If you had a New Year’s Resolution to lose weight but have already started to give up on it, perhaps this story will motivate you.
Meet Candace Brisco. She always loved food, and for many years, it wasn’t a problem for her since she was very active in sports while she was in school. After suffering from an injury that made her slow down her active lifestyle, her bad eating habits caught up with her.
Brisco had been able to maintain a healthy weight even while overeating, but after her injury, her weight shot up to 260 pounds.
Years later, when she was finishing nursing school, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She turned down the options of radiation and chemotherapy, and she passed away in 2016. Brisco turned to food for comfort, and her weight jumped up to 315 pounds by 2017.
Then, when she was getting fitted for her bridesmaid dress for her friend’s wedding, she knew she had to make a change. You see, she’d bought a size 14 dress hoping that it would motivate her to lose a few pounds. The seamstress told her that the dress was way too small and that she’d need to buy another one to have them sewn together, making the dress a size 28.
This was the last straw for Brisco. She knew she needed to lose weight, but when she tried to cut fat and calories, she felt so hungry all the time. A low fat, low calorie diet was not working for her.
One of her coworkers told her about the ketogenic diet. The keto diet, much like the Atkins diet, involves drastically cutting carbs and eating more fat than most diets allow. It can be very effective for weight loss, and since you don’t have to count calories, it can be easy to follow.
Brisco researched the keto diet online, and she decided to give it a try. She loved that she could eat the fatty foods she loved, and she says, “I was floored that I wouldn’t have to deprive myself.”
Not only that, but Brisco combined the keto diet with intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting is not really a diet since it doesn’t put any limits on what you can eat. Instead, it limits when you can eat. The idea is that you alternate periods of fasting with periods of eating. You don’t have to count calories on this plan either, but caloric intake is naturally reduced since you don’t eat for extended periods of time.
Brisco started only eating two meals a day, one at 2pm and another one at 6pm. She shares that a typical 2pm breakfast for her would include 3 hard boiled eggs, 2 slices of bacon and half of an avocado, while for her 6pm dinner she might have a chicken Caesar salad and a steak.
This diet plan worked for Brisco because she could stick with it. After all, the best diet is the one that works for you.
As Brisco started losing weight, she also started exercising. She started with walking, but then she progressed to jogging and added in weight lifting.
After losing 90 pounds, she started an Instagram account where she’d post progress pictures of herself. The response from her followers motivated her to keep going. Now, she has lost 145 pounds.
Brisco says that even though Instagram made it look like her weight loss journey happened quickly, it was far from easy. She even cried sometimes while exercising. The important thing is she found a diet and exercise plan that worked for her and she kept with it.