Drea's Life
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A Personal Discovery of Self Through Health and Weight loss

Welcome Friends

So glad you came to visit me here at my website. I created it just with you in mind and I hope that here you will find all the wonderful things I have created here to share with you.

Most anyone who knows me already knows that I am a YouTuber once and still on occasion a crafter though who gave up making videos and uploading them to my craft channel to spend more time on my weight-loss channel once I decided to change my life and my eating habits. I have now been on a weight-loss journey since October 2nd, 2011, and in only 4 months I was able to achieve a successful and healthy loss of  of 80 LBS.

I moved in June 2012 and started to get back to my old ways and bad habits. Little but slowly I started to regain some of the weight I had lost though I kept up the struggle as I do to date, like most other people on this journey I struggle with the food monster! Today I try and keep up a mostly Carnivore way of eating.

I am un-diagnosed or treated by anyone in the medical field, self-diagnosed if you will as its been clear to me for many years now that I am most certainly 
a food addict, an occasional binge eater, a person who eats to stuff down emotions or even when bored and one who would think I am constantly hungry even when I should be full. I work days and nights as the main supporter of my family and caregiver to my almost 81 year young mother,  and I seldom would make time to exercise and drinking water for me seemed hard because I hardly felt thirsty enough to bother remembering to swig down even a convenient 16.9oz bottle let alone 64+ ounces as recommended I drink daily. For me It was like, "why don't you just shove a hose up my@&&", ....Yeah I said that!

April 23rd, 2018 I had my gallbladder removed. Just a 1.5cm stone in the neck of my otherwise healthy gallbladder but they convinced me into allowing them to laparoscopically remove it. The pain I had in the wee early morning hours of the morning before (on a Sunday, why do things always happen on the weekend?) gave me the strength to allow my husband to drive me to the nearest hospital we have here. It was a known mistake long before this medical emergency but I was in pain and desperate! In short I will just say the hospital stay was not like anything I ever experienced with anyone I have ever stayed with during their hospital stay and maybe it's because I stayed with them and cared for them while they were staying. This place has nurses who don't care to work! Either their caseloads are overloaded or they just are plain lazy! Don't ring for a nurse expecting to get any assistance especially if you have to use the bathroom...no no no! If I waited for them to come I would have wet myself in my bed! A bed they did not care to clean for me when I asked them to anyway. I digress!

If you continue to read from here on my site you will find I have one heck of a sense of humor among other fine qualities!!!

Oh and before I forget to mention I also sell my own handcrafted Items made from bottle caps, polymer clay, paper, wire, vintage gems, vintage jewels, altered dominoes, handmade jewelry and other repurposeable and recyclable items.

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The Old and New Me

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Here I am at roRoughly 300+lbs! October 2nd, 2011 I decided enough was enough. Joined SparkPeople.com and was asked to put in my current height and weight. Wait, I don't know my weight??? I had not wanted to step anywhere near a scale for years fearing the worse! I quit smoking cigarettes nearly 16 years before and I knew I had packed on the poundage! Now if I wanted to do something about it I had to go step on my mom's scale and see what damage I had done to myself was....299.8lbs! Oh NOOOooooo

This is not fun, I could not believe my eyes! I can't see from the years of being on the computer more hours than I know what sleep is, but really? Really?? Really??? No Way...So here I was, the decision already made...I am gonna do this!!!!

So I hoped on YouTube, October 3rd of 2011 I made my 1st video and I have kept up with my plans to lose 1/2 of me.

Now my initial goal was to lose at least 100 lbs by October of this year 2012. I did not reach that goal but I am happy with the 77.8lbs I have lost thus far and I am not giving up the fight!

See My Inspiration

Watch the video from "LosingJess" on YouTube that I saw that gave me the inspiration and motivation to change my life forever!

Jess Today

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Here is that beautiful girl in an image I snagged off her Facebook Page (Hope She Doesn't Mind) Its late and I don't think she would...after-all I am so very proud of her I am only bragging who helped me thanks to the video she posted on YouTube! She deserves the credit in my eyes and mind!

Image was posted January 2012 but she has maintained this wonderful loss of hers. She posts what she eats daily on Facebook and though she has not had a recent updated video I take it that she really has nothing more to share since nothing has changed since her last one where she achieved her goal! I ♥ this girl! Thanks Jess for giving me another chance at living life. I don't know that I would have ever found the inspiration to even try without having seen your video!

October 19th, 2016 Tragedy Strikes!

While I should have been celebrating my 5th year on YouTube making videos for my weight loss I was involved in a pretty serious car accident. Its believed the person who hit us from behind was texting while driving and never even made an attempt to try and stop. My car was totaled!

This caused some difficult issues both mentally and physically and as stressful as it all seemed to be I began to eat though my pain and emotions and quickly the weight I had lost in September found me again!!

 This made things even worse. The pain caused me issues with sleep, and I began to make excuses with the holidays on the way that I needed to bake and cook as its always been my way to deal stress or my feelings, only I wasn't just giving what I was baking and making away I was eating more than my share as I knew not to do and got way out of control and though I didn't want to do what I was again doing I was in full-blown addiction finding it very difficult to stop myself.

I had to find a way to change, I saw a video on YouTube with Dr. Eric Westman who was conducting clinical studies for the Ketogenic Diet.  I heard from him what it was and wasn't and the more I listened to him the more I felt this was something I could do. Thus January 8th, 2017 began day #1 of my trying Keto.
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Me In 2012 At One of My Lowest Weights

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Here I am above 222 lbs and though the still large clothes I wear is not doing my much smaller body any justice for the sake of taking this picture with my crappy old cell phone cam I am happy to say that I went from a 4XL to a a 1 XL though the blouse I am wearing above is a 2XL and has those ruffles which if your trying to show how slim and trim you have gotten from the amount of weight I have lost you might want to stay away from ruffles!

WOW

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My Way Before and My NOW today March 3th, 2013  though the pic was taken end of February.

Yeah I know I was thinking the exact same thing! WoW!!!


​Doing it Naturally

No Programs, Pills, Potions or Shakes! Just real food, weighed out in proper portions, biting it then writing it "Keeping track certainly is key" and trying to get in any exercise I can...mostly dancing here in front of my computer to YouTube music videos, walking the dogs, taking out the trash, dancing every Saturday at Church, Working extra cooking in a Kitchen Every Sunday after I get off from pulling a 10-12 hour shift at work and whenever else time permits.


​January 2nd, 2013 - 1st Day at the Gym

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I finally singed up at the local gym and began a whole other path on my journey to start to tighten and tone my body as I had already lost a good 50lbs without exercise or even drinking much water as I am seldom thirsty enough to.

now days it seems as though I don't own anything to wear other than workout outfits.

Since I am a fighter through this journey I am on I thought it only appropriate enough that I had this picture taken of me standing next to this knight. I am sure whomever wore this armor at one time went through some kind of battle and made it through without even as much as a scratch on him. I know I can get through this battle just the same. Its not easy but its certainly worth it. Not even at my goal but I feel so much better already.
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Fast Forward February 2017

Today I am trying my best to stay engaged in my original journey to lose 1/2 of me. I have never given up but have often fallen off track here and there taking some time to get back on the damn thing. I have done Simple Salads for all of September 2016 and lost a good amount of weight getting me just few ponds down and away from being back to the lowest I had been in 2013. I really thought this is it I am back on way to do what I had originally intended back in 2011. 
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The image above is me doing a "Healthy" Mukbang (eating show) video on my YouTube Channel. 

November 7th, 2019 
"MY LOWEST WEIGHT YET"

So proud of myself. After going almost full on carnivore June 24th, 2019 I managed to lose a good amount of weight and get down to my lowest weight. I couldnt recall the last time I was 210 pounds. Here I was on my way to Georgia to visit with family for the holidays and I was 210 pounds! I felt amazing! Oh no I am on a vacation...the weight crept back up. I struggled to get back down but have been fighting an uphill battle of weight gain ever since. 

Life, and allowing myself to take back on old habits, and well...mom found out she had stage 4 lung cancer March 30th, 2020 and though today (January 7th, 2022 her cancer is miraculously in remission but the daily trips back in forth for her treatments for both chemo and radiation took a toll on us both emotionally. Me maybe a little more though I refused to admit it to her and let her know how very tired I was from working seven nights a week and getting off sometimes so late in the mornings I had to stay awake just to take her to her appointments. The lack of sleep, stress and eating things I knew were not on my lifestyle's menu led me quickly begin to regain much of the weight I once again had lost. I had say once again because I've lost and regained weight over the years since first starting to lose half the weight I was when I began in October 2011. I didn't always do keto or carnivore but I am here to tell you if you are reading this now that this is the best and most sustainable way for me anyway to not just lose weight but feel the best I had ever felt since as far back as I can remember. I can remember being made fun of in elementary school for being an overweight kid. I can remember being 16 and signing myself up for Weight Watchers and actually losing 13 pounds in the 1st week but then giving up and stopped going. I can remember those times, but until October 2nd, 2011 and at I believe was 315 pounds I hadn't tried to lose anything other than the life I hated living. Too much a coward to do anything other than try and eat myself to death. I locked myself in my office and worked, and ate, and worked and worried. I wanted to give up. I had nothing really to live for other than my animals. For them I strived and continued to work to pay the bills, put food in the fridge for mainly my mom and husband and for my pets. What a life? Seriously I was losing my house to to the economic crash of 2008, scared where would I live with 2 Akitas, my mother's small poodle and cat, my 5 cats and 2 birds. You think of it, I thought of it, and it just further depressed me. 

2012 Hubby found a house we could rent in Southwest Florida. It's 235 miles from the area I was raised and yet there wasn't a choice I felt. We had to get out and this was the only place we had to go. I was actually excited, it was a beautiful house. I was only a little scare because the new landlord to be had no idea how many animals we were moving in with. I stressed out every day until one by one they just started to all pass away from old age. 
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  • Home
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