What is the Keto Diet and is it Healthy?

Posted on November 11, 2019 by Julia Valdez

There’s a lot of myth and mystery surrounding the keto diet. Some say it’s the best diet for fast weight loss that they’ve ever tried. Others say that it can’t possibly work, given all the fats and meats eaten in place of good old carbs. Still others say that it can’t be healthy because hardly any fruits or vegetables are allowed.

This post will get down to the basics, a sort of guide to the keto diet for beginners. We’ll explore a bit of the science behind it, give examples of the common practices of keto dieters, and leave you with a few tips on maximizing its benefits for your own needs.

Ketosis

The keto diet, short for ketogenic diet, is a diet based on resetting the body’s metabolism to consume fats instead of carbohydrates. This natural metabolic state is called ketosis.

Notice that it is a “reset” to a “natural” state. Fats have actually been found to be the body’s natural or preferred source of energy. When the body relearns to produce ketone bodies from fats instead of relying on carbohydrates to produce energy, the magic happens.

In short, the keto diet can be simplified as a very low-carb, high-fat diet. Fats and carbs both produce energy, but fats do it without the negative side effects.

Wait — We Should Eat MORE Fat?

Yes! Eating fats isn’t what makes you fat or develop cardiac issues and other health problems. It may sound counter-intuitive, but it’s true.

Fat consumption is not necessarily a horrible thing, as we have long been taught. Fat is a type of nutrient for the body, just like protein and carbohydrates. The body needs fats for energy, vitamin absorption, and heart and brain protection, among other varied functions. Fats are also necessary for regulating mood and — get ready for this one — controlling weight and regulating cholesterol.

A distinction, however, must be made between good fats and bad fats.

Good fats are unsaturated, polyunsaturated, and monounsaturated ones, as well as fatty acids such as Omega-3.

These are mostly the fats that are naturally occurring, or those that are found in whole foods versus processed foods, like avocados, cacao, fatty fish, nuts and seeds.

Some foods that you don’t pick off trees, dig up from the soil or scoop up from the ocean are also really healthy. An example of this is IQ Bars, all natural bars that are approved keto diet snacks. Each bar contains a mere 4 grams of carbohydrates. When you factor in the other benefits, this bar beats out every other snack bar out there. For instance, IQ Bars are gluten-free, which is a huge plus. And more than being really easy additions to a keto diet for beginners, IQ Bars are great brain food — hence the name! Enjoy them in chocolate and fruity varieties, and don’t forget to try the exotic flavour combination rendered in the Matcha Chai variant.

There’s also Freedom Bars, which can be good keto diet snacks depending on an individual’s recommended carb intake.These are made from unaltered whole foods ingredients without all of the chemicals and processed sugars, etc.that are added to most prepackaged foods that you can find on supermarket shelves. The Chocolate Coconut Freedom Bar, for instance, is made of dates, almonds, cocoa powder, walnuts, coconut and sea salt, which are all natural ingredients. There is no added sugar and four of these ingredients are great sources of good fats.

Others, like processed canola oil, can be very bad for you. Canola in its natural form is a good fat, but once it’s processed for bottling so it can sit on supermarket shelves for months or even years, it becomes very unhealthy.

Bad fats are, then, the unnatural fats.

For instance, we have artificial trans fats and saturated fats. These are what mess up our metabolisms and lead to many health conditions. Examples of artificial trans fats are what you commonly find in commercially baked goods, coffee creamer, bottled salad dressings, hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils, packaged snack foods, processed shortening and butter substitutes.

Easily recognized saturated fats are in lard and palm oil. Now, here’s a seeming contradiction to the proclaimed health benefits of the more popular meat-loaded keto diet varieties: saturated fats are found primarily in red meats, chicken skin, dairy products, butter and ice cream.

The common keto diet for beginners encourages more meat to replace grains, vegetables and fruits. But this is the easy way out. It is much more beneficial to find a good balance of fats and carbs without resorting to meats and dairy. Instead of eating lots of meat, you can eat more fish and discard chicken skin. Instead of eating butter you can use olive oil. Then you can maintain good cholesterol levels and better keep disease away.

Killer Carbs

Conversely and somewhat ironically, carbohydrate consumption is the real enemy of health. The grains that we get most of our staple carbs from are not healthy foods at all. This is the science behind what the keto diet helps us to escape.

Before GMOs became a thing, wheat and barley and rice and all the other basic grains that the world consumed on a regular basis were not as bad as they are today. The problem is that we started to alter their natural composition by playing with their gene sequences. Plus, we started eating way too much of them because GMO technology made them much cheaper to produce via mass farming. They became, in a way, non-foods. They are far from the ancient grains that sustained our ancestors.

Now, remember that old food pyramid that we all learned in school? It actually dates back to the 1970’s. This is a couple of decades before the first publicly introduced GMO food, but decades after GMO research actually began. Although this food pyramid has been modified a few times over the decades, it hasn’t changed that much. It basically still tells us that we should eat lots of carbs and very little fats. Admittedly, the latest rendition has increased the proportions of fruits and vegetables, but not nearly enough.

The Wrong Way to Eat

We were taught that carb loading was the healthy way to eat. The reality behind this food pyramid, however, is that it was created not primarily as a healthy guide, but as a guide to cheaper foods. None of the various health organizations involved factored in the GMOs, thinking they were as harmless as the corporations behind them claimed.

The worst thing about this upside down pyramid is that it was taught to all of us in school. We were all systematically educated in all the wrong ways to eat. Generations have learned that a high-carb, low-fat diet is healthy.

The keto diet is all about going back to the basics and relearning how to eat the way we were made to eat.

Eating Right on the Keto Diet

There are several variations of the keto diet, some more extreme than others. Choosing the right one for you depends on your personal circumstances and needs.

Here are the more common variations:

Standard ketogenic diet (SKD): Typically 75% fat, 20% protein, 5% carbs.

High-protein ketogenic diet: Typically 60% fat, 35% protein, 5% carbs.

Cyclical ketogenic diet (CKD): Regular intervals of high-carb intake (e.g. 2 days out of 7).

Targeted ketogenic diet (TKD): Additional carbs allowed for periods of exercise.

So, what actually happens on the keto diet?

As the body adjusts from carbohydrates to fats, it mainly becomes increasingly efficient at:

burning fats to produce ketones, which is better than burning carbs to produce glucose
producing ketones in the liver, which feeds the brain and improves neurological health
regulating insulin levels

Going on a diet that is high in good fats and low in bad carbs has been proven very beneficial. There are studies that show people with diabetes, cancer, alzheimer’s, epilepsy, cardiovascular conditions, Parkinson’s disease, and other autoimmune-related health problems improving dramatically on this type of diet.

Dieting for Health

Dieting is most commonly thought of as a means to lose weight. A diet, however, is really more about eating right rather than depriving oneself of food to force the body into starvation mode. Health should always be the primary goal, and then weight loss will invariably happen as a natural result.

Be aware that most who share information about the keto diet for beginners will give you a standard food list because it’s easier to follow. This list, however, eliminates a lot of fruits and vegetables because of their sugar and carb content. These foods will be substituted with a lot of meat and dairy products. This is actually where a lot of the criticism on the keto diet comes from.

To lose weight faster, you will of course do better with this standard animal product list. However, you must understand that this will have negative long-term effects on your health.

Slow but steady wins the race.

Plant-based is still the best way to go. Don’t get thrown off by the carb content — these are the good kinds of carbs like soluble fibers, resistant starch and natural sugars that your body must have to be healthy. You also get a lot of good fats and proteins from vegetables and legumes. And you get a lot of essential nutrients from them as well as from fruits. Many of these are only available in sufficient amounts in fruits and vegetables, such as folic acid, flavonoids (antioxidants) vitamins A and C, potassium, prebiotics, and dietary fiber.

A lot of people will turn to supplements in place of essential fruits and vegetables. Remember, however, that these are processed, too, and will therefore not really give your body what it needs while also causing side-effects.