Your Keto Diet Isn’t Fooling Anyone

And Calling it A “Food Style” Isn’t Helping

I’ve just about had it with diet culture.

I’m done with the rules, the counting, the anxiety, the faux-science, the article-headline-readers-who-are-now-experts that clog my social media feeds and seem to follow me around as I transition from home to work, to therapy and training. I’m exhausted of before and after pictures, lectures about good and bad foods, and how I can maximize my calorie-light meals with more kale. Most of all, I’ve had it to my eyeballs with the health blogs/instagrams/facebook groups that say they eat intuitively, but are so proud of their slim, well-manicured bodies. You can’t eat intuitively and maintain an anti-fat focus.

Full disclosure: 2019 is a year of change for me. I’ve given up restriction as a lifestyle, and with it, I’ve also given up the binge eating that follows that brand of eating. I don’t always follow my intentions, but I’m a work in progress.

For me, the keto diet — yes, it’s a diet — represents the sinister and abusive part of diet culture. I don’t care how many health blogs you link me to, or how many studies you reference, the bottom line is: you’re telling me that your fat body is more of a concern than the damage to your health this restrictive, punishing diet could inflict. Yes, it’s helpful when combating neurological disorders like epilepsy, but that doesn’t mean it’s healthier than, say, just eating. There have been many studies released warning against the potential for kidney, heart, and digestive damage. I’m baffled by people who claim these risks are worth a quick drop in weight (which has also been proven is usually gained right back, plus a few pounds).

Any claims that can be made in favor of the positive aspects of keto and other restrictive diets should be discarded. You’re not removing an entire food group from your daily meals because you want to combat a disease or disorder — you’re doing it because you don’t want to be fat.

Being fat is not a bad thing.

I am tired of scrolling through account after account praising people for avoiding the death-sentence that is fat. I’m tired of friends calling their restrictive, abusive diets self-care. If you honestly cared about yourself, you would find the core of your distorted relationship with food. You would heal the wounds you’re nursing from thinking you’re fat, and therefore bad. You would push back against the relentless feelings that you are not beautiful, not loveable, not whole as long as you’re bigger than you think you should be. You would stop publicly telling people you were eating intuitively while privately bragging about your newfound love for keto.

Ignoring the true self-care in favor of restriction is damaging to you. And it’s damaging to people in recovery, like me.

As a person with a diagnosed eating disorder, I’m exhausted with my own struggle to maintain inner-kindness and self-love. I don’t need to witness your abuse, listen to your denial, and combat your snarky explanations to any responses you receive, claiming they’re concern for your health. In reality, it’s concern for my own health.

I can see right through your keto diet to the real problem, because it’s my real problem too. You’re not trying to be healthy, you’re trying to make yourself look and feel like you’re worthy of the love you’re starving yourself of. I’ve often spat the same garbage you litter our group chats, social media, and parties with. It’s painful when you realize there isn’t a greater force at work, keeping you prisoner and making you do the things that hurt your soul and damage your body.

Sugar isn’t addictive — the pleasure I get from indulging and self-harming is. This thought alone both empowered me to stop picking less nutritious options, and sent me into a week-long emotional tailspin when I confronted how very much I still hate my fat body. I realized I was willing to do anything to punish and hurt the body I had, including stuffing it with processed sugar I didn’t want to eat.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m still learning to let go of the fat-hate, the desire to restrict, the love affair with thinness, calorie counting, and grueling exercise regiments that only serve the purpose of providing a calorie deficit. But I’ve pulled back the curtain and I’ve seen what’s behind that kind of thinking. I deserve to be treated with empathy, kindness, and love — none of these things are allowed on any diet.

I’m ready to stop making everything I do about food. This includes removing unhealthy voices from my life, one keto, weight watcher, atkins and intermittent fast at a time.