Hi, I’m Cristina! I’m a musician, teacher, wife, and mother living in Taipei, Taiwan for the past nine years.
What started as an attempt to lose weight for our wedding quickly turned into a lifestyle.
My family and I have been following the Keto and Intermittent Fasting lifestyle for over 5 years.
I discovered the keto diet when I was looking for ways to lose weight for my wedding in 2018. I had heard of it before and was at the point where nothing else was working, so I was willing to try anything…even if it meant cutting bread, sugar, and pasta–some of my favorite foods! I was a bit skeptical, but our wedding date was approaching fast and I needed something that would work quickly. The other reason I decided to finally give keto a try is because I really hate exercising. I tried running, swimming, intense yoga, HIIT workouts, and so many more, but I could just never find any type of exercise that was sustainable for me. Inevitably, I would always find an excuse to skip a day, then another, and well, you know how that goes.
Enter the keto diet. After getting over the inevitable “keto flu,” I dropped several pounds within the first week! I was floored and super excited about the possibilities if I continued. Over the next few months, I tried several different keto diet methods and ended up being super successful at reaching my goal weight for my wedding! I was an official keto fan.
Just a month or two before our wedding, my husband got onboard. Now, I thought I was doing amazing, that is until I saw his progress. Most men are able to lose weight way faster with the keto diet, especially if their previous diet was anything like my husband’s. He dropped 20kg in just a few short months! That’s when our friends started asking questions and learning about keto.
After our wedding, we spent three weeks traveling around Europe visiting friends, exploring new places, and eating anything and everything our hearts desired. Of course upon returning home the scale told us just how detrimental that had been, but we have no regrets! Anyway, around this time is when I discovered that adding intermittent fasting to the keto diet could speed things along quite nicely.
We don’t follow the keto intermittent fasting diet 365 days a year. We always allow ourselves to enjoy our vacations and certain holidays fully, with no diets involved. Then, we will do a keto/intermittent fasting protocol until we reach our goal weight. From there, my husband just goes back to his usual diet until he decides it’s time to keto again, while I do “lazy keto” to maintain my weight. When we’re following a keto diet, we feed the same foods to our toddler and just add some bread, rice or pasta on the side. This way, we are able to feed her a healthy low-sugar diet and still allow her to eat the carbs she needs to grow.
Now in our group of friends, we are the keto experts that everyone comes to when they’re ready to try anything to lose weight. We love showing our friends just how great life can be when you can eat bacon and cheese and lose weight at the same time!