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Going Keto Won’t Help You Love Your Body

By Mary Radovich

Lowering your carbohydrate intake to the point where your body has to break down fat sounds like a legit way to lose weight. However, the Keto diet, (or Atkins 2018 as I like to call it) is not the magical weight loss method that many celebrities, trainers, and maybe your friends and neighbors make it out to be.

The truth is, it’s just another fad diet. One that will likely be on its way out sometime in the next year or so when someone repackages another old familiar diet to make millions off of it, and when its current converts fall off and end up gaining all the weight they lost back.

Any diet you go on is going to result in shifting your intake of some food group, which also decreases the amount of calories you are consuming. This will result in weight loss at first, but then your body will try to protect you (basically from starvation) by decreasing your metabolism, digestion, heart rate, and circulatory functions. You start thinking about food all the time. Get cranky (especially if you aren’t eating carbs, which are your brain’s preferred source of fuel). And then you probably end up quitting. Maybe you can white-knuckle it and stick it out until the end, but then what?

After being done with a diet, will you go back to your old eating habits, or can you sustain your restrictive diet for the long term? But more importantly, while your body may have changed, have you changed the way you perceive your body? Is your body now deemed worthy? What have you really learned from your latest diet besides how to make “fat bombs” and convince yourself that cauliflower is the same thing as pizza dough?

Most people can’t deal with constantly restricting their food intake because it takes too much time and energy, and severely impacts mental (and sometimes physical) well being. This is why statistically, over 95% of diets fail. It really doesn’t matter what the diet is, it’s going to be hard to sustain weight loss achieved through calorie restriction. It’s not about willpower, it’s biology.

So why do we constantly punish our bodies for looking a certain way by starving them (or loading them up with disgusting coconut oil coffee) in the hopes that we will magically have the perfect life once we are smaller?

Value yourself now- whatever size you are- and work on nourishing and taking care of yourself. It is important to debunk diet myths, define what healthy, sustainable eating could actually look like for you, and ditch diets for good. Keto, Whole30, and intermittent fasting won’t fix our diet obsessed culture, but a mindset shift and intuitive eating training can help you live your best life, free of weight cycling and food guilt.

Mary Radovich is a registered dietitian at Elle. She specializes in eating disorders, is an advocate of the Health at Every Size movement, and proponent of intuitive eating. If you are looking to change the way you think about food and your body, reach out to us to work with Mary.