🌻Growing up in the diet era (and what I've learned from 6 weeks of keto)

with special guest, PCOS

Have you heard? It’s not cool to be on a diet.

Healing your negative body image is what’s trending. 

Unfortunately for me, I was raised in the 90’s and 2000’s. During my formative years, flatter than flat stomachs were mandatory. A size zero was cooler than a size two or, ew, a six.

I remember when Jessica Simpson “got fat” and it made the news. (It was 2009. She was a size four.)

I remember, as someone who identified as a size small, how absolutely mortified I felt whenever I received a gift of clothing from a relative that was — gasp — a medium. Do they think I’m huge??

I remember that a major plot point of the movie Bridget Jones’ Diary was that Renée Zellweger was “fat.” She weighed… 136 lbs. 

I remember thinking that Lizzy McGuire was a chunky character.

I remember the TV commercials for Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig and Subway with people standing in their giant pants, holding them out to the side to show off the empty space.

I remember every time that someone I loved, who was not a size small, wouldn’t accompany me to the pool because “nobody wants to see that.” 

I remember Dr. Oz showing us a cart load of fat on Oprah.

And I remember reading, probably in my Seventeen magazine, that if you were 5’6”, you should weigh 120 lbs.

I’ve had that weight rattling around in my head ever since. 120 lbs.

5’6”, 120 lbs.

Yeah right, 120 lbs.

I don’t think I’ve weighed 120 lbs since grade school.

Meanwhile, it’s actually always been uncool to be on a diet. Diets are for the older generations. Friends poke fun at the friend who only ever orders a salad. Guys just want a girl who will binge pizza with them. 

Have you seen Gilmore Girls? Those girls are always eating, always eating out, always getting ice cream or having a candy-coated girls night. While still maintaining their figures, of course. They’re so cool.

You’re supposed to be skinny but not to eat skinny.

A “fat” person in 2009. Sigh.

Enter: Body Positivity 💪

But that was all then. Over the past decade or so, society has been fighting back against the waves of diet culture and unreasonable beauty standards from years prior. People around the world are actively working on accepting all body shapes and sizes as they are. The younger generations (and in-the-know older folks) now agree that enough is enough and that we are no longer “fat-shaming.” This is, in my opinion, a great thing.

But this is, down to my very core, not how I was raised. 

It’s hard to rewire your brain.

My Instagram feed right now is all about “intuitive eating.” That means not being “on a diet” and not restricting foods, but learning how to simply eat what’s good for your body and makes you feel good. Repairing your psychological relationship with food. 

We’re making fun of “almond moms” (that’s the moms that told you 10 almonds was an appropriate snack). We’re commiserating about the “100-calorie pack” snacks, and Snackwell’s low fat devil’s food cakes, and we’re promising not to torture the next generation the way we were tortured by diet culture.

There’s new science, too. We’re disentangling obesity from some of the health issues it was long thought that it directly caused. We’re ditching BMI as a metric of health. We’re finally understanding genetics and hormones and all the gazillion factors that might affect someone’s weight.

I mean, we’ve all seen Lizzo run a marathon every night on her tour. I will fight anyone who tells that all-star she needs to “exercise more.” 

The cultural pendulum has swung fully to the other side. You’re not supposed to say you want to lose weight, because that’s an outdated insecurity. Skinny is out, loving yourself is in.

However.

I’m dying to know how many people over the age of 28 actually believe this in their heart of hearts, vs. how many just want it to be true so badly that they’re trying to will it into existence. Maybe if we say it enough times, we’ll believe it ourselves? Skinny is out, loving yourself is in. Skinny is out, loving yourself is in.

I’m in the second camp. I want to believe it. But, I confess, I don’t.

2024, I have failed you. I’m on a diet. I want to lose weight. There, I said it.

An Unfortunate Turning Point

Surprisingly, this new diet can’t trace its origins back to that Seventeen magazine, like so many diets before it.

I had a weird nightmare at the end of April. 

I’m out to eat with friends, and I get up and go to the bathroom. But when I look in the mirror, I have a beard. I’m shocked, then confused, then utterly ashamed. How could this have happened? I realize it’s because we’re out of town and I forgot to bring my razor on the trip, so I haven’t shaved in a few days. Somehow I also haven’t gotten a good look at myself until now. I am absolutely mortified.

I WANT to run crying out of the restaurant, but I keep it together, keeping my head bowed until I can sneak away to go buy a razor at the nearby drugstore.

Also, this wasn’t a dream, it really happened. 

I have this annoying little condition called PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome) that I have largely ignored for the past decade. I don’t even remember how the diagnosis came about, but about a decade ago, my doctor told me I had it. It’s in my chart. 

No doctor has ever mentioned it ever since. Must not be a big deal then, right? Just some cysts on some ovaries, not like that’s bothering me in my daily life!

One of the trademarks of PCOS is messed up sex hormones, including just enough extra androgens to give some unlucky ladies just enough extra facial hair to be, by modern beauty standards, downright horrifying. But we have tweezers and razors and wax, which is why you haven’t noticed that something like 10% of women have goatees.

At this point, shaving my unwanted facial hair has become such a no-big-deal part of my routine that I don’t even think about it any more. In fact, I don’t even think about it to the point that, when I forget my razor on a trip, I think “no one will care if my legs don’t get shaved daily” and completely forget about my impending five-o-clock shadow.

So this restaurant scene really happened and I almost died of shame. Not embarrassment. Shame.

And it reminded me that I do, in fact, have PCOS. 

This is going somewhere, I promise.

The incident inspired me to actually look up PCOS and see what it means for me. I learned that it’s definitely not no big deal, and can cause things like depression, fatigue, gut issues, overactive appetite, sugar and carb cravings, weight gain, and infertility. How did I not know any of this?

After a lot of web surfing, I came across a blog from a nutritionist that explained how PCOS is basically insulin resistance.

*Record scratch*

Insulin resistance! I could have written a whole separate post about how I already thought I had insulin resistance! (See again: depression, fatigue, gut issues, sugar and carb cravings, weight gain…) We’ll have to talk about that another day, because we need to get back to the topic at hand. 

This same blog post went on to explain that if you have PCOS/insulin resistance, very likely a keto diet is the way forward.

Nooooooo! Not my carbohydrates!

Not wanting it to be true, I poked around the internet some more. (Fun fact, if you search “PCOS” you get a bunch of useless stuff about hormones and ovaries. If you search “PCOS insulin resistance,” you unlock the real stuff, mechanisms and research and treatments.)

I even read the actual Atkins book (Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution) and learned that not only is keto just Atkins rebranded, but it was all always about insulin. I walked away fully convinced that doing keto would not only help my PCOS but might save my life. 

Admittedly, from what I read, I also expected really spectacular weight loss. (Told you I was going to get back to the point.)

My 2024 Diet 🙄

I started the super-low-carb diet on May 1, trying to focus on the PCOS-reversing and other life-saving parts of keto (because we are anti-diet and body-positive now).

There were a few rough days at the beginning (as promised, #ketoflu) but after a few days of headaches and naps, I woke up with a physical energy I have not experienced since I was a teenager. I feel amazing. I’m taking fewer medications. I haven’t even touched my magic powder that lets me eat onions. It’s a literal Godsend.

However.

It’s unlocked some latent part of my brain that is now ultra-fixated on the possibility of weight loss.

I’ve been on the scale every single morning, eagerly awaiting the promised miracle weight loss. It’s been six weeks, and the needle hasn’t moved enough to feel meaningful.

I gotta say, I’m disappointed. Like, really disappointed.

But I’m also disappointed in myself for being disappointed. I feel truly great. By 2024 standards, I’ve already won.

Unfortunately, my brain was set in stone in 2003, and I’m supposed to weigh 120 lbs. 

🤷