I’ve been doing keto for a while now. Not for myself but for my 6 year old daughter who was having up to 28 tonic-clonic seizures a day. We tried a bunch of medications and even a surgery but nothing worked. They got progressively worse. In April we started her on keto with the help of a nutritional team. 4 days after starting keto she stopped having seizures. She has been seizure free since.
It has been a life-changing journey for my little girl. She is nonverbal and has had seizures since she was 6 months old. She has other things wrong with her but the epilepsy has been the hardest. Ill try to word this the best I can. She has PMG – Polymicrogyria. That alone has damaged more than 80% of her brain. We were told she wouldn’t walk, talk, or be able to feed herself. She would be in a wheelchair and would be blind and deaf by the age of 2.
I’ll tell you this little girl has overcome those odds. The doctors put her on different medications to control her seizure, even CBD and nothing stopped them EVER. The surgery she had was to have a VNS installed in her chest. That never had any real effect in controlling her seizures. Since we started keto, and have kept on track (her 100%, me about 70%) she’s improved so much.
She talks, (gibberish but there are words we understand). Shes learning how to read, can count to 30 and loves to color. She dances and sings and runs everywhere. She sometimes names things from the past that we had no clue her damaged brain was retaining, it’s AMAZING. She is almost off all her medications.
I can’t wait to see how she is when we can stop the last one. This little girl loves all her keto food. She has no clue on what she’s “missing out” on. Ruled.me has helped me make sweet things so when she’s at birthday parties or things of that nature she can participate in the sweets and be included.
Below is a picture. The red dress was Halloween pre-keto She was staring out of the side of her face all the time. She drooled all the time and was a zombie most of the time. The other picture of just her is Halloween this year. That was almost 7 months on Keto. She knew what she was doing and knew she had a beautiful dress.
1. What tactics did you employ to help you get to your goal? What did you find helped you get to your goals best?
I did research on what keto was and how I could implement it in my daily life. I needed to know the “how” in it works. When we were ready to start be purged the house of foods that we wouldn’t use again and replaced it with things I needed to make good Keto food. Baby steps and feeling prepared helped the most.
2. What is the most impactful change you’ve made to your diet and why do you feel it’s been the most important?
For my daughter the biggest impact is having her 9 months seizure free, all because of the diet. Doctors have been surprised how well her body had reacted to the diet and how well she is doing. Keto isn’t boring or plain. There are so many options for foods that are keto.
3. What is the best single piece of advice you can give to someone that is just starting out?
Research. Know what you need and make a plan that you can execute. Plan ahead and get prepared before you jump into it. Don’t say you’re going to start without doing the leg work.
4. How do you feel your life is now that you’re at your goal?
For me I’m not at my goal weight. I’ve lost 50 lbs so far and need to lose 100 more. I can say I’m happier on Keto. I don’t feel sluggish. I want to do things. I love cooking so learning new recipes makes me happy.
For my daughter our goal was to stop epilepsy. We have done so and I couldn’t be happier. Its was hard for 6 years living on edge wondering if that seizure was going to be the one that ends her life. I love that we don’t live with that fear now.
5. What do you consider the biggest change in your day-to-day life?
Living life is the biggest change. We couldn’t live before. We ate our emotions away. Now I’ll have a steak with butter if I’m emotional lol. We are getting our lives to where we always knew we could be.
6. What did you do to find support throughout your journey?
People around us, when we talked about keto, blew it off as a fad. It will go away so the support wasn’t there. We had to learn to support each other through the process. We also learned to not be offended by the responses of others but rather share our lives and what keto has done for daughter. Besides the support from the nutritional teams for my daughter we only had each and the emails I would get from Ruled.me
7. What do you currently do to manage your day-to-day diet?
Daily we just plan for the next day. It’s hard for us the adults to stay on track 100% of the time because there are holiday traditions I couldn’t give up yet. For my daughter I plan ahead all the time. I send her with food to school every day. If we have to leave town or know of times we can’t eat at home we prepare in advance for what we can take or order.
8. What is your favorite keto recipe from www.ruled.me that’s become a staple?
There are so many things that it would be hard to name just one. Enchiladas, peanut butter/chocolate fudge, chocolate breakfast smoothie, chick fil a style chicken. So much deliciousness.
9. If there is one thing that you could do differently during your journey, what would it be and why?
For myself I would be more disciplined which is my goal this year. For my daughter the only thing I would change would have been to start Keto earlier.
