Keto dieting – it’s been hard to avoid hearing the term lately even if you haven’t been searching specifically for it. Every workplace, gym and social media feed has at least one person raving about their keto plan that you can pay to sign up to, or their keto pills you can buy. It’s gained a lot of followers recently, but why, and what does it actually involve?
Keto, or the Ketogenic Diet Plan, was created by doctors in the 1920s as a way of controlling and reducing seizures in children with refractory epilepsy.
The diet consists of reducing carbohydrates to no more than 10% of your daily food intake, protein about 20% and the rest of your calorie allowance made up from fats. When there is such little carbohydrate consumed (for multiple consecutive days) for your body to use as energy, it will use the glycogen stores in the liver and provisionally break down muscle to release glycogen from there. Once stores are fully depleted, the liver produces ketone bodies which are found in fatty acids and can be converted into a useable form of energy, as a carbohydrate replacement.
This change in fuel for the body, from glucose to fatty acids, causes a shift in many biological reactions, pathways and end-products and is thought to account for the neurological therapeutic and protective effect on seizures. Additionally, it will also cause weight loss if followed properly, which is where the keto fad diet comes in…It’s effectively a prolonged stage of phase one of the Atkins diet; so its use as a weight loss plan is not new to the diet market, just packaged differently hoping you won’t notice or question…
People who attempt to follow the keto diet plan will inevitably not be able to do well with compliance with it and so any weight loss seen will likely be down to an overall reduction in calories, being more aware of what is being eaten in general due to ‘being on a diet’ and focusing more in all aspects of life on healthier practices. However not sticking to the rules of the keto diet is definitely no bad mistake to make, due to the results of numerous studies looking into the implications and danger to health of the long term affects of the keto diet.
Although anti-epileptic drugs are now the widely used option, when advised by a doctor to adopt a keto diet for medical reasons, it will be closely monitored to ensure no nutrient or mineral deficiencies and their related symptoms develop, gut health isn’t negatively affected, as well as checking general state of well-being regarding energy levels etc. As it is such a high fat, high red meat and low fibre diet, there are known risks involved with cardiovascular disease and bowel cancer. Additionally, for people with GI problems following a keto diet, a third to half of them will experience constipation and vomiting episodes, to add to the common reported side effects of diarrhoea, constipation, fatigue, iron deficiency, high triglycerides, high LDL cholesterol and vomiting.
To take a slightly more simplistic view of it – a diet that tells you to cut out oats, rice, fruits, vegetables…really? For weight loss which has been proven easier, safer and more sustainable in so many other ways, just why would anyone opt for this and its long list of dangerous health effects?
Similar to fads such as using a gluten free diet designed for coeliac disease, keto is easy to sell as a ‘medically developed diet plan’ – which technically it is, but if you are just looking for weight loss then it wasn’t medically developed for you. Not that the online influencers promoting the diet plans will go out of their way to highlight this..
If it isn’t a ‘join the diet plan’ sign up, it may be keto pills for sale you see. Where to start. I would advise anyone who has ever considered them to simply read this short 2020 report (click here to view the report). As with every diet pill, if they were safe, and could actually provide results, they would be prescribed by doctors.
So, this post is effectively a scam avoidance awareness notice for everyone. Hopefully the explanation of what is involved in the keto diet is knowledge enough to stop anyone being tempted to hand over cash for a plan. Chad from Instagram, with his 6 week online course in health and fitness, does not care nor know how to fully offer and look after someone on a keto diet. Please do not pander to him by crediting any short term weight loss you initially achieve by reducing bread, as a result to him…
Merry Christmas Everyone (but not you, Chad) x
