The First Move

This week I thought I'd try out something a little different. I'm going post every day this week and I'll tell you WHY.

Lately I've been researching a lot about the Ketogenic Diet. It's basically "a low-carb diet, where the body produces ketones in the liver to be used as energy." In a metabolic state of Ketosis, we're essentially burning body fat as opposed to glycogen/our glucose stores. This is actually a state into which we're born, but as we grow older, we can fall out of ketosis.

In addition to learning what I can about this long-term diet, which seems to be more of a fad right now, I heard from a friend of mine, Jill Samter, about exogenous (meaning it originates from a source outside of the body) ketones in the form of a drink packet. I'm going to try a five-day challenge of taking these ketones!

The main reason I'm trying this now is because I am ready to make a change in my lifestyle that is beneficial to myself and my health. Even though I might not look it, I am overweight for my height/age and I've tried enough (different ways to lose weight) that I've had enough. It wasn't until a few years ago that I discovered I've been gaining ten pounds every year since the eighth grade. Thank goodness I found that out in time before it could get too out of hand.

Since then however, I've been looking for ways to lose weight. I've tried working out of course. One program I did for three months and I could actually see results, but once the heat broke down in our living room one chilly morning in Fall, I skipped one day of working out and my exercise regiment has never been quite as consistent since.

I've never officially, that is on my own, decided to take the initiative to start a diet. When I was younger, my siblings and I were on the Candida Diet and I think it worked well, but it was something my mom had us do. The first thing that started working for me (and not even that long ago) was Intermittent Fasting. I was so surprised and thrilled to see it work and I lost a little bit from that, but something is still missing and I'm hoping I've found that with the Keto Diet.

Burning ketones was something I never found before in any of my research because I now realize that I wasn't looking for how to burn off fat. I was looking for how to loose weight. One might think that those two come hand-in-hand, but that's like saying a scale is accurate. Meaning, a regular scale will tell you how much your overall body weight is, not your muscle to fat ratio or anything necessarily helpful. It's a trick to our brains for us to think that weighing ourselves every day is going to make us happy because in the end, it's all just numbers. And I realized a few years ago that society's obsession with numbers is just mind-boggling, but that's another issue entirely on it's own.

The point is that I'd like to take you, my wonderful readers, on this journey with me as I begin to try to change the way I take care of myself internally and externally. I'd like to invite you all to come along for the ride and experience with me the ups and downs of whatever I go through as I invest in a healthier version of myself.

~Olivia

P.S. I'm not claiming to know anything about the Keto Diet. For sure, do your own research if it interests you.

Day One of my Five-Day Experience starts HERE!