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Some of the angriest comments I get on instagram are from people who swear that the keto diet is helping them and that I’m soooo incredibly ignorant and/or deceitful for saying that the body prefers carbs.

However, for every comment where someone is swearing by keto, there are twenty more comments with people saying that they too tried keto, with hope bursting in their hearts, only to find that after a few months it had fucked up their metabolism, hormones, energy levels, sanity, and has been really hard to recover from, mentally and physically.

I’ve spent a long time trying to decide how to be diplomatic and to not claim to know what’s best for everyone’s body. Because– everyone is different. Some people are allergic to fucking tomatoes. We are all different.

I’m also not a doctor or nutritionist or dietitian so I have no authority or desire to weigh in on diets that people claim are medically necessary and helpful to them. TFID is concerned with the mental and spiritual ramifications of chronic dieting, it just so happens that there are very physical consequences to dieting, too.

So in my attempts to be diplomatic, I say things like: I’m so glad you feel good on keto, but this is an account for people trying to heal from chronic dieting or disordered eating, and your comments about keto do not belong here. And many many people have had opposite experiences on keto.

I’ve also compared keto to wheelchairs or mobility devices. Meaning, just because a select number of people are benefitted (read: children with seizures, maybe), that doesn’t mean that it cures any underlying condition, and also doesn’t mean that people who don’t need keto/mobility devices should be using them, in fact if they do, it will probably make things worse in the long run. (I also asked Anna Sweeney, MS, RD, LDN, CEDRD-S, who uses a wheelchair, if this was a cool comparison and she gave me the green light.)

But the most honest thing I can say about the keto diet is: what the fuck do you think I’m going to say? 

Keto is a very, very restrictive diet, and therefore it has no place in or on or around The Fuck It Diet. It has no place in the lives of people recovering from disordered eating or eating disorders.

And if you are someone who is on the keto diet and you feel great, then you don’t need the Fuck It Diet either. Why are we fighting? If your diet is truly supporting your mental and physical health: that’s great. Round of applause. Most people don’t have that experience, and I’d love for you to check in with me in two or three years and tell me how you’re doing, too.

More frankly: I don’t care how you eat, Pamela. Eat a no-carb-diet to your heart’s content. I have no desire to evangelize you. If it is ‘working’ for you – I’m not going to try and tell you it’s not working.

If you want to know what I think, the short term “benefits” of the keto diet, and any diet for that matter, are just that: short term. The long term effects can be physically and mentally devastating, and have yet to be truly studied.

So, where does this leave us?

Do you need to do keto?

If you want to recover from chronic dieting: NO. HELL NO.

But could keto cure your chronic health problems? 

Probably not. It was shown to help children with epilepsy in the 1920s, but it still comes with side effects (kidney strain, hypoglycemia, dehydration, GI issues, etc). Are those side effects worth it for kids with epilepsy? Yes! Potentially! Is it the cure-all that people claim it is? I don’t think so.

Will keto help you lose weight?

Temporarily, yes. Like all diets. But now we are getting into our usual TFID rigemroll. Diets backfire longterm. It’s how we are wired. And, diets and weight loss can actually negatively impact health, against all our cultural common knowledge. We are all confused about weight loss and health. We are assuming weight loss is always good for us – often it’s not .

But more importantly, the psychology of extreme dieting, even for ‘health’, is almost identical to eating disorders. So if your lifestyle is negatively impacting your mental health… it’s not a good idea. It’s not sustainable. What’s health if it doesn’t take into account mental health and stress levels?

The psychology of extreme dieting is all consuming – you have to buy in. You have to believe that what you are doing could really help you. You have to believe that maybe it already really is helping you, but you just haven’t experienced the benefits yet. I have personally done this over and over and over. I’ve gone from extreme to extreme diet (Keto, Paleo, Raw Vegan, etc etc etc) and I always had to buy in. I had to believe. I understand. I empathize. I really do.

If you feel that keto truly is helping you, that’s great. But no, it doesn’t belong on or near the f**k it diet. And yes, the body prefers carbs to keep you alive. You need stress hormones to run on little or no carbs.

Stress is not what we want.

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Lots of people ask me, “ok — I can get behind the “no dieting” thing, but aren’t there foods that are inherently … shitty? Shouldn’t I still avoid shitty food, even while I’m “not dieting”?

Here’s the thing –  and it’s important: If I told you stop dieting but to try and avoid or even limit “shitty food,” that would first of all, be a rule, which is a diet, which would turn into restriction in many people’s heads and fuck up their eating anyway.

But people would also think, oh jeez… So there IS food that I should be eating and food I shouldn’t be eating? But which food is shitty food? I thought we were neutralizing food? What will happen to me if I do eat it? If it’s a sometimes thing, how often is it okay to eat shitty food? Should I really just avoid shitty food always?  

And that way of thinking is not the Fuck It Diet, and it will not help you.

Look, let me play devil’s advocate with myself. If we zoom way out: We have polluted our planet and our food and our water and our air and our soil and our homes. We have. It’s a fact. It goes way, way deeper than food or packaged food or “shitty food”. There are way worse things in the air than whatever food additive you’re afraid of or whatever fried food you’re avoiding. Pollution is everywhere. I could make you afraid of drinking water and taking a breath and taking a shower. But that would not help you. 

You could easily spend every moment of your day thinking about it and worrying about it and trying to avoid all pollution – but you cannot avoid it. You can’t. It’s a dark reality.

I actually care deeply about environmental sustainability, and cleaning up our planet, but I also care deeply about helping people heal disordered eating and restore their mental health and quality of life, and focus on resilience instead of fear.

In a way, pollution and disordered eating are both issues of quality of life, and they aren’t mutually exclusive. You can feed yourself organic foods when you want or when it is possible, you can vote with your dollar, (if you have the luxury and privilege of being able to afford it), you can volunteer for environmental sustainability groups and charities, and eat packaged snacks when that’s what you crave, or when that’s all that’s available.

We can and should be able to do both.

Food perfectionism has gotten you nowhere. Stress over the food you eat is arguably worse for you than the food itself. Stress has been shown to change gut microbiota, can shut down or slow digestion, and raise inflammation. The lining of the gut is literally a part of our nervous system, and every process in our body is interconnected. Stress physically affects your body, your nervous system, and your bodily functions and processes.

On the other hand, under calmer circumstances, our bodies are wired and equipped to take the good from food and process out the bad. These are all reasons to just surrender during this process and let yourself eat whatever food you want, “whole” or “shitty” or somewhere in between.

Fuck it, listen to your body, and eat the funfetti.

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Maintaining a low weight is one of my core values. How am I supposed to be happy if I sacrifice one of my core values?

I have heard something like this again and again, and I think… maintaining a low weight is one of your core values? Like treating others the way you’d want to be treated and being honest?

Maintaining a low weight is not a core value. It’s a fear-based ingrained societal standard, created to make money off of your insecurities. Keeping your weight below where it wants to be relies on fear and fixation. The only thing we like about it is the high of fitting in, getting praise, feeling safe, and the temporary relief that comes when we reach a goal weight. Whew, now everyone will leave me alone and approve of me. Now I’llllll leave me alone.

That’s until it isn’t good enough anymore, or we gain it back and feel horrible about ourselves, and the cycle continues.

Better focuses like health, self-care, movement, eating what feels good, and dressing yourself in clothes you like aren’t even core values. They are, however, awesome ways to take care of yourself. Feeling healthy and strong and embodied is a perfectly legitimate desire or goal, but living in a constant food and weight obsession is not.

“Staying healthy and thin/fit” as a core value also relies on the belief that health and weight are fully within your control, and that controlling your food and weight will actually lead to better health – all things that that have been proven untrue. Goals and core values that are more self-loving and self-forgiving will almost certainly end up being better for your overall health anyway.

A core value that’ll serve you better is “prioritizing your needs” or “taking care of yourself,” and if you have a weight obsession or eating disorder, prioritizing your needs is gonna look a lot like The Fuck It Diet and eating what you want.

You have every right to remain someone who judges your daily worth based on your weight, but it’s not gonna be fun for very long.