First post, I’m a 40 year old female that started keto just out of curiosity. I am overweight, not hugely, but especially the last couple years I really plumped up from giving myself permission to eat whatever I wanted while going through a rough time (lots of sugar and fast food). I knew it was time to move back to better eating, but was lacking motivation.
I’ve never actually ‘dieted’ in my life, I love eating and have seen people around me yo-yo up and down through the years - always stressing about food, always being hungry and then always gaining the weight back anyway. It seemed rather pointless to torture myself in that way if I was just going to come back to plumpness anyway.
Anyway, so I ran across something about keto a few months ago and what caught my eye was the fat content - I LOVE fat. I always thought there was something wrong with me when I enjoyed the fat more than the meat growing up - and everyone else around me always thought it was disgusting. I adore cheese, avocados and while I have no interest in milk - now CREAM is a different story. Also, all my life I have never had any interest in eating breakfast (and often lunch), so I’ve been IF fasting without even knowing about it, which everyone is always telling me how bad it is for me. Go figure. So I started looking into keto more and was really curious to see if it worked, it just sounded so bizarre and unlikely - but also kind of like it was made for me!
Anyway, so I took the plunge back in June, just to see what it was like. At the very least I figured it could help reset me back into healthier eating. I really doubted I would be able to go without sugar, and I wasn’t going to do anything that made me feel deprived as I’ve seen that roller coaster and wasn’t about to get on it.
So, yeah, it’s been a couple months now and I think I’m going to call it official, this seems to be working for me. I’m lazy about it, but if this is going to be something I do on an everyday basis, it needs to be easy enough to do without a calculator. I don’t have a scale and have no idea what I weigh, but I have lost weight and spend way too much time squishing my belly fat now because it feels so WEIRD now.
I feel good and I enjoy eating this way - it seems like living in some weird alternate universe where this isn’t going to kill me. I can finally indulge in my love of ribeye steaks with lots of rock salt, sometimes topped with cream and cheese. Mmmm. I actually enjoy salads now, as they’re mostly the GOOD stuff, nuts and dressing and cheese and avocados. Been making some easy HWC/cream cheese and sugar free Torani desserts to satisfy any sweet cravings I have.
I never would have guessed it would be so easy to stop eating sugar … well not much, anyway. 
I’ve had some ice cream here and there, my big weakness. I have had days where I ate ‘normal’ food when out with friends or relatives, but it’s so easy to just have a few bites instead of a whole serving. Then just eat keto at home 98% of the time, as if it’s something that is going to work for me on a long term basis I need to be able to feel free to eat whatever I want if I feel the need. But, so far, I don’t feel an intense NEED to eat more carb loaded foods - and that’s pretty awesome.
So I’m pretty jazzed that I may have found a long term solution to enjoying food but not killing myself with it. There have been some downsides, including hormone CRAZINESS - 2 week long periods, some crazy PMS, bad hormonal acne, and some intense headaches along with all of that. My understanding is that this can happen from hormones being released from fat … but that part has not been fun. Fingers crossed that normalizes.
And then my other complaint is how much fricken money and food I keep wasting. I keep going to the store and buying food, as eating is one of my favorite things to do so it’s kind of a ‘reward’ for me to go shopping. But then I keep buying WAY more food than I actually eat now, which means so much food thrown away. Same with cooking, I keep cooking amounts like I USED to eat, and then putting leftovers away … which I never get around to eating. SO MUCH WASTE. And apparently i’m a slow learner, I still keep doing it. Don’t even get me started on buying shit I thought I would need, like almond flour and erythritol - to make desserts that just taste awful. And, yeah, plenty of failed keto recipe attempts - right in the trash (I’m sorry, pork rind pancakes are one of the worst things I’ve ever tasted). So weird to go from packed fridge and pantry to crazy empty - still freaks me out to open the fridge and it’s like a wasteland.
Anyway, that’s my story of keto - I think at this point my curious experiment is going to stick around. If my version of lazy keto continues to make me feel good, I think it’s a good match for me long term. Would be nice to continue to lose some weight, but if this is ‘healthy’, then, okay, that’s me, health nut.