| 

Our Member Spotlight at this week’s meeting was Karen Oaks. Karen has been able to reduce and eliminate a number of medications since going low carb, in addition to losing over 65 pounds! She also is a cancer survivor for over 5 years. She talked about her victories and her struggles in this week’s meeting.

Discussion:

  • Karen never dieted until about the age of 22. At 150 pounds she never considered herself overweight and didn’t really think about her weight very much. Her mother mentioned Karen appeared to be gaining weight, which made her start to be self-conscious about it — the dieting actually caused her to gain weight and she was stuck in that cycle for years.
  • Karen’s highest weight was 284 in 2015 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. After her practitioner changed practices she decided to make the trip to New York to meet Dr. Tro and begin his program. From June, 2019 to February, 2020 Karen lost 65 pounds. In addition to the weight loss, Karen was able to stop the allergy shots she had been taking for 20 years. She was also able to stop many other medications.
  • Recently Karen struggled during the holidays — her kids were home from college because of COVID, and at Thanksgiving Karen wanted to accommodate those that did not do low carb. She started tasting the foods she was preparing for everyone else and it began a slippery slope of hunger and cravings starting again.
  • Karen’s doctors were not very accepting of her low carb lifestyle, in fact, it was discouraged. During a slight scale fluctuation comments from her doctor were unkind and hurtful, but Karen stayed the course.
  • She has introduced low carb to her parents who are in their 70’s and have had much success. Karen says they now act like they are in their 50’s. She also has introduced low carb to coworkers.
  • Karen’s husband Scott also does low carb with her. They form a great team and help each other when struggling, trying to recognize when the other needs support. They also enjoy hiking and exercising together.
  • Karen’s current struggle is managing school and work stress. She wants to lose about another 40 pounds, and as a step toward that end, she and her husband Scott have joined Personal Group Coaching with Amy and Brian.

Article by Brian Wiley

Brian Wiley is a Certified Health Coach who struggled to lose weight for most of his life. He attempted most of the mainstream approaches, along with the standard advice to “eat, less move more.” This advice resulted in minimal short-term success, or no success at all. Brian then adopted a low-carb lifestyle in 2009, and succeeded in losing 100 pounds. He has maintained that weight loss ever since using a low-carb ketogenic IF lifestyle. "I see people every day, both in real life and on social media, struggling, going through the same cycles of unsuccessful dieting like I did. I want to serve as an example that this approach can be successful, is not a fad, and is a healthy long-term lifestyle solution." Brian is also an ACE certified personal trainer.