Losing a significant amount of weight has a slew of health-related benefits that can improve your quality of life and extend your life expectancy. For Misty Mitchell, one of the benefits of losing 137 pounds was easy to spot right away. After undergoing back surgery and reaching almost 300 pounds on the scale, she made the decision to cut out two large contributors to her unhealthy diet: alcohol and carbs. As a result, the 36-year-old Texas mom now looks decades younger than she did at her heaviest.
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Drawing on her own success, Mitchell is now helping others attain their own weight-loss goals through an online weight-loss support program called Mind Your Macros. On her website, Mitchell recounts the turning point that led her to her healthier eating habits. “On February 19, 2015, I stepped on the scale and weighed in at almost 300 lbs, was most likely an alcoholic and I smoked,” she wrote. “I didn’t like where my life was going and I was sick of being unhappy, so I decided to change everything…I stopped eating carbs and started following a ketogenic diet, I also quit drinking and smoking at the same time.”
In addition to her ketogenic diet and working out five days a week, Mitchell credits cutting out alcohol for her success. “I was eating all day, then drinking by night, then because I was hungover I was eating badly— it was a terrible cycle and amounted to me consuming a lot of calories. On my worst days, I probably drank around half a liter of vodka, which equates to an additional 1,000 empty calories on top of my poor diet.”
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A year and a half later, she’s shed 137 pounds and cut her body fat percentage from 60 to 25 percent. Mitchell counts her youthful appearance as one of the biggest benefits of her dramatic transformation. She tells the Daily Mail, “No one believes me when I tell them I’m 36, which is great because I looked middle-aged less than two years ago. I feel like I’ve lost 20 years off my age and I certainly look that way too.”
