I politely decline. In 2017 and 2018 I lost 100 lbs in 18 months and the primary staple of my diet was pasta dishes. The low-carb thing is not for me.
Like I said, find what works for you and ignore what people say is supposed to work. Today it is quite trendy to demonize carbs, tomorrow it may be something else, meanwhile plenty of healthy people eat lots of demonized items, but a narrow focus and overemphasis on good/bad may cause you to lose the big picture.
> Going completely off the rails and jumping on fad diets instead is not a wise choice
it seems your opinion on how to tell which diet is fad is based not on research but on a quick google search. inform yourself on the topic, then we can argue.
> The current recommendation of a diet heavy in plants, low in saturated fat, moderate in carbs (complex carbs, ditch the simple ones) is perfectly sound, a good average diet for the average person
except none of what you said makes the keto diet bad. i can grant you that it's not recommended for average person mainly because it requires a lot of knowledge and discipline to be following properly, but the rest is bs.
> People don't eat a low carb diet by accident, when they do they often follow the horrible advice given by the many misguided keto diet proponents: eat low carb, high fat, medium protein.
This is not remotely my anecdotal experience. The overwhelming majority of those I know that I have dabbled with low carb ran the bunless burger, chicken wings, bacon, and steak game and I would guess that their macro intake was high protein, medium fat (if that), low carb. The textbook versions are high fat, medium protein, low carb. And seemingly pretty hard to pull off without eating a lot of stuff like salads with a cup of olive oil.
> It’s really interesting to see the diet industry attack this. Calling it a “fad diet” as if eating low carbs is somehow a fad. Other things I’ve seen are essentially “keto diets are for treating epilepsy, not for losing weight!” Etc.
> Keto diets don’t require you to buy any products or books or take any courses or anything. Just literally read the nutrition facts and eat 20-50 carbs a day.
But that's the issue, isn't it?
Sometimes I feel like changing my usual snack of apples with some kind of biscuit / cookie. It's next to impossible to find anything below 500 kCals / 100 g at my local grocery store. And when I look at the ingredients, there's always a ton of sugar in there.
The only lower-ish processed food I can easily find is sorbet. But that's impractical to deal with at work (we don't have a freezer).
So most of the time, I end up buying nothing if I don't feel like an apple. Why would "big ag" cheer me in going this route?
I should note I'm not even into Keto or anything, just paying attention to how many calories I eat.
> The ketogenic diet is not a general-purpose diet, it's a therapeutic diet used to treat specific medical conditions.
https://www.reddit.com/r/keto would disagree with you. I myself stay below 20g of carbohydrates per day, and I lose ~3lbs a week on the diet, while eating cheese, meat, and green vegetables. I feel phenomenal, still get to eat food I enjoy, and wouldn't go back to a traditional carbohydrate-heavy diet if I was paid to.
> Yet you purposely eat high fat and low nutrition foods such as butter
You make it sound like a bad choice, but that's exactly the keto food that gives them results, and the one that makes the difference. High fat food like butter.
Most people subscribed to /r/keto already tried all you advocate, and failed.
> You can be on a keto diet and gain weight. You can be on a low carb diet and gain weight.
No you can't
I'm in a Ketogenic diet 6 months now (lost 83 pounds so far) and although i'm eating the same amount of calories (and even more) as i did before i started i'm losing weight non stop, no exercise , no intermittent fasting, NO-THING!
You clearly have no idea what you're talking about
> It's weird that there is such a stigma surrounding keto.
I'm always curious about health topics, having lost a lot of weight in 2017-2018 almost by accident and getting curious about how all that works. (For me it was: stress reduction, smaller portions, daily walking)
So at one point I got a YouTube recommendation that turned out to be keto-aligned, but was phrased as just scientific material about metabolism. As I followed that rabbit hole a bit, I had to stop when it got rather cult-like. They made a lot of claims that all ailments are caused by gluten, carbs, and lack of vitamins. Keto was the solution for literally every problem. Some of the same people promote stuff saying that psychiatry is 110% quackery and that if you take antipsychotics you should stop. Once you adopt a mindset that modern medicine is failing everybody all the time and that there's a silver bullet solution to everything else, the door is open to other such conspiracies.
My own weight loss story involved daily pasta intake. Conspiracy theories about gluten and carbs are just that. I'm sure that not everybody who's into keto is that culty, but man the ones I saw are scary.
> your body needs a fair amount of carbs every day, and people are cutting bad carbs without replacing them with good carbs, and thus experiencing an inescapable craving for carbs.
I'm sorry but this is simply not true. Since switching to a ketogenic several months ago I have maintained a very low (< 15g / day) net carb intake and not only have I not experienced any adverse effects from this, I feel much better (better mood, more energy, less hunger cravings) overall. I should also point out that I am a very active person as well (yoga & Crossfit daily), implying that a high fat diet is suitable (in terms of energy requirements) for maintaining an active lifestyle.
> Your question will be , why bother when we are losing weight by having pasta, Maggi or McDonald' s or double cheese burger!
Keto is a low carbohydrate/low sugar diet. McDonald's is definitely out since the buns/fries/et al contain a LOT of sugar/carbs. Most pasta too is out unless you substitute it with these[0].
> Keto diet was basically invented for athletes and bodybuilders to help loose fat, during vacation, by eating less carb and more of fat, when they are not working out at all.
It dates all the way back to 400 BC where doctors of the period thought they could use it to combat epilepsy (with mixed success). This idea continued all throughout the 20th century (1920s with convolutions) and even up to the 1990s with "Charlie Abrahams" on Dateline.
No clue where they got bodybuilders from, appears inaccurate.
> Why Keto diet is bad for you and can prove fatal
Where in the article is the title answered? They never come back to the fatality claim in the title. Seems like clickbait. Plus a lot of their concerns (side effects) aren't well explained, justified, or referenced.
I'd recommend people read the "Adverse effects" on Wikipedia[1]. It is better written and has references to additional reading material. This article is low grade clickbait.
>If you're restricting your carbs, you simply ultimately eat less. The restriction of choice is the root cause, for example.
Yeah, there have been a few studies confirming people on low carb diets simply end up consuming fewer calories. The problem is that it doesn't hold for everyone. I don't get sick of eating cheese and butter and meat. I gained 20 pounds on a keto diet before I switched to a potato diet and started losing weight.
>It annoying to me the extraordinary divisiveness conversations on ketogenic diets generate at this point. But I get we are still in the middle of the learning curve scientifically, and there is a lot of confusion.
One of the big name diet plans blamed Keto for when they lost a huge portion of their revenue. At exactly the same time advertisements everywhere were about 'keto crotch' which is no longer a thing. Clearly were paid for articles to discourage women from going keto.
There's a ton of $ to prevent people from going keto. Why?
Imagine what a grocery store looks like if there were no carbs. A meat department, some drinks? The entire business model collapses. How about fast food? Some fast food joints have been catering to keto folks. The fast food joints that dont and traditionally push nothing but sugar are struggling.
>I no longer practice keto, but a lot of the concepts I learned still stick with me. I practice intermittent fasting many days but not always. If I feel like eating breakfast I do. If I want some bread or pasta I eat it. But I don’t base my diet on it.
How come you quit keto? Were there effects you didnt like or was it just the inconvenience that you basically cant eat anywhere?
>Admittedly with little research I tried out a low-carb (more like no-carb) diet (of my own invention)
Not trying to be snarky, but I suspect this is where your problem was.
One of the most commonly reported side effects of typical low-carb diets is appetite suppression. Better focus after the first couple of weeks is pretty common as well.
I will note that while I think low carb diets work, I'm also firmly of the belief that, in terms of weight loss, they're still caloric deficit diets at the core. It's just there are a few other things going on metabolically -- including the appetite suppression -- that tend to make them easier for a lot of people.
> in a month I just can’t stand anymore meat and bacon and going back to a balanced diet feels very good.
90% of curries are keto friendly, Thai food that doesn't involve noodles or rice, a-ok, tons of Chinese dishes are also 100% keto!
Going on any sort of restricted diet is going to involve learning how to improve your cooking game, but after years of Keto I can put together meals for large groups of people that are 100% keto and people won't even notice, and that is including the hazelnut cookies with chocolate ganache for dessert!
> Would question the whole „carbs where scarce, so we evolved to overfeed on them“ dogma
I agree historical evidence may be lacking, but a large percent of the population[1] do overfeed on carbs and a mix of carbs+fat, in a way that is has dramatic health consequences.
The way I always like to put it is, between a stuffed baked potato, and a steak, what will people at more calories of when given a chance? I know for me it is the potatoes, I can easily go through 2 entire potatoes, stuffed with sour cream, chive, shrimp, and cheese. (and I know the shrimp sounds super weird in there, but trust me, try it, it is amazing!)
That is 800 calories, and after that I'm going to wait 15 minutes and resume the rest of my dinner for yet more calories!
But if I start with 8oz of steak and some well prepared kale, well, I'm done for the night. ~700 calories total for the entire meal, rather than starting with 800 and working my way up from there!
The thing that changed my mind was realizing that skipping the bread at dinner didn't make me any less full.
[1] Such unhealthy habits are spreading world wide!
> The keto diet has been around over 100 years and it was developed in a clinical setting for children with epilepsy
Yes, exactly. It was developed and studied in the context of epilepsy treatment.
The current wave of keto influencers are pushing it as something else, though.
I have tried keto and noticed some interesting effects, but the impact on certain parameters of my lipid bloodwork was undeniably bad no matter what I tried. The keto community works overtime to downplay the possible negative effects of the diet, but actual cardio and lipid researchers have very different opinions.
I politely decline. In 2017 and 2018 I lost 100 lbs in 18 months and the primary staple of my diet was pasta dishes. The low-carb thing is not for me.
Like I said, find what works for you and ignore what people say is supposed to work. Today it is quite trendy to demonize carbs, tomorrow it may be something else, meanwhile plenty of healthy people eat lots of demonized items, but a narrow focus and overemphasis on good/bad may cause you to lose the big picture.
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