đ»Growing up in the diet era (and what I've learned from 6 weeks of keto)
with special guest, PCOS
Have you heard? Itâs not cool to be on a diet.
Healing your negative body image is whatâs trending.Â
Unfortunately for me, I was raised in the 90âs and 2000âs. 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 âgot fatâ 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 â gasp â a medium. Do they think Iâm huge??
I remember that a major plot point of the movie Bridget Jonesâ Diary was that RenĂ©e Zellweger was âfat.â She weighed⊠136 lbs.Â
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, wouldnât accompany me to the pool because ânobody wants to see that.âÂ
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 5â6â, you should weigh 120 lbs.
Iâve had that weight rattling around in my head ever since. 120 lbs.
5â6â, 120 lbs.
Yeah right, 120 lbs.
I donât think Iâve weighed 120 lbs since grade school.
Meanwhile, itâs 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.Â
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. Theyâre so cool.
Youâre supposed to be skinny but not to eat skinny.
Enter: Body Positivity đȘ
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 âfat-shaming.â This is, in my opinion, a great thing.
But this is, down to my very core, not how I was raised.Â
Itâs hard to rewire your brain.
My Instagram feed right now is all about âintuitive eating.â That means not being âon a dietâ and not restricting foods, but learning how to simply eat whatâs good for your body and makes you feel good. Repairing your psychological relationship with food.Â
Weâre making fun of âalmond momsâ (thatâs the moms that told you 10 almonds was an appropriate snack). Weâre commiserating about the â100-calorie packâ snacks, and Snackwellâs low fat devilâs food cakes, and weâre promising not to torture the next generation the way we were tortured by diet culture.
Thereâs new science, too. Weâre disentangling obesity from some of the health issues it was long thought that it directly caused. Weâre ditching BMI as a metric of health. Weâre finally understanding genetics and hormones and all the gazillion factors that might affect someoneâs weight.
I mean, weâve all seen Lizzo run a marathon every night on her tour. I will fight anyone who tells that all-star she needs to âexercise more.âÂ
The cultural pendulum has swung fully to the other side. Youâre not supposed to say you want to lose weight, because thatâs an outdated insecurity. Skinny is out, loving yourself is in.
However.
Iâm 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 theyâre trying to will it into existence. Maybe if we say it enough times, weâll believe it ourselves? Skinny is out, loving yourself is in. Skinny is out, loving yourself is in.
Iâm in the second camp. I want to believe it. But, I confess, I donât.
2024, I have failed you. Iâm on a diet. I want to lose weight. There, I said it.
An Unfortunate Turning Point
Surprisingly, this new diet canât trace its origins back to that Seventeen magazine, like so many diets before it.
I had a weird nightmare at the end of April.Â
Iâm 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. Iâm shocked, then confused, then utterly ashamed. How could this have happened? I realize itâs because weâre out of town and I forgot to bring my razor on the trip, so I havenât shaved in a few days. Somehow I also havenât 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 wasnât a dream, it really happened.Â
I have this annoying little condition called PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome) that I have largely ignored for the past decade. I donât even remember how the diagnosis came about, but about a decade ago, my doctor told me I had it. Itâs in my chart.Â
No doctor has ever mentioned it ever since. Must not be a big deal then, right? Just some cysts on some ovaries, not like thatâs 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 havenât 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 donât even think about it any more. In fact, I donât even think about it to the point that, when I forget my razor on a trip, I think âno one will care if my legs donât get shaved dailyâ 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.Â
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 itâs 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 gainâŠ) Weâll have to talk about that another day, because we need to get back to the topic at hand.Â
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 âPCOSâ you get a bunch of useless stuff about hormones and ovaries. If you search âPCOS insulin resistance,â 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.Â
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 đ
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. Iâm taking fewer medications. I havenât even touched my magic powder that lets me eat onions. Itâs a literal Godsend.
However.
Itâs unlocked some latent part of my brain that is now ultra-fixated on the possibility of weight loss.
Iâve been on the scale every single morning, eagerly awaiting the promised miracle weight loss. Itâs been six weeks, and the needle hasnât moved enough to feel meaningful.
I gotta say, Iâm disappointed. Like, really disappointed.
But Iâm also disappointed in myself for being disappointed. I feel truly great. By 2024 standards, Iâve already won.
Unfortunately, my brain was set in stone in 2003, and Iâm supposed to weigh 120 lbs.Â
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I really resonate with wanting to believe that any weight is fine on our body. I don't care what others look like or how much they weigh and I'm just happy for them no matter what, but I have a hard time feeling the same way about myself.
I tell myself that I feel great and have done some great things like a couple half marathons and am pretty active overall, but some days it's just not enough for my brain that thinks I should weigh less.
I definitely understand where you're coming from and wish you the best on your journey with the keto diet. Glad to hear you're feeling much better and I hope your brain is able to come to accept over time that feeling great on keto is worth more than any number on a scale
fellow PCOS-er (and survivor of 90s diet culture) â i was diagnosed at 16 and was LIVID that no one told me until my 30s that itâs associated with insulin resistance until i learned that the link was established after i was diagnosed. wild how little we know about a condition that affects millions of people! anyway, i know there are a lot of great resources out there but always game to compare PCOS notes and frustrations :)