Ketogenic diets are kind of a hot thing right now. Yes, I am very familiar with all the ins and outs of it, having used this strategy consistently for a number of years. Here’s what people are getting right and wrong about this approach currently:
Right:
Reducing blood sugar and body fat by cutting out the sugar and eliminating processed carbohydrate. Carbs are an “elective” macronutrient. Your body can run on fats and protein after an adjustment period. It may or may not run its best (depending on who you are), but it will run just fine if you do it right and get through the transition period.
If humans didn’t have this “metabolic flexibility” we wouldn’t have survived. The vast majority of people in today’s society overdo their carbs. You have to earn them, or they are just going to be stored as fat.
Wrong:
Using supplements and eating low-quality, inflammatory foods and man-made oils.
A keto diet can be very healthy if you are getting lots of fatty wild fish, fatty pastured meats, grass-fed butter, low-carb veggies, etc. But, if you are getting your fats from nothing but supplements (yes, even coconut oil and MCT oil are meant to be limited), and are eating pounds of bacon and sausage per day, you are not going to do well.
So basically, what we are looking at is a very low-carb version of a paleo or primal diet, if one is to do this in a healthy way. Like it or not, that is what we’re talking about, or something about 95% there. It may be marketed as something different, but it is likely just a knockoff of a very basic ancestral diet.
