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Hi. I'm Vickie Ewell.

Here at Just Do You, the emphasis is on living and balance, rather than dieting. While nutrition is important and restricting calories is how you achieve your weight-loss target, being overweight is a bit more complex than simply blaming the type of food you choose to eat.

All diets work in the same way.

For that reason, our intent is to assist you in digging up the false beliefs, mindless habits, and strong buffers that are keeping you from being all that you can be. Here, the focus is on complete nutrition for the body, mind, and spirit.

Weight management isn't simply a numbers game. Your:
  • emotions
  • inner critic
  • childhood conditioning
  • and outdated habits
all affect how you look, feel, and perceive the world. If your feelings, thought process, and awareness are not all given equal development, losing the weight isn't going to bring the benefits you're looking for.

We are completely devoted to tackling the vital issues of life, the senseless habits that affect your relationship to food, self, family, and the world around you.

Our purpose is to assist you in taking charge of your inner state, and thereby, begin to function on a higher level of understanding and purpose. It doesn't matter what weight-loss diet you're following. Everyone is welcome here, even people who prefer to eat a low-carb diet. 

There isn't one single nutritional program that is fit for everyone. Hence, the name of this blog has been changed to Just do You.

The major difference between Just Do You and Kickin' Carb Clutter isn't just the food choices. 

Moderate-carb diets do include carby foods that low-carb diets do not, but only one in three overweight people have insulin resistance, so there is a need for moderate-carb and alternative low-carb communities.

However, a well-balanced diet won't bring joy and peace if the rest of your life is unbalanced, so this blog also offers help with personal development, as well as diet. Just do You is a safe place to explore the complexities of personality, habit, behavior, and choice.

And yet, diet cannot be overlooked.

There are a lot of people who arrive at the Kickin' Carb Clutter blog who shouldn't be doing a low-carb diet.

Some of them are normal weight and just want to ditch those stubborn fat pockets. Some of them have a poor body image, so they are not able to see themselves in a good, kind light. Others are not insulin resistant, so when they take their carbohydrates down to an extremely low level, they start experiencing weird symptoms of malnutrition.

A balanced lifestyle can bring some sanity to all of that, but mindful eating tactics, dieting tips, and a strong nutritional focus still doesn't address the real problem, so Just do You seeks to go the extra mile to get to the heart of the matter.

You won't find any gimmicks here. No low-carb magic. Just the kind of truth that really does set you FREE.

Who is Vickie Ewell?


I am a professional blogger and writer who specializes in the topics that are near and dear to my heart:
  • weight loss
  • celiac disease
  • gluten-free recipes
  • health and wellness
  • writing and blogging
  • awareness and mindful living
In January of 2007, after gaining an additional 80 pounds due to health issues, I started a low-carb diet. At that time, my major motivation was the pain of neuropathy. I thought a standard low-carb diet would be a good fit since it had worked well for me in the past, once I'd discovered Dr. Atkins original diet book at the public library.

That was 1975.

I experimented with Dr. Atkins’ eating plan, which was much stricter than the Atkins Diet is today, and reached goal weight within only 6 weeks. But I didn’t understand the importance of weight management, nor was I interested in mindfulness and staying in charge of the emotional eating issues that most of us fight with all the time.

Throughout the years, I went on-and-off several different diets. Some were low carb, and some were not. It seemed like whenever I lost a few pounds, I could depend on being hit with one real-life setback or another. 

I had no problems reaching for new excuses.

When I found myself bedridden with severe vertigo, extremely fat, and unable to walk without wearing shoes (I'd been diagnosed with idiopathic neuropathy), the time had arrived to get serious about my weight and my life. 

But when you’ve been on-and-off of a low-carb diet as many times as I have, there was no metabolic advantage.

No more golden shot. 

No Dumbo’s feather to encourage and motivate you to keep going.

This time, I had to come face-to-face with myself and admit that low-carb was no different than any other weight-loss diet.

Over the years, I’ve tried a variety of low-carb eating styles, tweaked a few of them to fit my personal health issues, and found only partial success.

I did lose the extra 80 pounds in 2007, mostly due to Kimkins and Lyle McDonald’s rapid fat-loss plan. I also managed to shave off another 30 pounds the following year doing a modified Hcg Diet plan, but the weight loss wasn't sustainable. 

The body fought back hard, and since I believed in low-carb magic, I had no buffers of protection. I was helpless to stop the weight regain. I had no understanding of how weight-loss diets actually work.

Since then, I have busied myself digging through:
  • the research and real science behind low-carb diets
  • the truth regarding how and why they work
  • weight-loss plans in general
And I have come to the conclusion that a very low-carb diet is not for me.

Not only does 20 to 30 net carbs a day raise my blood glucose levels into diabetic territory, if I eat that way for too long, but most of the research I've done does not support the Insulin Hypothesis. 

A low-carb diet works because the high protein reduces hunger and makes it easier to eat at a calorie deficit.

There is no more magic to Keto than that.

In addition, I started seriously questioning whether low carb was a good thing for the thyroid and adrenals. Along with:
  • vertigo
  • neuropathy
  • celiac disease
I was also diagnosed with Graves Disease a few years ago, so walking around blinded by a low-carb magic that doesn’t exist can seriously affect your quality of life.

Don't get me wrong.

I'm not against low-carb diets.

I use low-carb techniques to keep my blood glucose level in line. 

Plus, people who are severely insulin resistant do much better on carbohydrate restriction to some degree. 

However, some folks don’t do well on a low-carb diet. And for some reason, these people get ignored or swept under the rug.

I was at a loss to explain why many people completely stall part way to target weight. I happened to be one of those individuals. I stalled, gave up, and then regained almost all of that weight because I didn't take the necessary steps to maintain those losses. 

Today, June 24, 2021, I understand that the body fights to defend it's fat stores, that our brain wants to keep our fat stores full, so it will do whatever it can to convince us to eat, and eat some more.

I also understand that from day one on a calorie-restricted diet, the body's picks up the purpose of equilibrium. It doesn't stop adapting to what you're doing until it reaches balance.

Balance is the name of the game.

But that means you'll stall before you reach your weight-loss goal.

What Just Do You Can Do For You


If you’ve tried a low-carb diet and failed, you are not alone. Failure is just a learning experience, so you can now cross that possibility off your list of potential solutions.

If you have completely stalled and want to know the truth about carbohydrates and low-carb diets, you'll find that here. There's no whitewashing the truth about how our body functions. You'll also find information on how to return carbohydrates to the diet without gaining weight.

If you're looking for the original Weight Watchers Exchange Plans, including Quick Start and others, you can find that here too. 

I've done a lot of research on the net, trying to gather up all the information and materials I can find because I was quite successful using the Old Weight Watchers Plans of the mid '80s and many people have asked me for that information.

If you're looking for a supportive community of like-minded folks, who understand what you've gone through, the struggles you're currently having, and your weight-loss goals, you'll find that here too. 

I realize that I haven't been as active on this blog as I would like, but I've had a few rough years health-wise that I'm just now beginning to pull out of.

Having celiac disease isn't easy, but once I came to some personal realizations, faced my denial regarding pre-diabetes, and made some strong commitments to my health, things started to turn around for me. 

They can do the same for you. 

All it takes is a willingness to stay aware and dump anything in your life that is not in your own best interest.

In addition to health and fitness, I want to expand the blog to include:
  • useful tips for living
  • weight-loss strategies
  • articles on mindfulness
  • general diet information
  • scientific research studies
  • latest health news and advice
  • nutritional information
  • various dieting plans
All with the intent of assisting you to reach your goals, no matter what they may be.

If you have questions, or want to see a particular topic discussed, leave me a comment or fire me off an email at:

Lavender.Rose27@yahoo.com


To learn more about me and why I started this blog, check out:

Why I Started This Blog (And a Little About Me)

It details my dieting history, health issues, and what you can expect to get by joining this community.