Seeing the trim, energetic YouTube influencer Kiki Nelson online today, it is difficult to imagine her as the obese young woman she was seven years ago when she struggled with health issues. From the age of 15, Nelson fought to keep the weight from piling on. Despite having tried multiple fad diets and exercising “to the point of exhaustion”, by the age of 33 the 1.
61-metre-tall (5ft 3 inch tall) mother-of-two weighed 88kg (194lb). “At 15, I was 9kg heavier than I should have been and didn’t know why, because my weight had been normal up that point,” says Nelson, who is in her early forties and lives in the state of Colorado. She started dieting in her early twenties.
Thinking “a low-carb, high-fat, high-protein diet was the way to go”, she first followed the Atkins plan, which allowed her to keep eating a favourite food, bacon. She could never stay on a diet for longer than a month; even if she lost a few kilos she would put them back on – and a few more. When she tipped the scales at 88kg, and with 43 per cent body fat, Nelson had a serious talk with her doctor, who “highlighted all my health issues and told me that I needed to lose 18kg”.
Nelson believed that prediabetic or diabetic people should avoid carbohydrates and follow a high-fat, high-protein diet. “But I was so desperate for a solution that I bought the book and read it immediately.” “Dr McDougall had been helping people lose weight for more than 40 years but I’d never heard of him bef.
