Hi, I am Kate, of Kate's Weigh.
I have lost and kept off over 45kg eating a plant based diet.
Like many people I had put on weight steadily since my early 20's. By the time I was in my 50th year I was obese.
Over the years I had tried many diets...many diets! And the results were all the same. I lost weight in the short term, but later all the pounds I had so carefully lost came back again, and brought a few friends with them. Yes, every diet cycle I went on eventually ended with me GAINING weight!
As I got older I decided this was just the way it was going to be. Dieting was useless...worse than useless...and 'everybody knows' menopausal women can't lose weight anyway.
Then I heard about the Paleo diet and decided to give it one last go. Yes, it worked, but only up to a point. I dropped from somewhere north of 110kg to around 100kg. Then the weight loss stalled. I checked on internet forums and was told I was cheating! Err...no...I wasn't cheating. So then I was told to restrict carbs even more, so I did. I listened to advice from people I had never met with no qualifications whatsoever, advising me to cut carbs out of my life. Eventually I went zero carb. No carbs at all. No food unless it came from an animal. So I ate dairy, meat, fish, eggs. That was all. The only vegetable matter to cross my lips were a few herbs and spices and tea leaves. I lost a little more weight, and got down to around 90Kg, when I stalled again. I had joined a zero carb community on the internet, and they said 'Stick with it! It will work!" So I did. For a whole year, and during that year I bounced between 90 and 95kg.
Everything changed on a flight from NZ to the UK in 2012. I had left my book at home, and it is a long way to the UK from NZ. With my flight already being called and needing to get to the gate I dashed into the bookshop and brought the first book on nutrition I could see, then I ran for my plane.
As I settled into the flight, I opened my book....and realised in horror...I had brought THE WRONG BOOK! This was a vegan book. This was all vegan propaganda. I was zero carb and this was a book about eating PLANTS!
Well, it really is a very long way to the UK, and over the next 2 days and 4 flights I read the book, The China Study. It made startling reading. I had read on the paleo websites that low carb had all the science in its favour, that the vegan activists didn't have a leg to stand on. And I had believed it all without even bothering to check on the evidence for myself.
Confused, I became an omnivore whilst in the UK. This certainly made traveling much simpler. Living a zero carb lifestyle makes socialising very difficult. On my return to NZ I started reading. And this time I read books by doctors and scientists who had research to back up their claims.
I went vegan almost immediately, and then a few weeks later I embraced a low fat wholefood plant based diet. I never counted calories, points, carbs or anything, I never felt hungry and I loved the food. By the end of 2013 I was around 75kg. Since then my weight has drifted down and stabilised around 65kg. I am a 54 year old woman, 172 cm in height with a BMI of 22.
Several people asked me how I did it, and I told them, but they always had more questions than I could answer. So, at the beginning of 2016 I signed up to the the Plant Based Nutrition Course with Cornell University. Now a qualified Plant Based Nutritionalist, I started Kate's Weigh in October 2016.
I live in Christchurch, New Zealand with my husband, one big bouncy dog and 2 crazy grey cats.
To start your weigh loss journey return to the top of this page and click the contact button. Together we can harness the power of plants and begin your plant based adventure.
