Hey Sonali,

I'm here. I used to hangout a lot on Lawrence's UK London Cambridge page. He was a great guy and a big time motivator like a marine corp drill instructor that whipped you into shape. One of his famous sayings that he always used was "DON'T OPEN THE BOX!" He called me up one day on his nickel from London and we spoke for about an hour. He was a super guy. His FB page is now a memorial but his girlfriend I believe or his partner took over and her page is still very busy with posts from all over the UK. He helped me a lot to get my mind straight and to encourage me. I owe him a lot. All of Lawrence's videos are still on Youtube. Let me know if you want to watch them and I will send you the link to his YT videos. Here's a little background on me. I have always been about 185 my entire life. My height is 6'3". I could eat anything, anytime and I never gained weight.

I'm sure it helped that I had my own biz delivering vending machines all day long. Those things are like from 400-800 pounds. Sometimes more if they are full. Well working all day long outside in hot conditions during the summer I'm sure burned off anything I ate. When I decided I wanted a more comfy, inside biz about when I was 38 I went from being outdoors all day long moving stuff to inside my place sitting in a nice soft, comfy chair. Guess what happened? Yup, the weight slowly started to creep on gradually. To be honest I never noticed it even in the mirror. I was up to 225 in a couple years. Then later, believe it or not I almost touched 300. 297 was my biggest weight. Even then I didn't really feel it to be honest. My pants got bigger but I still felt inside like I was 185.

I got serious one day after I could no longer put on my motorcycle boots. That was a shock. I had not been weighing myself. I bought a scale that keeps records on my phone. I weighed myself and was really, really surprised I was 297. Anyhoos, long story short, I started on Cambridge, went down as low as 193 then I wanted to test how well I could maintain it and what would happen if I went back to my old habits but tone them down a bit. Well it took about 4 or 5 months and I was back at 262. This time, at least for me, I think I have it figured out pretty well what is required when I hit my target of 185. I'm in no hurry and I am sort of a scientist when it comes to determining how much food will maintain the weight and how much food will start packing on 5 or 10 or 15 pounds per month.

I started this last (and final!!) journey down a bit ago, as you will see on the overall journey screen capture, on April 13, 2020 at 263.8. This is after coming back up from 193 earlier. Look on the overall screenshot. As of today Saturday 7.25.20 I am at 216. In the last 30 days I have lost 27 pounds. It will not take much longer to get back to 185. And at that point I plan to carefully maintain it and never again go above 200 at the very most. On the way down from 263 I did a little experimenting to see just how much food it takes to maintain my weight as you will see in the overall chart.

To be honest, when I am in 100% ketosis I have ZERO desire for food. I mean zero. No cravings, no thoughts to sneak something, nada. This is coming from a guy that when he was 300 could order two large 18" pepperoni, sausage and mushroom pizzas then I could devour 1 and a half of them in one sitting watching a good old time movie and a few hours later I would polish off the remaining half! Believe it or not !

Hopefully this will inspire you a bit and anyone else that stumbles across it in the future. I do drink a lot of water now. Usually about 1 1/2 gallons per day. Some days 2 gallons.

Will report back in a bit when I hit 185

Mike