We all compare ourselves to others. You've done it, I've done it. It's messed up but society continues to encourage us to do it. Weirdly enough, that isn't my issue. I compare myself to what I believe I should be. I compare myself to "idealised future me", which is an impossible comparison. I will never win. Because I could always be better. I could always be more successful, less distracted, more productive, thinner, learn to dress better, be more adult, be a better wife, be a better friend, do more (ugh, or any) charity work... You get the idea. I set these massive goals for myself that I am set up to fail at. I've said this before; my brain is awful, and that bitch hates me.

I achieved about half of my 2017 goals. I started a food blog, I hit 30kg lost, I went on a road trip with Waide, I networked more, I worked on my art. I did not however have my own exhibition (what was I thinking), lose another 15kg in 2017 (unrealistic much??), "grow my business" (my life took a bit of a detour this year), get a new business website (seriously, money. Hah), or even read the Sherlock Holmes books. In fact, of all of these, I am most embarrassed by the book thing. I am a fast reader. In 2016 I read 47 books. This year, 5, and 3 of those were rereads. My first thoughts "oh god I have failed", my second thoughts "what the hell psycho, who cares if you didn't read much this year... There's no afterlife syllabus that I have to complete. This isn't some kind of cosmic homework".

So my goal for 2018 is one thing: give myself a break. Instead of new years resolutions I am going to set micro-goals. Tiny, inconsequential, achievable goals. "start painting in the mornings", "go get my art turned into prints", "blog some more", "leave the house during the week". Things I can control. Things that don't loom over me like a 15kg (extra) goal I was never going to achieve. 2017 kicked my butt, in a big way. So I've realised something: I have to be kinder and nicer and more compassionate to myself because I can't count on 2018 to "be my year" because it really hasn't been working out that way so far. If you only do one thing next year, be nicer to yourself.

After two years of doing keto, I STILL don't feel qualified to really answer this question. I am constantly learning new things every day. So I've crowd-sourced this post. Thank you to everyone who helped me!

Firstly, the best place I can recommend is Reddit. If you have never used Reddit before, it's an online forum dedicated to thousands of different subjects. The keto subreddit is a great source of information for people starting out. Go read the FAQ and if you have any questions you can search the sub, because chances are, your question has been asked before. Ketoscience is a great place to go if you want to get to the scientific stuff regarding low carb and ketosis. 

I posted about starting my personal keto journey here and here. Go give it a read. I talk about some of the things that helped me when I started as well as how keto has improved my health. 

I've been giving this post a lot of thought lately and honestly, I can't remember exactly how I stumbled on keto. I live in South Africa and banting is a big thing here and has been for a while. Banting is Tim Noakes' version of the Low Carb High Fat diet. So I wasn't totally unaware of this way of eating but I was very against it. I bought into the rhetoric that fat will kill you, carbs are fuel and complex carbohydrates are absolutely necessary for life to continue. Yup. Hook, line and sinker. At least until I started testing my blood sugar after eating "healthy foods".

I would also like to pause here to say, I am not a doctor or a dietician. This is not medical advice, and everyone responds differently to carbohydrates. So, if you feel strongly that people need complex carbs to be healthy… you should probably stop reading now.

Hi! So after finally starting my food blog I guess I should start by introducing myself. My name is Elizabeth (or Lisa, or Liz, or Littlebit, or Pix - I have too many nicknames and no idea how this happened). I am a type 2 diabetic, I also have hypothyroidism, PCOS, anemia and on the 9th of March 2016 I had a BMI of 40. For the last ten years of my life I had been slowly, passively, killing myself by pretending that everything was ok. My husband and I had decided that maybe the next step was kids and so, as one does, I went off the pill. As it turns out the birth control pill was the only thing holding my body together like a tiny piece of dental floss keeping the house from falling down. And the minute I went off it, all hell broke loose.