Ketogenic Diet Debunked
The ketogenic diet gained popularity through the weight loss community. It’s a low-carb (often 25g per day), high-fat diet triggering the body to burn fat for energy instead of carbohydrates.
With increased popularity, there has also been an increase in keto-naysayers; they think it’s a dangerous fad fueled by the common desire to lose weight.“It’s unhealthy and unsustainable,” they say. “How can a high-fat diet help you lose weight? It’s dangerous for the heart, increases the risk of ketoacidosis, leads to poor mineral intake and electrolyte imbalance,” they say. But the ketogenic diet has a well-established history of aiding in disease treatment. It has been used to help people with epilepsy (especially children) since the early 1900’s, and more recently, it has been used to manage type-2 diabetes (since it lowers the need for insulin therapy).
With all the noise surrounding the ketogenic diet, it’s difficult to know what to believe. So we’re here to set the record straight, and provide information to help make well-informed decisions about the keto diet. Below, we’ve gathered some common misconceptions about the ketogenic diet and provided answers to help cut through all that static.
“If I eat so much fat, won’t I get heart disease?”
The short answer is “no.” It’s important to note there are several different groups of fats, including trans, saturated and unsaturated.
Old school dietary conventions suggest eating fatty foods increases the risk of heart disease and lead to high cholesterol levels.
The keto diet requires ample fat to provide energy and compensate for the reduction in energy from carbohydrates. Foods that are rich in fat include meats, cheese, oils, fish, butter, cream and eggs.
Over the last four years with Virta Health, we’ve been speaking to physicians, doing continuing medical education and formal presentations. I wanted to have a little bit more fun with this talk. Rather than giving a straightforward talk about a clinical trial, I thought we would reorganize things and talk about debunking myths.
There’s really only one goal for this talk, and that’s to arm you to answer any question about ketogenic and low-carb nutrition approaches.
The reason that this is important is that the public, in the last few years, is finally paying attention, and the defenders of the status quo really are nervous. If you do Google Trends, this is the way that diet search terms fluctuate every year. Between 2004 and 2012, looking at Weight Watchers as just one example of a diet that people search for, every January it spikes. One thing that’s kind of interesting that happened between 2004 and 2012 was the rise of the term “vegan,” which passed Weight Watchers.
Over the last four years with Virta Health, we’ve been speaking to physicians, doing continuing medical education and formal presentations. I wanted to have a little bit more fun with this talk. Rather than giving a straightforward talk about a clinical trial, I thought we would reorganize things and talk about debunking myths.
There’s really only one goal for this talk, and that’s to arm you to answer any question about ketogenic and low-carb nutrition approaches.
The reason that this is important is that the public, in the last few years, is finally paying attention, and the defenders of the status quo really are nervous. If you do Google Trends, this is the way that diet search terms fluctuate every year. Between 2004 and 2012, looking at Weight Watchers as just one example of a diet that people search for, every January it spikes. One thing that’s kind of interesting that happened between 2004 and 2012 was the rise of the term “vegan,” which passed Weight Watchers.
Our bodies don’t like to be starved. Human physiology and our evolutionary development is set up for us to maintain weight. This was once vitally important to ensure survival when food was scarce, but flash forward to today and, at least in wealthy countries, the food landscape is vastly different.
We have thousands of calorie-dense options at our fingertips. It’s no surprise that many Australians struggle to maintain a healthy body weight. Despite new fad diets regularly being touted as the answer to our health woes, they simply don’t work. And it’s important to understand why.
Most importantly, when it comes to achieving a healthy body weight or long-term weight loss, diets rarely work. The greatest downfall of most is over-restriction, which can lead to hunger, cravings and then binges and subsequent feelings of failure. It’s a nasty cycle.
Weight loss is also not as simple as eating less and moving more. There are a lot of complexities at play here, including appetite-influencing hormones, the interplay of genetics, stress levels, our emotional state, eating environments, support networks – even how much we sleep can influence our appetite and body weight.
Let’s take a look at the claims of some of the most popular fad diets and consider how effective they really are.
The ketogenic diet
Originally intended as a regimen to treat epilepsy that doesn’t respond to medication, the ketogenic diet has become one of the most googled dietary trends in the world.
A ketogenic diet (keto for short) is a very low-carbohydrate, high-fat way of eating, which limits total carbohydrate intake to about 20 grams per day. The intention is to achieve a state of ketosis, which causes your muscles and liver to switch their primary fuel source from glucose to fatty acids, as your liver starts to produce ketone bodies to fuel your brain and other organs.
In order to achieve ketosis, it is commonly recommended that a person avoids carbohydrate-rich foods like wholegrains, legumes, starchy vegetables and most fruit, while greatly increasing consumption of fats and oils, certain meat and dairy products, nuts, coconut products and avocado. A small amount of low-carbohydrate veg – such as leafy greens, brassicas, and mushrooms – is allowed.
Proponents claim that a keto diet can not only assist with weight loss but help manage diabetes as well. But does the science support these claims? Well, in the first few days of eating this way a person can indeed lose a decent amount of weight, but the scales aren’t always an accurate reflection of what’s going on inside.
When carbohydrate intake is restricted, glycogen stores (and therefore water stores) in muscles are reduced, resulting in weight loss but not necessarily fat loss. Most of this water weight will return as soon as a person starts to eat enough carbohydrates again. Additionally, the keto diet as well as other adaptations of a low-carb diet, such as Atkins or the Dukan Diet, are too low in fibre and too high in inflammatory compounds, which can harm the health of your gut microbiome. The short-term weight loss effect of the keto diet simply does not outweigh the long-term risks of eating this way.
A lifestyle that works
Fad diets fail over and over again.
They simply aren’t the answer for achieving a healthy body weight. The way forward is a sensible approach to food and nutrition, filling your plate with whole plant foods while crowding out the unhealthier foods. Eating this way is not a ‘diet’ per se. It’s an evidence-based, sustainable, health-promoting lifestyle. A wholefood plant-based lifestyle also changes your gut microbiota, increasing healthy bacteria, improving insulin sensitivity and protecting against chronic disease.
Focusing on fruits, vegetables, wholegrains, legumes, small amounts of nuts and seeds and doing so consistently over time will yield results. Part of why it works so well is that whole plant foods have a low calorie density, increasing satiety rather than creating the deprivation experienced when trying to adhere to a typical restriction style diet. This bolsters our ability to stick to a healthy eating pattern in the long term – the key to success!
