“I NEVER FELT LIKE I WAS ON A DIET!”

Good chefs try their food, Holly Harz always told herself as she sampled spoonful after spoonful of the cookie dough she was whipping up in her custom bakery. But when she pulled the cookies out of the oven, she often wondered, Where did they all go? Shouldn’t this batch

make more cookies than this? That’s when she knew her carb addiction had gotten the best of her…again.

“I was the buttercream queen,” reveals Holly. All those cravings came with a price: unwanted weight, constant fatigue and sore knees. “But calorie-restrictive diets only damaged my metabolism and slowed it down even more,” she says.

Initially, Holly wasn’t interested when a relative told her about keto. But as she watched her loved one shed 70 pounds, she decided to give it a try.

She admits, “It was simple to start—I already had eggs and butter.” Eating tasty keto food, Holly didn’t feel like she was missing out. After one week, her

cravings disappeared. And in three weeks, she was down 20 pounds and felt better than she had in ages.

Holly turned to SparkPeople.com keto groups for support and to seek out keto alternatives to her favorite comfort foods. For a summer cookout, she made cauliflower mash and sugarfree barbecue sauce. She enjoyed keto biscuits loaded with butter and gravy made with heavy cream, turkey drippings, melted cream cheese and spices. Instead of breadcrumbs, she fried chicken in a mix of Parmesan cheese, protein powder and seasoning. “It was crispy and delicious!”

She also taught herself to make lowcarb versions of her favorite desserts.

Holly shares, “One customer called and said, ‘I think you shipped me the wrong keto cupcakes because they are too good.’ And I said, ‘Don’t worry. They’re really keto!’”

Today, Holly is down 166 pounds. “The first thing people say when they hear I’m doing keto is, ‘I could never give up carbs.’ I said the same thing. I didn’t expect to stay on it for more than three weeks—I planned to go off it. Then I was feeling so good, I wanted to keep going!” Following keto even improved her bottom line. Now when Holly bakes, she thinks, Wow, it’s amazing how many cookies I can get out of a batch when I don’t eat the dough!