Edit: translated from Dutch
My name is Jos, 52 years old, married for 23 years and father of 3 children. I have always been very much into sports: I played soccer when I was young, went running almost everyday and did a lot of road biking. I have a demanding job and when I wasn’t with my family I really preferred to spend my free time exercising. Good for the mind, but also good for the body. I have always been reasonably slim.
When I turned 49, I suddenly got several injuries, it all happened at the same time: my knees started to bother me while running and my back started to play up while cycling. My GP thought I should take it easy for a bit and also referred me to a physiotherapist. Unfortunately I am very stubborn and, against the advice of the physiotherapist, I started running again too fast. And guess what, those injuries came back and they hit twice as hard this time round. So all of a sudden I was really stuck at home, with no prospect of getting rid of those injuries any time soon.
I’m the first to admit that I made eating my new hobby. I did go for a walk every day, but at home I took up cooking and then of course eating. But I also started eating outside of those meals. Sweet or savoury, I didn’t care as long as I could eat. So I gained quite a bit of weight.
My wife started to make remarks about my weight and she wanted me to have myself checked by the GP. That check-up gave me a bit of a shock: blood pressure on the higher side, high blood sugar and of course very much overweight. ‘More exercise, less food’ that is what the GP told me. That bit of advice was not of much use to me because I still couldn’t exercise because of those injuries. I did try to eat less but I really found that an ordeal. I kept that up for two days at the most and after that I was back to eating everything in sight.
A good friend of my wife then told me that she had switched to the keto lifestyle, also for her health, and that after a few months without results she started coaching with Sevi . She really praised not just the lifestyle itself but also Sevi’s coaching so I signed up a week later for an eight week program. Mind you, I really didn’t know anything about keto but I thought ‘I’ll see how it goes’.
Sevi told me that to get healthy again and lose weight exercise really isn’t necessary: it’s great to get your body moving but if exercise is out of the question following the keto lifestyle is enough. Of course that was at odds with what the GP had told me but after a couple of weeks I noticed that Sevi was right. I had lost a good deal of weight already and not once felt hungry. When I went for a check-up with my GP after four weeks it turned out that my blood pressure and blood sugar were back to normal. That it would happen so fast really came as a surprise. But what surprised me the most: keto is just REALLY good food. I also loved to try out all those new keto recipes.
I couldn’t have done this without Sevi’s help. Because it was all so new to me, and my wife didn’t know anything about it either, I had so many questions every day. So it’s really nice that all you have to do is send a WhatsApp and get an answer straight away. The coach calls were also great. Not just because I could ask even more questions but also because Sevi really listens to you during those conversations and understands when you are having a hard time with something. I definitely learned a lot about nutrition and how my body works. All in all a very valuable experience.
Sevi Rutgrink - Keto Coaching 