'Sick to Death of Keto' by Jude Higgins

Sometimes it’s just eating those extra squares of chocolate or even the pizza base you made so carefully from psyllium husks and coconut flour, with that riffraff of vegetables on top, cooked, perhaps, in too much olive oil, plus drinking a second tumbler of kefir, nibbling on falafels for an evening snack, sipping a small glass of Rioja, munching a wedge of  vintage cheddar and when, next morning, you step on the scales, your weight loss goal, elusive since that summer — must be 30 years ago, waist size perfect then —  is yet further away and, cast down now, you hanker for doughnuts oozing with raspberry jam for breakfast or an almond croissant but you won’t succumb, you’ll get dressed, carry on with the day, hopeful, still convinced the years can fall away, as well as the pounds, still believing the world will be better place, like it seemed when you stood on the hill-side terrace outside the cottage you once owned and gazed towards the far horizon with nothing between you and it, but autumn- tinted woodland and bird song.