Losing 120 pounds with keto and the right mindset

Keto diet for beginners | How to start | The keto diet | A beginners guide

Suzanne Ryan – author of the best-selling book Simply Keto and known to thousands of people online as Keto Karma – is a happy, healthy, energetic, optimistic young woman.

However, this wasn’t always the case.

For years, she struggled with obesity and the anxiety, depression, and hopelessness that accompanied it.

“I was actually pretty thin up until middle school,” Suzanne remembers. “But after my parents divorced and my brother and I ended up living with my father, I was dealing with a lot of emotional issues, and food became a source of comfort.”

Moreover, the food that was available to her had little nutritional value. As a busy man with limited financial resources, Suzanne’s father often took the family to McDonald’s, pizza, and other fast food places.

“I also drank soda all the time. It was our main beverage. We didn’t even really drink water,” she recalls.

“My dad and brother ate all the same stuff I did and stayed thin, but by about fifth or sixth grade, I began to really put on weight,” says Suzanne. “It was really tough, because not only was I taller than all of my classmates, but I was heavier as well. I didn’t look like any of them or like I fit in, which is all you really want at that age. When you’re that much bigger than everyone else, you just stick out. I was constantly picked on because of my size.”...

Meeting the love of her life

In 2010, Suzanne married Mick, the love of her life. But what should have been one of the happiest days of her life didn’t turn out that way.

“After I got engaged, I remember thinking, this is going to be the moment where I’m going to finally lose the weight. But my self-esteem and self-worth were at an all-time low, and I just didn’t believe I had the ability to do it.”

In fact, instead of losing weight, she actually gained in the weeks leading up to her wedding.

“I was probably at my heaviest weight ever, definitely over 300 pounds (136 kg). And I really didn’t even enjoy my wedding because I was so uncomfortable and struggling with all these emotions. I was wearing a white, strapless size 26 dress, and I just didn’t feel good about myself. And at that point I thought, this is just my life. If I couldn’t do it for my wedding, I’m never going to lose weight. So I just kind of gave up at that point,” remembers Suzanne, sadly.

Three years later, she gave birth to her daughter, Olivia. Once Olivia became an active toddler, Suzanne found that taking care of her was increasingly difficult.

“I just didn’t have the energy to keep up with her,” Suzanne says. “My back and neck hurt, my joints were cracking, I was sleeping nine hours a day but had no energy, and I was just miserable. And I was only 30 years old.”

Envisioning a future of continued weight gain, pain, and worsening health problems, she briefly considered weight-loss surgery...

Discovering the keto diet

Shortly thereafter, she was on the Reddit forums and noticed a keto thread featuring “before” and “after” photos of a woman who’d successfully lost a lot of weight. She appreciated that the person had a body similar to her own and that nothing was being marketed other than the diet itself.

“The person seemed really happy, and I wanted to learn more. So I started researching keto as much as I possibly could before trying it, and it sounded great. I thought that this is going to be the last diet that I try. And if this doesn’t work, maybe I will get the surgery, because I’m really at the end of my rope. I just can’t live this way anymore,” Suzanne remembers.

Although she started keto fully intending to stick to it, her initial attempt lasted only lasted a day because her carb cravings were so intense. “I still had such strong emotional ties to those processed, heavily-addictive high-carb foods, the kinds of foods I was raised on,” she says.

But she found the motivation she needed when during this same time period, a good friend’s young son who had been diagnosed with a genetic disease tragically passed away.

“Something just clicked at that point,” Suzanne remembers. “I realized the emotional component behind lifestyle change and how important it is to make yourself and your health a priority. I really started seeing the importance of investing in your mindset. You can have the perfect plan, but without the right mindset, it’s not going to do you any good. And I just thought that I am not going to take my life for granted one more day.”

“I mean, here’s this little boy, and all he wants to do is live, run, and play, and he doesn’t have the chance. And here I am, and I have this perfectly healthy body aside from what I’ve done to it. No more. I will not waste another day.”

Suzanne immediately signed up to participate in a 5K run, even though she hadn’t done much running in her life and weighed 289 pounds (131 kg) at the time...

Her best tips

Here are Suzanne’s best tips for losing weight successfully and sustainably:

Focus on your mindset. “Invest in yourself, and find your ‘why.’ Really work on the emotional component and setting yourself up for success, whatever that means for you. If you don’t have a purpose for doing this, you won’t be successful long term,” warns Suzanne.
Make small, livable changes. “If you try to do too much at once, you’ll give up, and then you’ll feel like a failure. Challenge yourself to do new things, but take them one at a time. In my case, one of the first things I did was give up soda, which was huge for me,” she says. “Once I’d done that, I thought, okay, now I can move on to the next thing.”
Have a support system. “This is really important because losing weight is such an emotional process,” says Suzanne. “It’s important to be able to share what you’re going through and bounce ideas off of other people who can relate and provide the support you need.”