Here we go, KETO!

“IT’S NOT FAIR,” MY MOM SAYS, HER TONE DRIPPING WITH GENUINE SYMPATHY. “SOME PEOPLE CAN EAT WHATEVER THEY WANT AND NEVER GAIN WEIGHT.”

I know this is, in fact, her best attempt at making me feel better, but even after all these years, she still hasn’t gotten the script right. I would have preferred something like, “Oh honey, you’re beautiful just the way you are.”

flipping out over keto: eating a diet high in fat and low in sugar and carbohydrates gives you more energy, focus … and you can eat bacon.

I know I’m always complaining about my weight, but here’s the thing: I’ve spent at least half my life on trendy diets, agonizing juice cleanses, and working out enough to call it a part time job, yet I constantly find myself on the roller coaster of weight loss and weight gain. Not to be confused with yo-yo dieting, because I am always careful about what I eat. But no matter what I do, the weight always finds its way back on, and the cycle starts all over again. For some reason, I’ve never been able to figure out how to just live my life and eat when I’m hungry and stop when I’m not, to be able to just “listen to my body.”

As it turns out, it’s my body that never seems to want to listen to me.

Since I last wrote to you guys, I’ve gone from eating primarily vegan (read all about it in “Vegan Fart Fest”) to the high-fat, low-carb Keto diet, swapping out chickpeas and sweet potatoes for bacon and butter.

While I did enjoy the nuances of vegan cooking and learned virtually every recipe in the world involving chickpeas, I eventually began to eat too much—both in terms of volume and calories. I became so bloated by the end of the day I looked six months pregnant, or maybe like a middle-aged Humpty Dumpty. Then one day I got crazy enough to put on a pair of jeans instead of yoga pants, and was shocked to discover I couldn’t button them.

How the F could I be gaining so much weight? I’m the girl who orders a salad at Sure Thing Burger, who doesn’t eat after 7 p.m., who serves my family pizza while I eat vegan broccoli soup. And for dessert? Gummy vitamins, people!

It’s true, I did eat a lot of chickpeas. I ate them fried, sautéed, and roasted. I put them in soups, salads, stews, sauces, dressings, and dips. Did you know you can bake them until they become crunchy and eat them for a snack or use them on a salad instead of croutons?

One day, I walked into Walgreens where a magazine caught my eye: “The Complete Guide to KETO” with cover blurbs in big red letters, as if it were there just for me. “Change your body in 28 days!” it read in shouty capitals. “The No-Hunger Diet!” it promised in bold font. “Boost Energy, Burn Fat, Sharpen Focus!”

Give me a diet and I’ll follow it like my life depends on it.

My friend Lisa Cohen, a nutritionist and founder of the vegan meal delivery service Good Clean Food once told me, “You are a rule follower. If you don’t have a program to follow, you’re lost.”

She’s right.

I’m great at following a program. I’m super disciplined. If you tell me to eat nothing and drink green juice that tastes like dirty dirt and choke down a half dozen chalky horse pills for 10 days, I’ll do it. Give me a diet and I’ll follow it like my life depends on it.

If you tell me not to eat any processed foods, I’ll spend 10-times as much money to buy organic nut butter and seeds to make my own damn protein bars. If you tell me to make Caesar salad with dressing made from (you guessed it) chickpeas, garlic and capers, topped with nutritional yeast instead of parmesan cheese, I’ll pretend to like it.

After all that, the idea of a diet high in fat that brings home the bacon, so to speak, might sound appealing. You can imagine why Caesar dressing made from real mayo with real cheese might be the best thing I ever ate. Sure, there are still a lot of foods I can’t eat on this program (no sugar, hello) but after a month, I have had tremendous results from this diet.

My focus is insane; I can sit and work for several hours at a time instead of jumping up out of my chair every 15 minutes to empty the dishwasher or take 10 more photos of my pugs for my Instagram feed. I’m never hungry. My digestion is perfect, my skin is clear, and my energy is steady throughout the day. I’m sleeping a solid 8 hours every night. My skin and hair are loving all the collagen and MCT oil I’m getting in my Bulletproof coffee. I can enjoy flavorful foods and even a few sweet treats (thanks to monk fruit and dark chocolate). But most importantly, I don’t overeat. There is something about eating more fat that really does control your appetite.

I’ll admit it took me a while to wrap my head around trying to eat more fat; it just seemed so counterintuitive. But what I’ve learned is when I eat more fat, I end up eating far fewer calories overall. It’s easy to overeat carbohydrates—think about the last time you sat down for Mexican food and polished off a bowl of tortilla chips or finished an entire bowl of popcorn or a container of Ben & Jerry’s during a Netlix binge. When you consume enough fat, the appetite switch in your brain gets shut off. I know that’s not the most scientific explanation out there, but it’s all I got. And truth be told, I’m not really eating much bacon or cheese, focusing instead on healthy fats from foods like coconut oil, avocado, nuts, and seeds.

While I’m not stick thin and the weight loss has been gradual, I can finally button my jeans. Yes, I miss eating chips and plan to drink beer again, but I can go without it most of the time.

And I definitely won’t miss those chickpeas.

With dark chocolate, gondola beers, and the first turns of the season,