My Cause

As mentioned in my previous post, there is something so contagious about someone acknowledging their lack of self-love for themselves. A movement that is also incredibly important to me, that I came across just entering college is a movement called The Self-Love Movement. This movement targets women with low self-esteem, and encourages a healthy, happy life, with themselves and with everyone around them. 

Creator Alana Avanitis had this to say about her rising movement:

"Live with an open heart and bathe in a sea of self-love. It is not selfish to love yourself unconditionally. In fact, it is absolutely necessary! Your entire world is reflective of the relationship you have with self. It’s time to nourish and nurture this connection and watch your life begin to magically blossom through the power of Self-Love.Self-Love is the act of putting your own happiness & well-being first, something that is lacking within our current society.

It all starts with SELF."

Before incorporating a diet that I knew was going to beneficially change my lifestyle, I realized that I needed to love myself before I could change myself. I had to determine what I loved about who I was before I could begin this new lifestyle.

I am more than an athlete, I am more than a student. I am more than a server at a restaurant. I am human and I make mistakes. But one thing I knew for certain was that I was my biggest critic. Coming to terms with that was the biggest uprising of self-esteem I could have given myself. 

For more information of the Self-Love Movement, check out their website at:

http://theself-lovemovement.com/

The Keto Community

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out my first post with helpful links and tips regarding all that is Keto, from recipes to healthful tips on maintaining the Keto Zone!

Something super important to me, that I never knew I would be able to establish on my Keto journey so far, is a bond and topic I could really relate to with my mom. The Keto Diet is one of the only diets I have seen truly have an effect on my mom, both physically and mentally.  She has been 'living keto' for close to a year now. She exercises regularly, at least twice a week and even though I am a collegiate athlete, she has truly inspired me to create a better and healthier lifestyle for myself.

There were many phone calls talking about things I had no knowledge about whatsoever, like ketones, and magnesium, and collagen, and blood pressure zones, and painfully so many more. My mom thinks our family thinks shes crazy, but I found it so inspiring that she was not only able to find a community that benefited her health but also a community she felt like she belonged to. It was so inspiring because it was a side of my mom I always knew was there, but had never seen it before.

She and I have a very similar physique. Very short, 5 foot 2', blonde hair, slight hour glass figure, and muscular. But she never saw herself like I did. She was a collegiate cheerleader herself, she was also a member of many collegiate dance teams so she held a great, healthy body shape her whole life. She started a family with my older sister first, then myself, and lastly, my little brother. Having three kids, putting them through school, and putting your family first before yourself always can become very overwhelming, it is though she forgot about herself and the things she loved and needed for herself.

Through the Keto community, she found belongingness. She found something in her that made her strive for self-betterment and self-love. She did this for herself, and just like college athletics, I'm following her foot steps.

That is why I am living keto.

What is "Keto"??

My name is Hanna Crist. I am 21 years old, and I am taking on the Ketogenic diet.

Throughout my life, friends and family of mine would agree that I am an active, athletic person. However, after my retirement from college soccer at my university, I had decided that now was a great time to start eating healthy and finding ways to compensate for my decline in top-notch daily exercise, in hopes of finding a diet that was easy to obtain, enjoyable, and relevant to my lifestyle. Then, my lovely mother introduced me to a diet she had just started called the Ketogenic diet: a high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate diet that forces the body to burn fats rather than carbohydrates. This low carb diet produces ketones in the liver to be used as energy. The end goal of a properly maintained keto diet is to force your body into a metabolic state of ketosis, a natural process adapting the body to be able to thrive when food intake is low. During ketosis, the body produces ketones which breakdown fats within the liver. Ultimately, the goal is not to starve our bodies of calories, rather starvation of carbohydrates.

And the best part? **MOST OF THE KETOGENIC FRIENDLY RECIPES CAN BE EASILY MODIFIED FOR GLUTEN AND DAIRY ALLERGIES!!!**

The Ketogenic diet has an unlimited amount of health benefits to offer. Many of those benefits include weight loss, controlled blood sugar, mental focus, increased energy, normalized hunger, control of epilepsy episodes, cholesterol improvements, insulin resistance, and acne improvements. The diet also has an abundance of research to back up that the diet is also helping people suffering with:

• type 1 & 2 diabetes
• alzheimer's 
• parkinson's
• chronic inflammation
• obesity
• polysystic ovary syndrome
• fatty liver disease
• cancer
• migraines

IT LITERALLY HELPS IMPROVE ALMOST EVERYTHING WITHIN THE BODY!! What's stopping you from giving your body what it deserves??

This is not by any means, a blog persuading you that this diet is the best diet there is. Everyone's body is going to respond different to diets, depending on your lifestyle and your drive towards achieving your goal. This blog is here to document my attack on a healthy lifestyle and to show you guys all the physical and mental benefits there are to living keto!!

For more resources, the most useful sites I have found are:

https://ketodash.com/ketogenic-diet (detailed explanation of a keto diet)

https://ketodash.com/food (full list of foods and substitutes that are keto friendly)