On Returning to Keto After Two Years
The only thing I hate more than endless eggs is being rejected because of my size
Two years ago I weighed 45 pounds less than I do now. From 2018 until mid-2020 I controlled my weight through the Keto diet. This past summer, the person I had been dating online for the past three months finally met me in person. At the end of a four-day date, they told me they weren’t physically attracted to me. For weeks and weeks prior, we had spent an average of three hours a day on video chat, my love had even named one of my smiles- boomerang.
But in the end, it didn’t matter how close we’d become. They wouldn’t outwardly say it but when I asked one night “Is it because of my size?” they said, “a little bit, yeah.”
And so I knew it was time to return to Keto.
My History with Obesity
I have been overweight since the fourth grade. My whole family struggles with their weight, we’re from that class of society where historically just getting food on the table has often been a triumph.
I didn’t begin seriously losing weight until I finished my BA degree in my mid-twenties. I think at my heaviest I was about 220 pounds and 5'3" but I’m not sure because nobody likes weighing themselves at their heaviest.
At the age of about twenty-six, I began to seriously want to drop pounds. In the span of about two years, I lost between 60 and 70 pounds. I think at my lowest weight I was about 154 pounds, which is still fluffy for someone of my stature but for me it was life-changing. Keto wasn’t a thing in the early 2010s, at that time, the fad diet was HCG where you took hormones and decreased your calorie levels to exceedingly low levels, think 500 calories a day. I do not recommend it for obvious reasons, but it worked for me.
I am the sort of person who is either on a diet, or I’m steadily gaining weight. (I will add a caveat to this). There is no in-between. I can easily gain forty pounds in a year. I’ve never been a binge eater but I also gravitate towards carbs and sugar; if I could live off of buttered toast for every meal I would.
Discovering Keto
During grad school, from the winter of 2018 until mid-2020, I was on the Keto diet. My journals from the time show that at the end of January 2018 I weighed 185lbs. That spring, I went into strict Keto-mode and by July I was excited to be at 167lb, I had lost 18 pounds. Now, that’s not a lot of weight loss for six months, but I was new to Keto and eating a lot of almond flour, my Keto Instagram from that time confirms it. I was doing dirty Keto.
I held on to that weight for a while, I was about the same weight in September, which is surprising since I actually worked the summer in China at an English summer camp and was under an enormous amount of financial stress. I’m guessing that I tried to stay Keto as much as possible. Between September 2018 and the end of January 2019, I have no daily weight tracking records but it looks like my weight stayed consistent. My Instagram from that time shows that I was still dirty Keto, I gained about two pounds during this time. In January 2019, I started tracking my weight again which means I became more serious about Keto. From the end of January 2019 until the end of March 2019, I lost about 9lbs. In total, from January 2019 until July 2019, I lost 11 pounds. I was about 160lbs by July 2019. Honestly, 160 is a good weight for me. It’s usally as low as I’m able to get my body, although I’d love to know what 140 feels like. People I’ve dated who are just as tall as me weigh as little as 110.
Falling Off the Keto Wagon
There are no notes of me being on strict Keto from July 2019 to Spring 2020, there wouldn’t be. I was living with a partner at the time and also writing my MA thesis. I was stressed. I think I remember trying to stay and cook Keto, but I also knew that I would only live in Paris once, and I was finally allowing myself to secretly have a baguette or a croissant every once in a while. By the time I weighed myself in March 2020, I was 185lbs again. I had gained about 25lbs in nine months. I definitely was not binge eating, but I was eating carbs and sugar now and then. That made all the difference.
Back on Keto
At that time, I went into strict Keto and began working out with my partner. From March 26 to April 14, I only lost 4.4lbs. During the next month, I lost 6lbs, in the next month it was 9lbs. Between mid-March and early July 2020, I had lost about 22 pounds on Keto. From my Notes app, it seems like I was being pretty strict during this time and doing egg fasts often. The picture above shows me that summer at around 160lbs looking and feeling confident, it would be the only summer of my life that I would wear a two-piece bathing suit. I know I’m not thin by any means in that photo. but I’m thin for me.
Tracking Your Progress on Keto is Key
At this point, I’m really glad that I kept notes while I was doing Keto. Not only did it help me figure things out at the time, but it was also confirmation for me two years later that the diet does work for me when I stick to it. It would be easy for me looking back to think that it doesn’t work, but my notes confirm that it does. When I’m really strict on Keto and working out, I can drop about 20 pounds in three months. When I’m not so strict, it takes twice the amount of time. If I’m doing pretty dirty Keto but still eating low-carb, I can keep the same weight (like I did between September 2018 and January 2019). Once I begin to eat sugar or carbs, I immediately begin to gain weight.
From doing a little online research, dropping 1–3lbs per week on Keto is normal. In my experience, it seems my success rate directly corresponds to how strict I am, but also how much I monitor what I eat and how it affects me. I have countless notes in my journals that show days when I upped my fat consumption just for a day or two and ended up breaking a plateau.
The Last Two Years
In the Summer of 2020, I broke up with my partner of five years. Our relationship had become simply, way too toxic. With almost no money and the pandemic raging, I moved to a little town on the southern coast of Albania where I could pay rent for 200 euros a month. I was broke, I ate carbs, and I adopted one of the many street dogs that roamed the city in which I lived. I began gaining weight steadily. In fact according to my notes, between July 2020 and August 2021 I gained 44 pounds.
In March 2021, I moved to the Middle East. I’ve attempted to restart Keto in the Middle East a number of times, but things have always gotten in the way. I’m definitely more sedentary here than I’ve ever been in my life with temperatures hovering between 100 and 120F for most of the year. When I do go for walks, men stop, roll down their windows and talk to me. Or they follow me. I tend to not go for walks very often.
Back to Keto
This spring, while I fell in love with the woman who would later go on to break up with me, I kept mentioning that I had gained weight and she kept telling me how I was beautiful anyways, and how attracted she was to me. But she hadn’t yet put her arms around my round figure and I was too shy to set up my phone and give her a catwalk preview of my full body size. So, we continued on in love, until we met in person and she was disappointed.
Keto is a Lifestyle
The thing that’s made me drag my feet about Keto is that it doesn’t work when you do it halfway. Truthfully I’ve been halfway Keto for the last two years, but it hasn’t worked. You have to be fully committed to enter into ketosis. You need to drink the full three liters of water a day to make it work. And if you really want to shed pounds? You have to track your progress, weigh yourself daily, and troubleshoot along the way because Keto doesn’t work on two bodies in the same way.
Life Priorities
I’m the sort of person who thinks that they don’t care about looks and yet, I continue to fall for beautiful people. My ex in Oregon is gorgeous, perfectly thin, she has an incredible smile and amazing cheekbones. I should have known better, I should have taken a really hard look in the mirror last March.
The break-up has cost me a lot of nights' sleep. I realized that I’ve prioritized other things over my weight- I’ve been trying to write a work of creative nonfiction and I’ve been dealing with the weird feelings that living in the Middle East can give you, I’ve been trying to figure out how to get out of here and establish a career in the States.
Then one night, the thought came to me, I’ve never gotten laid because I was a writer. In fact, I could work for the next five years and devote myself to writing and finish a memoir but there’s no guarantee that it will be published or that it will help me earn a living. The chances that it will, are in fact, quite slim. But will being sucessful at writing make me happy? Has it ever made me happy?
The answer? In small ways, yes. But only when I was part of a writer’s workshop.
The truth is, as an INFJ, a Cancer, and someone Anxiously Attached, I am forever in search of deep and meaningful relationshiops.
I hate to say this, but you have a much greater selection of people willing to love you, to cherish you, and to stand by you when you’re conventionally attractive.
I know exactly how being thinner affects my life. I watched it happen almost in shock in 2013 when I first lost a lot of weight. People tipped me more (I was a barista in Seattle). People were more polite to me, kinder. Men approached me at bus stops (not my favorite part). Everything changed. Life became easier. I knew I could never see the world the same way again and reader? I was never actually thin or gorgeous. I had just gone from fat to average and it had made a world of difference.
I’ve been fat, and I’ve been average- life is much easier when I’m average and that’s based solely on how people respect me more, they hold me in higher esteem. I wish this weren’t true, but it is.
So, until the world changes (and even if it does), it’s back to Keto for me. Check back here weekly for progress reports, musings, recipes, and unsolicited Keto advice.
Lavender Dezarae was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. She believes in rainy afternoons spent in bookstores, dark roast coffee, and making buttermilk biscuits only when she’s in love. Find out more here.
