Here’s what happened when I tried Kim Kardashian’s baby weight loss diet
Like any (okay fine, maybe some, I don’t know your life!) girl living in L.A. who’s driving to Vegas for a weekendation, I wanted to maybe lose a pound or two. I’ll be wearing shorts and drinking all the drinks in my new one-piece, and I unabashedly would like to feel a lil’ bit lighter, okay? The goal is not a bikini body (or whatever that means). The goal is to feel sexy and good, and maybe eating my normal tacos and sushi draped with that spicy mayo sauce for lunch wasn’t how I was going to achieve that. So I googled “diet” over the weekend, and lo and behold, Kim Kardashian’s 3-day weight loss plan flooded my browser.
Kim‘s meal plan has been a ~hot topic~. It’s Atkins! She lost 60 pounds! Kim says she still hasn’t reached her goal weight (“My butt and my hips are the last to go, but I’m not stopping!” she said), but I think she looks fantastic (and tbh I’m sure she did before the diet — women who push tiny humans out of their bodies are strong and beautiful and I feel sad that they give in to the pressures of “getting their body back” as though it were snatched from them to begin with, but that’s neither here nor there). How did Kim achieve her weight loss? THIS HERE DIET (which, if you’re not familiar with the Atkins diet, is basically just cutting carbs). Published exclusively on People, Kim blessed us with all the tools we needed to also get a bangin’ bod.
I mean, I’m skeptical this is actually the food Kim ate. It seems too simple and not made with enough hard cheeses and expensive seeds, but whatever — I’ll take what I can get. This is a three-day glimpse into Kim’s food schedule (and here’s my rendition of it).
Day 1
Breakfast:
Scrambled eggs with turkey sausage and smoked Gouda & 4 oz. Greek yogurt with 1/3 cup fresh blueberries.
Thoughts
I’m used to inhaling a piece of sourdough or a probiotic yogurt five minutes before rushing out the door for work. But for a Kim K-approved breakfast I actually had to use the stove. What a drag. The end result was really hearty — maybe TOO hearty.
Pre-lunch snack:
1 medium carrot and 4 tbsp. hummus
Lunch:
Grilled lime chicken over spinach salad with a feta-ranch dressing
Thoughts
So, I clearly ate too much in the morning and then felt grotesquely full all day, forcing myself to eat my snack and my lunch which I prepared the night before because I’m a genius and knew even scrambling a couple eggs in the morning would send me into a panic. Lunch was filling and tasted like your average chicken and spinach salad — nothing exciting, but after my gigantic ass breakfast and snack (which was great, I am a hummus FIEND) I was totally satisfied until dinner.
Dinner:
Lemon thyme halibut with sautéed green beans
Thoughts
I always thought being an adult meant regularly grilling fish for dinner, but apparently I didn’t turn into that kind of adult. It’s expensive. I don’t understand the difference between halibut, tilapia, and seabass. I don’t particularly LIKE the taste of fish (unless it’s raw, wrapped in seaweed, and costs $18 a serving, apparently), so I didn’t think I would like halibut. But ya know what? It wasn’t bad! Like I wish I also had a side of French fries, but I understand sacrifices must be made. Maybe I *am* that fish-grilling adult now.
Post-dinner snack:
Atkins Harvest Trail Dark Chocolate Cherry and Nuts Bar
Thoughts
At around eight o’clock, I treated myself to an Atkins bar, which tasted like a nuttier, sadder Snickers bar. It was actually really good, and I can’t believe one of those is only 160 calories. What are they putting in there? What is this sorcery? I swear there are at least seven almonds wedged in the nougat-y bar. I went to bed full and not feeling at all like I was on a diet.
Day 2
Breakfast:
Chicken chorizo and cauliflower sauté with cheese and salsa
Thoughts
What is even a “cauliflower scramble”? I asked myself this as I crankily chopped up some pale florets and squeezed soy chorizo out of its tube (my grocery store didn’t have chicken chorizo, sorry Kim) into a pan. It’s official. I don’t like eating cauliflower for breakfast.
Pre-lunch snack:
½ small apple with 2 oz. cheddar cheese
Thoughts
Eating this made me think of snack time in Kindergarten, so I felt pretty adorable eating my lil’ slices of apple and cheese at work. I am a big fan of cheese, so I really felt like I was living my snack truth.
But also I succumbed to two mini Sprinkles cupcakes which were brought into the HG office. I reassured myself Kim K would make the exact same decision, because Kardashian or not, NO HUMAN on this planet can resist that crack-like Sprinkles frosting. Especially if it’s free, so.
Lunch:
Turkey burger with chipotle aioli, tomato, pickles and onions
Thoughts
This bun-less turkey burger held me over until dinner time, so who needs bread anyway? (JK, me, I need it.) No complaints here, other than wishing I bought actual ground turkey meat instead of a frozen turkey patty, because it was dry AF and no amount of chipotle mayo was going to fix that.
Dinner:
Slow roasted lemon rosemary chicken with asparagus & 1/3 cup of wild rice
Thoughts
Dinner this time around was less filling than normal, but that’s because I spaced and forgot to make wild rice (my bad, not Kim’s). On the plus side, it was flavorful and I’m really trying to train myself to like asparagus (I will never get over the fact that it makes your pee smell weird, never).
Post-dinner snack:
Atkins Harvest Trail Dark Chocolate Sea Salt Caramel Bar
Thoughts
To make up for my wild rice debacle, I had an Atkins bar before going to bed, and I felt GOOD. High-five Gina, you are DOING THIS THING.
Day 3
Breakfast:
Hatch green chili, cheese and egg bake with arugula & 1/8 of a honeydew melon
Thoughts
My breakfast was surprisingly delicious — apparently I need to be making everything with green chilis and arugula because HELLO, YUM.
Post-lunch snack:
Vanilla coffee frappe
Thoughts
I have to say, I was pretty confused about the whole Frappuccino thing, though. It felt so ~naughty~ and I even ordered it with whipped cream, because it’s not like the instructions told me NOT to. Regardless, I woke up the next morning feeling refreshed, so I guess Kim knows what she’s doing.
Lunch:
Zucchini noodles with spicy chicken sausage
Thoughts
I really didn’t know what Kim meant by “zucchini noodles” so I just took it as a nudge to use that spiralizer I bought from Amazon like four months ago and only used once. Turns out, noodles made from zucchini really don’t hold up well throughout the day, because by the time lunch came around I had to drain all the green zucchini juice that had pooled in my Tupperware before adding marinara sauce. Also, not sure if I was allowed to eat marinara sauce, but eating plain noodles with meat seemed very wrong.
Dinner:
Grilled chicken with cauliflower mac and cheese
Thoughts
For dinner, I realized I was never having normal mac ‘n cheese again, because cauliflower mac is my new god. It tasted just like mac ‘n cheese made with carbs. And yes, okay, I enlisted my chef husband to help me make it because otherwise I would have ended up with a sad plate of boiled cauliflower with Velveeta melted on top.
Post-dinner snack:
Atkins Harvest Trail Vanilla Fruit and Nut Bar
Thoughts
I thought I would get sick of these bars by now, but I’m not. I’m officially a fake Snickers bar convert. This is the NEW ME.
Verdict
The pros
As a human woman who has zero self-control and holds little to no grasp on clean eating, I found this diet pretty easy to follow. I missed bread, and found myself envisioning crunchy slices of French baguette sometimes, but I was never hungry. All the protein does actually fill you up, and you for sure don’t feel deprived.
The cons
Unfortunately, the diet plan didn’t really include portion sizes, so for all I know Kim had everything I had, but cut in half. But I basically went by the “fist” rule (the protein you eat shouldn’t be larger than your hand, balled up in a fist) and kinda winged it.
Also, it required a lot of cooking I wasn’t used to. I don’t usually cook in the morning or for lunch (I either eat out, buy one of those pre-made salads at Trader Joe’s, or bring in leftovers), so you know, it was time- consuming and stressful. Every night after I made dinner, I also made my lunch and prepared my snacks, so I had to set aside an extra hour every day just to make sure I was all set up for the next day. Blegh.
As for how budget-friendly this diet is: It isn’t, really. No, you don’t have to buy expensive powders with names you can’t pronounce from Whole Foods, but you have to invest in a lot of ingredients, because every single day is different. In fact, I only bought one kind of Atkins bar, so I didn’t have to spend $20 on just poseur candy bars. And instead of eating my zucchini noodles with chicken sausage, I used leftover soy chorizo from my breakfast that day. I don’t know about you, but I reuse ingredients throughout the week — I don’t just buy a bag of carrots so that I can have one of them for my pre-lunch snack. It’s not economical for the average human to purchase a bunch of different ingredients for each day of the week.
Did it work?
I lost exactly one pound, but then again I fluctuate between 3-4 pounds a week, more if I’m on my period. So, I don’t know if the diet actually WORKED. Maybe if I did it longer than three days, I would have more conclusive results. But hey, I’m happy with my bod and not totally dreading to live in my bathing suit this weekend. Good work, Kim. I’m proud of us.
