Launched in April, 2018 as a community for highly motivated individuals that are committed to a low-carb healthy fat or ketogenic lifestyle. By choosing this lifestyle, your life will be changed and will lead to remarkably improved health and wellness. This site is a home for anyone on the low-carb journey that wants to improve their physical, emotional, or spiritual health.
Welcome to the JOYFUL life.
Are you overweight and sick and tired of being “sick and tired”? Have you been diagnosed with metabolic dysfunctions that you want to reverse or control? If you’ve answered yes to either of those questions – you’ll feel right at home here.
You are going to be inspired, encouraged and motivated to make permanent lifestyle changes on the pages of this site, by myself and others in our growing community. I will be blogging about my personal experiences on my low-carb journey to losing 100 pounds.
Upcoming features will include blog posts, challenges, recipe posts, forums, and a few other ideas that are buzzing around my brain. One of the first things I’ll be blogging about is my upcoming travels in a foreign country while maintaining my Keto lifestyle. I hear that Ireland has lots of farms – which should mean an adequate supply of beef, pork, and dairy! Fabulous!
As the second most popular success story of 2017 on the popular Diet Doctor website, I have earned the credibility as someone who has successfully traveled this journey to incredibly improved health. I am positive I can help motivate you to start and continue on your own journey to achieve better health. Although I do consider myself somewhat of an expert in what it takes in the day to day to be successful in this lifestyle, I am always looking for ways to continually improve my health and will share the latest news and views that you can apply to your own journey.
This site came to life after many, many months of encouragement (and nagging) from family and friends. I have been encouraging personal friends, a group of over 100 people, in a private Facebook group for over a year with great success in helping them change their lives. It gives me great pleasure to see and share in their successes every day! But mostly, I believe it came to life through divine intervention and a constant overwhelming nudging from God. When random social media strangers start telling you to do something – well, maybe there is something to that as well.
Did I mention I believe in divine intervention? I may never know what brought you here, but just like my lightbulb moment – I hope you are here to start your own amazing journey.
I have full faith that He intentionally led me to this lifestyle to not only improve my health and family life, but to ignite the passion within me to share this way of life with others. I have experienced personally what it means to faithfully follow God’s direction in my life to choose the healthy foods that He has provided for me – and making that choice has drastically changed my life. I need to share this passion with anyone who is ready to make this change.
A brief introduction of yours truly! Me! I’m a wife (of 28 years), mom to two amazing young adults, full time
Controller of a physician organization, and very active member of my local church. My life is all about what my heavenly Father calls me to do to serve and help others. God has blessed me with this abundant life and for some 
reason gave me the tools I needed to move my mountain. He answered my prayers when I was pleading for a
better way. He showed me I could do this by just eating real food – the real food He provides. How AH-mazing and overwhelming. I do still have to pinch myself sometimes!
A few more tidbits about me – I love our cats Miki (Maine Coon) and Kitty (your basic tabby cat), all things Irish (I am Irish and my birthday is on St. Patrick’s Day), my extended family, my hometown (where I’ve lived since I was three), scrapbooking, singing and leading worship, and my newest love is fashion! I mean, c’mon, I did need a whole new wardrobe after all! Not tragic at all. Oh, also sharing clothes with my size “small” twenty year old daughter is pretty cool!
I will share a lot more in future blog posts about my health story – but the important highlights start with the fact that I have been overweight my entire adult life. I have tried every weight loss program you can imagine. I have tried tracking CICO (calories in – calories out). I have tried the SAD (standard American diet). I have tried outrunning my bad diet. You CAN’T outrun a bad diet. Besides, I hate to run. HATE. IT. In fact, I hated all forms of exercise until recently when I finally wanted to start moving my body. Now I really love to exercise – but you don’t need to exercise to get results with this low-carb lifestyle. I have tried it all. For thirty years. Failing over and over again because I didn’t KNOW that my body was carbohydrate intolerant. THIRTY long, frustrating years!
My life changing, divine intervention moment came during a casual conversation over lunch with a friend on January 13, 2017. Coincidently, I was eating bread and potato. Oh, and a steak – which was fine and dandy. Anyhow – my friend asked me if I had ever heard of Dr. Jason Fung and his book “The Obesity Code”? And how about “intermittent fasting”? Nope – never heard of any of that, but the little bit of info she gave me compelled me to spend all evening researching Dr. Fung. Reading his blogs. Watching his videos on Diet Doctor. I grasped the low-carb healthy fat, ketogenic diet, and intermittent fasting science and I have never looked back. Amazing that one year later, Diet Doctor was congratulating me on my one year anniversary of being Keto. We call this the “Ketoversary”! By the time I had that Ketoversary, I had achieved my healthy goal weight just a few days before. Since then, I’ve lost a few more pounds to be in the 100 pound weight loss club!
I have an amazing list of improved health markers that I can share with you:
- ELIMINATED:
- Obesity
- Extreme Fatigue
- Insulin Resistance/Hyperinsulinemia
- Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (confirmed by ultrasound)
- Obstructive Sleep Apnea (confirmed by sleep study)
- The need for the C-Pap machine (confirmed by sleep study)
- Daily headaches
- Monthly migraines
- Cystic acne
- Joint inflammation
- Insomnia
- Cravings
- GAINED:
- Amazing energy 24/7
- Control over hunger
- Control over emotional eating
- Enjoyment in physical activity
- Improved immunity to illnesses like cold and flu
- Complete change in daily mood – from exhausted to complete JOY
I have lost 100 pounds…that’s 10 bags of 10 pounds of potatoes…that’s 400 sticks of butter!!! All of these improved
health markers have greatly improved my metabolic functioning. I tell anyone that will listen about the freedom and complete joy I have found in living my best life. I always remind people to “Choose You!” and to “Choose Joy!” In fact, I just recently had “Choose Joy” tattooed on my arm as a daily reminder of this journey. I can’t help but smile every time I look at it. The tattoo is only a month old and I still have no regrets! Ha!
Now you may be asking what else is in store for me? I have goals. I will always have goals. In this journey, I discovered that I am wicked stubborn about setting and reaching my goals. I’m going to be talking about goals a lot – so start setting your goals! My main goal is to continue working on reducing body fat percentage. I’m working on adding muscle and reducing the body fat through weight lifting, HIIT workouts, and continuing to eat Keto with a bit of a bump up in my protein intake. I’m always doing some type of challenge – so come along and tackle your goals with me. Then you can also say BOOM!
So here’s my CHALLENGE for you right now. Are you sick and tired of feeling “sick and tired” all the time? Are you ready to start your journey to wellness and AH-mazing JOY on a daily basis? Or are you floundering and lost in the low-carb world, not sure what you can be doing to change your health? I CHALLENGE you to choose YOU today! Sign up for my newsletter below and I will challenge you – motivate you – guide you – and cheer for you on your own journey to a joyful life. #ChooseJoy
(Disclaimer: I am not a health care professional. I am writing about my personal experiences to encourage others to research a low-carb lifestyle. You should always work closely with a health care professional to manage your health. I work with three MDs to manage my health: functional medicine, cardiology, and sleep/pulmonology. They treat my metabolic dysfunctions along with monitoring my important blood markers routinely. Keto or LCHF may not be an appropriate way of eating for your metabolic health or other health needs. Please check with your personal health care professional before making any changes in your diet.)