 pounds. My blood pressure rose abnormally and he had to be induced 3 weeks early to allow delivery and medication. I was in a dangerous situation.

I know having kids wasn’t the best choice at the time. But when you are a mother, you will do anything for your children and sacrifice your life for them. Even when you know you need to take care of yourself, it’s really hard not to do it.

But I knew it was time to think about my health and making sure my children were grown and I could see my grandchildren. I should have been thinking about this all the time, but I got so absorbed in my mother’s life that I forgot about my own.

As before, the baby did not lose weight at all. It was December 2016. I weighed 374 pounds and was absolutely miserable. I couldn’t do a good job as a mother and I couldn’t be there for my children. I was really depressed.

I ate anything I could get my hands on that had sugar in it. I was eating an entire six-pack box of full-sized donuts and drinking 64 ounces of Coke at night. I can eat 5 pounds of gummy bears in a few days.

My blood pressure was outrageous. The numbers were so high that I was in danger of being hospitalized. I was so desperate, but I couldn’t find any answers and felt like there was nothing. Losing weight seemed impossible and I was worried about when I would have to hire home health care.

So we got serious about finding a solution. First, I researched gastric bypass surgery. Sleeve surgery. Surgery to insert a balloon into the stomach. However, some people have died as a result of the surgery. There are too many risks. I knew surgery wasn’t for me.

In the end, I found my own solution. It breathed new life into me and gave me hope. My weight loss journey finally began on January 1, 2017, when I weighed 374 pounds. By October 2019, less than three years later, I had lost 200 pounds.

I achieved my weight loss through a low-calorie ketogenic diet that minimizes carbohydrate intake and focuses on healthy fats and protein. My calorie goal when eating in the red was 1,300 calories. It’s not a fad diet. I thought it was a very sustainable way of eating.

I had never heard of the keto diet until a mom I was talking to on Facebook mentioned it when she mentioned that I eat only red meat and vegetables. When she introduced me to the online keto community, I was blown away. My prayers were answered.

The keto diet is essentially a low-carbohydrate diet. It puts your body into a state of ketosis, where it burns stored fat instead of sugar for energy. Basically, limit your carbohydrate intake to cut out glucose.

I measured the “macros” (macronutrients like protein, fat, carbohydrates, etc.) you should be taking in in grams each day to make sure you’re taking in the right amount of each to get into ketosis .

What you can eat is very simple. Basically any type of meat, cheese, but especially those low in carbohydrates, such as cottage cheese, plain yogurt with live cultures, leafy greens, avocado, broccoli, zucchini, pumpkin, etc. Please note.

Fruits can be high in carbohydrates, so eat them sparingly. Berries are the lowest carbohydrate fruit of all fruits. Nuts are OK, but they’re high in fat and calories, so be careful when tracking your macro intake.

Foods that should not be eaten are rice, bread, potatoes, and large root vegetables of all kinds. But the first among them all is sugar. I used to love sugar, but after cutting out sugar for two weeks, I became a completely different person. You won’t even know yourself. It’s like stepping out of a fog into a beautiful sunlit room.

We recommend avoiding fake desserts and “keto-friendly” flours. They will only lead you back down the slippery slope. Do not bake or make bread. Stick to whole foods with an emphasis on low carbohydrates.

Anyone can do this. It’s overwhelming at first, and the first few weeks are tough, especially if you’re eating a lot of carbs like I am. But it’s completely doable.

I didn’t have a gym membership. The only exercise I actually got was going on hikes with my kids or walking around amusement parks on trips. But as I lost weight, I naturally became more active.

As I felt lighter, I felt my body aching to move. I wanted to be more active and it’s fun. Before I lost weight, I could barely walk up the stairs. Now I run up them.

I also tried some other things that I documented on my YouTube channel “Keto in the Chaos”. Stories about intermittent fasting, electrolyte management, and the emotional ups and downs of this journey.

When I reached the 200 pound weight loss mark, I was so happy, it felt like the first time in a while, but it also felt a little strange. I was surprised at my reaction.

I’ve had a lot of emotions these past few days. They were everywhere. I don’t know if it’s because I felt like my journey was over or because I had to evaluate where my life was going from there.

Just when I expected to feel calm and happy, I had to do a lot of soul searching. Still, I was so excited and proud of what I had accomplished.

After losing 200 pounds, I transitioned to a maintenance keto diet to keep my weight at a satisfactory level. I was really looking forward to moving on to the next stage of my weight loss journey.

Maintaining the weight loss was the scariest part. Losing weight is only part of the battle. It’s even harder to stay away from it.

I have lost several centimeters around my arms, waist, and thighs. After losing weight, my skin had loosened and my abdomen had rounded, but overall I was pretty happy with how I looked and felt and had no intention of losing any more weight.

I took a vacation that fall and ate healthy foods that were high in fat. But I stuck with the keto diet. I was experimenting a bit with calories and macros to see where my body was happy and my weight stabilized.

In the past, when I lost weight, I would gain 15 to 20 pounds of water weight each time I transitioned to maintenance calories. I was really trying to avoid it again. Therefore, one of my goals was to determine if my body could consume more carbohydrates without taking it out of ketosis.

When I tried to lose 200 pounds, I was worried about loose skin. There were a lot of comments that made me think that I didn’t want people to see my sagging skin, that I should be ashamed of it, that it wasn’t Christian to show my body in a bikini. .

It hurt that people weren’t interested in seeing what I looked like and that I had to hide my sagging skin. I prayed about it so many times and I was told that Jesus doesn’t care if I show the world my sagging skin and what I look like so people can see what it feels like to lose weight. I’ve come to a conclusion.

I’ve been looking for such videos in the past, so I wanted to add to what’s out there and provide another perspective. Many of the videos I watched featured people with saggy skin than me.

I literally lost an obese person from my body, which is crazy. I can’t imagine walking around with a 200 pound person on my back.

Eventually, I decided I wanted to have plastic surgery to remove sagging skin, including a tummy tuck. There was no health reason, I just wanted to get rid of loose skin. And that’s totally fine.

Since then, I have been suffering from lipedema and lymphedema, which causes fat accumulation and fluid retention in my legs, and am going through perimenopause. Financial issues made it difficult for me to stick to a strict keto diet, so I had to do what I could.

As a result, I gained weight during these problems and was back to the low 200 lbs. But I’m starting the keto diet again and trying to get my weight under 200 pounds, so I’m once again documenting my journey on YouTube.

I’m still proud of where I’ve gotten to. Losing weight completely changed my life and gave me an indescribable freedom.

Tamra Hyde talks about her weight loss journey on her YouTube channel. Keto in the chaos.

All views expressed are the author’s own.

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