Hi and welcome Maria.

I was raised as a little sugar addict and later struggled with anxiety and depression, then anorexia once I moved out of the house. I realize in retrospect that I was basically abusing starvation as self-medication, plus it was so much easier to just eat little-to-nothing than try to "moderate" as everyone tells you to. Low-carb finally moderated my moods and my weight. That's a very long story made short - I always had ups and downs, but it was one of the final puzzle pieces for me.

My final puzzle piece was getting rid of gluten. That was after I was already eating LC for about a decade. Getting rid of most of it via LC helped a lot, but I had arthritis appear at about your age (I'm 45 now), connected some dots, and another long story short, it definitely does bad things to my joints, my gut, and my brain.

Anyway, pardon my lengthy novel there. Welcome aboard and don't give up. Keep tweaking, keep doing your best, and if you have a bad day, just jump back in right where you were.

Re beef: I consider myself a good cook, but I'm very "hit or miss" with steak. I usually stick with ground beef (you call it "mince", right?) or eye of round (the least expensive at our stores here in Canada) cooked in my pressure cooker or slow cooker in liquid. The texture and flavour is wonderful. Chili is my favorite thing to do with ground beef, but you can be creative - curries, meatballs in sauce, spaghetti sauce over zucchini or shirataki noodles, etc.

Wishing you much luck and good health.