I thought I'd share a success story here in the Low Carb Forum specifically. I'm not done by any means, but I have made much more progress than I ever thought I could, actually. Here's the tale

I started at 218 lbs. At 5'8", that's a lot. I didn't measure my body fat then, which is really too bad, but I would guess it was somewhere around 35% assuming that my lean body mass was 140 lbs.

From a health perspective, I was in trouble, too. My cholesterol was over 280, my HDL was only 24 and my fasting glucose was 135!!! My blood pressure was 144/90. Basically, I was a 45 year old middle aged career male mess.

In June, 2012, I signed up for Livestrong to use the food tracking and I bought Gary Taubes book, "Why We Get Fat". I went cold turkey n to his diet. When the rest of the family ate pasta, I put extra veggies and no pasta on my plate. I suffered through the Atkins Flu with no idea what it actually was, but grimly determined to make some sort of progress. I started running again. I could barely run 1 mile without having to stop and walk.

And the awesome thing is that it started working! I slowly saw the pounds come off. And my cardio endurance increased. Somewhere in September I was able to run 2 miles without stopping. And I had to buy a new belt. Clothes I had given up hope on started fitting again.

Had a blip over the holidays, but got past it. And in January I decided to go to a new level. Time to really get fit, so I did my research and decided on Tony Horton's Power90 Bootcamp as my first phase of fitness. I started that on Jan 28th, my 4 week milestone was this weekend. I have only missed one workout during those 4 weeks and it's paid off too.

Over all this time I have kept doing tons of research on low carb ... have learned about nutritional ketosis and now understand what our paleolithic ancestors actually at while they hunted the wooly mammoth in an ice age. My lifestyle is a very sustainable Primal lifestyle (think Mark's Daily Apple) these days. I love the food I eat, really enjoy working out once again and plan to keep this up the rest of my life.

Here's the pics, if you are interested. I don't have any shirt off pictures at 218, it was horribly embarrassing. The first shirtless pictures were at 204.5, took them myself because I still wasn't up for my wife doing it for me. Here you.



From left to right, top row
April 2012, 218 lbs | Nov 2012, 198 lbs | Feb 2013, 190 lbs
From left to right, middle row
Aug 2012, 204 lbs | Jan 2013, 194 lbs | Feb 2013, 188 lbs
From left to right, bottom row
Aug 2012, 204 lbs | Jan 2013, 194 lbs | Feb 2013, 188 lbs

As of Feb 23, 2013

CW - 188 lbs
Body fat % - 24.43% (highest measured was 27%)

Bloodwork in Nov, 2012
Cholesterol from 283 - 228
HDL from 24 - 41
Glucose from 135 - 107
BP from 144/90 - 110/70

The really big deal is how much change the body fat changes are making. I'm not losing weight the way I did last summer, but the "beer belly" is going away, the muscles are getting bigger, etc. I look a lot different. I want to look even better, but I'm not horrified when I look at myself anymore.