'I Tried The Ketogenic Diet For Weight LossHere's What Happened'

I hate diets—especially rigid ones that cut out entire food groups and require tracking numbers.

Restrictive diets don't seem realistic to me in the long term, and I've heard of so many people gaining the weight back when the diet is over—sometimes even more weight. I don’t like denying myself. It makes me want that banned food so much more. I believe in subtle, moderate lifestyle changes that add up over time and become the new normal.

Sounds reasonable, doesn't it?

That philosophy hasn't worked. My weight has slowly crept up about 15 pounds since I met my boyfriend six years ago and moved in with him three years ago. (It’s not his fault. Really.) That weight gain isn’t as obvious on my 5’11” frame as it is for other women, but I can’t fit into my fancy Joe jeans comfortably. I haven’t worn them in at least two years. The same goes for my pencil skirts and form-fitting dresses.

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Plus, my time away from those strength-training classes at the gym has meant muscle loss, so the weight I do have is fat, not muscle. I can see the difference in my body’s composition, especially in my arms. I still run about three times a week, but cardio can do only so much. I feel bloated, I’m exhausted all the time, I have mood swings, and my skin gets acne and eczema.

All that is reason enough to make a lifestyle change, but there’s motivation more important than the way I look, and even feel: I am a sugar addict who needs an intervention.

In May 2016, my doctor told me to cut down on my daily dessert intake. My blood sugar levels weren’t pre-diabetic yet, but they would be if I kept up my sugar habit, he said. Try having a bowl of ice cream once a week instead of once a day, he suggested. “Ha!” I thought with (unhealthy) skepticism. “Easy for you to say.” My typical day included two or more sweet treats—plus four kinds of fruit—a day.

But ultimately, what my doctor said scared me into taking some drastic sugar-reduction action.

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So, I turned to this crazy keto diet as a way to kick-start my sugar-less, carb-less life. It’s a ridiculously strict low-carb, high-fat diet. For two weeks, I tried to eat only 20 to 30 carbohydrates a day to get my body to reach ketosis. This is the state when your body switches from burning carbohydrates to burning fat for energy.

This diet isn’t for everyone, says Samantha Rigoli, R.D. She’s also a nutrition consultant with a master’s in public health, a yoga instructor, and the founder of Healthy to the Core NYC, where she provides individual counseling and leads nutrition-focused seminars, wellness talks, and cooking demonstrations.

“People will lose weight, but I rarely see it kept off. It’s hard to maintain,” Rigoli says. Uh-oh.

On top of that, she predicted the diet might make me extra-cranky, too. That's because I'd be cutting out both complex carbohydrates (whole grains, potatoes, beans, fruits, and even some vegetables) and simple carbs (the kind found in soda, candy, and my beloved gelato). And complex carbs make you feel good, she says, but not in a sugar-high kind of way. They create more serotonin in the brain, one of those happy chemicals we love, and without those slight lifts, keto dieters often feel irritable.

So naturally, the weekend before I started the keto diet, I scarfed down as much dessert as I could get my paws on, plus all sorts of bread, pizza, baked goods, and pasta. I made an apple-pear crumble with a brown sugar, whole-wheat flour, and oats topping, and paired it with vanilla bean gelato. When I ate out, I got the fries, ordered the soda, and ate the bread that came to the table before our salads. (I still had salad! Don’t judge.)

I was initially going to do this diet for two weeks, but I’ve been keeping it up because—spoiler alert—it’s been working. Here’s what I learned in the following 19 days, along with photos of the delicious meals I ate along the way:

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