Check for autosaves (left of your save slots screen), but it's unlikely seeing as it sounds like you deleted your saves when updating.
So no, you don't have to restart every time you update - just don't delete your saves. All you had to do was move them before deleting the game folder they're in, and with the new patching process for 0.13.2 onward, you don't even have to do that, since there's no deletion of your game folder at all.