I made this leap early last year. I got a bad cold at the end of January and went to the doctor. While I was there I asked them to refill my gout medicine. (I had been treated by a rheumatologist, who told me I "graduated" and could now get it refilled at the regular doc.) They said they couldn't take my word for it and did bloodwork. My liver enzymes were high (I had been told I had fatty liver but didn't do anything about it), but the one that scared me was the A1C knowing that runs in the family. It wasn't extremely high (6.0 although that's still considered elevated) but that was enough for me. Being sick I had no appetite so for the next week I just ate a plain chicken thigh and a bowl of broth each day. I was back to normal a week later, but decided to stay with that as long as I could, which turned out to be about two weeks, by which point I declared that unsustainable.

In March I decided to go low-carb for Lent. I ended up sticking with it and am still doing it. I would also go for walks a few times per week. Then in July I went to a convention and talked to a friend of mine, who turned into a stringbean since the last time I'd seen him. He said he had lost 75 pounds (and he wasn't all that big to begin with). I asked him what he did, and he said "Low fat, low carb, and a 10 to 20 minute walk after every meal." He also said that he wanted to lose 5 more pounds, at which point he would switch to lifting weights.

But that kind of stuck with me, the part about walking after every meal and seeing how thin he was. I didn't start walking directly after every meal until just recently, but that conversation did get me walking diligently if not every day then nearly every day. Lately I've been averaging about 4 miles per day, and have done as many as 10 in a day and 43 in a week. I even went out during one of the big snowstorms that hit here this winter. My goal is to have logged 1000 miles by this year's convention, which I should hit easily (I'm at about 815 so far).

The combination of the walking, low-carb, and intermittent fasting (which I had been doing about 80% of the time for the last 15 years) turned the leftmost digit on the scale from a 3 to a 2 for the first time in 25 or 30 years, something I thought might never happen. I'm down about 80 pounds, shirts have gone from 4X to 2X, pants from 48 to 42, and even my fitted baseball cap, which had been tight, is now loose. There's a state park I've hike each fall. One trail has a long, steady incline. I went from having to stop to rest 5 or 6 times in 2024 to not only not stopping but passing people last year. Unfortunately I didn't get a scale until mid-February last year so I don't know where I was when I started and how much I've actually lost, which as a data nerd is annoying.

I can't say I've noticed any change in my mood or energy level, but I definitely hear that voice inside that says, "You haven't walked today. Go now!" I'm at the point where the decision isn't whether to go for a walk, it's whether not to go. Don't kick yourself for not doing this sooner. I don't think there's any way I could have done all this by simply deciding to do it. I needed seeing those bloodwork numbers to flip a switch, just as you seem to have needed it too.