Hey, y'all welcome back to the Be About Being Better podcast. Today we're gonna be talking about why keto is a no for me, dog. The ketogenic diet. This is a diet where you can put butter in your coffee. You can eat straight up lard. You can have steak every day for every meal. You can have five eggs at one time and it's okay.
But it's not okay to eat an apple. How does that make sense? Make it make sense. The ketogenic diet. For those of you who don't know or, or need a friendly reminder, the ketogenic diet is a high fat, very low carb diet with moderate protein. And the point of the ketogenic diet is to consume so much fat that you're no longer using carbs or glucose as fuel.
Your body is using fat as fuel. And so your body is no longer in a process called glycolysis, but your body is burning through energy, through a process called ketosis and your body can switch over to that energy system by consuming so much fat. But there's a lot of risks with this. And I think it's important to note that when you're on the ketogenic diet, you are having about 70 to 80% of your daily caloric intake coming from fat, which makes it, only little bit of a percentage left, you know, somewhere between 10 and 20% coming from protein and carbohydrates. So those are very, very low. As I was kind of prepping for this episode, you know, I wondered because I know this from reading the literature and we're gonna get into a few studies that have come out, recently about the ketogenic diets will be, you know, I'll be explaining why it's so dangerous and why it's not really shown to be effective.
Oh. Especially over the long term, because this is a high fat diet and the macro breakdown is like 70 to 80% fats per day. You know, that doesn't mean that a high carb diet means that you're that 70 to 80% of your calories each day are coming from carbohydrates. A quote unquote high carb diet is about 45 to 50%.
Like half of your calories each day are coming from carbohydrates and that's normal. That's typical. So it's not like, you know, if you're on keto, the alternative is that 80% of your calories every day have to be coming from carbohydrates. So I just wanted to dispel that myth, and I also want to remind people that, because I know carbs get such a bad rep and carbohydrates.
It's not just the cookies and the ice cream and the pasta. Carbohydrates are fruits and vegetables. It's whole grains. We got fiber, we got vitamins and minerals and so many amazing benefits. And it's also important to note that our body wants to use carbohydrates as. Our primary fuel source. It does not naturally want to go through ketosis.
It wants to go through a process called glycolysis where it's breaking down the glucose for energy. Our body naturally wants to do that. So this is why we have to, you know, people that are on keto need to work so hard to try and get their body to be doing keto. Why are we trying to go against the grain here? Why do we think we can outsmart the human body like that truly baffles me. And it's important to know, you know, even though a lot of doctors and people out there are recommending the ketogenic diet as a treatment for weight loss or a treatment for diabetes or a treatment for PCOS.
And you might be listening to this episode right now because you just also listened to the last episode and you haven't yet, especially if you have PCOS if you haven't listened to the last episode, talking about what to eat, to improve your period health. Definitely listen to that. But a lot of you might be listening to this right now that have one or more of those conditions like, well, keto was prescribed to me.
And so you're seeing it not as a diet, but you're seeing as a, as a treatment. And that's even more of a problem because you think that you need to be on this, but it's gonna cause more harm than good. And it really is not a treat. It is a very restrictive diet. And so we just need to put it into this category of dieting.
It's a part of diet culture. And it's, it's very dangerous because the diets in general don't work. The NIH recently did a consensus about different diets. And one third to two third thirds of people who went through a diet, ended up gaining the weight back that they had lost within a year. And most people gain all of the weight back within five years, two thirds of people that diet end up gaining more weight.
Where they were when they originally started. And I'm sure some of you are listening to this right now. And you're like, yep. That was me. That was exactly my story. And that, that was my story too, with my history of dieting. So dieting is actually a predictor of weight to gain. There's no diet that has been proven to be effective for long term sustainable weight loss.
There's no diet that does. And if there was y'all we would already know about it. Like we would already know if there was one diet that worked for every single person we would already know about this. And to be honest, y'all, it's. It's not even just a predictor of weight gain, dieting is a predictor of poor mental health, and it's gonna increase your risk for binge eating and binge eating disorder or another eating disorder.
It's really dangerous. There was one study that came out in 2021, where they followed over 22,000 adolescents. Over the last 30 years, they followed them from being an adolescent through adulthood. And you know, it just came out. They've been following these people for the last 30 years and they found that dieting was associated with weight gain and poor mental health.
So it's really weighing on us. So, so why, why is dieting bad? Why is dieting giving us the result? We don't want right. And you know, this is the question, and we're gonna be talking about this so much on the podcast from so many different angles. And I think the biggest, you know, red flag when it comes to dieting and the greatest reason why.
We're not getting the result that we are looking for, which is normally striving for, for thinness and trying to make ourselves smaller and lose weight because of the restriction that's associated with dieting. We always want what we can't have. And so when you take something away and you're allowing yourself to have it, you think about it more and it pulls your energy, it pulls your focus. You start dreaming about it. The stuff that's just readily available to us. It's just normal. It's there. We, it, it loses its allure over us. So when you're restricting something, we always want what we can't have and you start to think about it.
And then as soon as you like, let yourself have it. That's where we normally over indulge on it. And we binge on it because we don't know when we're gonna allow ourselves to have that again. So we have to make the most out of that experience. If you say, you know, I'm not gonna have any carbs, but then you go to happy hour on, you know, thirsty Thursday on a Friday after work with coworkers or whoever.
And then you just eat, you end up eating all the chips and salsa, or you get a whole bunch of fries and you're like, well, screw it. I'll just take the whole weekend to eat however I want. And I'll start again on Monday. It's like, you don't know when you're gonna allow yourself to have it again. So you wanna make the most out of that experience.
So you go hard, you overindulge, but then Monday rolls around you wake up and you just, you feel crappy and you feel guilty for you ate, you feel shame, you feel disgusted with yourself, you feel disappointed, you're frustrated and that's when you feel like, okay, I gotta kick it in gear. I gotta start all over again.
I gotta get “back on the wagon” and that is so dangerous because that's when you're gonna keep restricting yourself, you're gonna keep yourself on that hamster wheel of that restrict binge guilt cycle. And you're likely going to put your body through extremes. You're going to work out extra to work off the calories that you ate.
You're going to work out even harder or longer at the gym to punish yourself or to make room for what you're going to eat later. You're gonna keep restricting your calories to make up for how much you ate over the weekend and to lose weight or decrease bloating. And you're putting your body through extremes.
So it's really, really dangerous. And in my opinion, it's just better to eat the cookie. Like it is so much better for your mental health. To eat the cookie or order the pasta dish or get the ice cream or have the chips and salsa. It's better for you to eat it and fully enjoy it and fully savor that experience and be really present with your food while you're eating than to restrict yourself, not be able to keep that up with willpower and discipline, because we only have limited amounts of willpower and discipline so we end up overindulging in it and then you feel crappy afterward, and then you need to restrict yourself and then you end up putting your body through extremes that is more dangerous physically, mentally, and emotionally than it is to actually eat the cookie, like one cookie, like it's or even like, you know, one weekend out like that is not going to make or break your progress that is not going to make or break your health. But. By restricting yourself and kind of staying in this restrict binge guilt cycle that is going to do so much more harm than any calories that cookie would because it's affecting you mentally and emotionally and driving you to put your body through extremes.
So that's why, you know, dieting is really, really dangerous. So where keto comes in specifically where it's even more dangerous is, you know, a keto was never designed. It wasn't first designed for weight loss. And when the research started on keto, It was for children with epilepsy, children with seizure disorders.
So it's only been in the last 10 years or so that keto has been explored in the literature as could this be a weight loss solution? So, and you might be thinking, oh, 10 years is a long time in the research world. It's really not. That is like the blink of an eye.
So we haven't been researching it that long. It's still fairly new and it wasn't really intended for weight loss. It was intended for children with epilepsy. Now I got a comment on one of my TikToks. Well, let me actually read it.
Cuz I was saying how, you know, the keto diet was dangerous on TikTok and they said, you know, but, but why is that? Because Botox was originally for migraines, but now it's used for wrinkles. I'm not arguing with you. I just don't understand the hate on keto for weight loss. So my response to that is, you know, just because something can be used for another purpose doesn't mean that it should, you know, especially in this case where the ketogenic diet is being used for weight loss, it's perpetuating diet culture.
It's reinforcing this notion that our thinnest self is our best self, that having any sort of fat in your body should be caused for shame. and that we need to, you know, be continuously striving for thinness.
And here's the other thing, just because something can be used for a different purpose doesn't mean that the research supports it as being an effective alternative. And it doesn't mean that it's safe. there are a lot of risks with the ketogenic diet, you know, with having such low fruit and vegetable intake and low fiber intake, you can have a lot of constipation and digestive issues, gastrointestinal damage, nutrient deficiencies, kidney stones, changes with your blood pressure.
A lot of people experience low blood pressure because they're not their blood sugar is so low because they're not having enough carbohydrates. You might be thinking, well, if high blood sugar wouldn't, I have high blood pressure. Wouldn't low blood pressure be better? And it's like, well, maybe, but you know, when you have low blood pressure, that's not good either.
I mean, you just get so dizzy and faint and you could pass out. It's not good. And because of the high fat intake, you're also having on the ketogenic diet, a higher intake of saturated fat, which there has been so much literature done on saturated fat, saturated fat is one of those things that we can say with a lot of confidence, this in high amounts, this is not healthy for us. It's directly correlated with heart disease. Atherosclerosis. It's just. It's not good. Saturated fat is not good for us in large amounts. In moderation it’s okay. So, you know, we just need to, be, be cognizant and the foods that are common with the ketogenic diet, they tend to be higher in saturated fat.
So there, there are definitely risks. When you're not controlling your ketos when you're not getting, you know, routine blood work or checking your urine consistently for your keto levels, when you're on the ketogenic diet, you know, if, if they're too high and there's too many, ketones in your blood that can lead to ketoacidosis, which can put you in a coma or be fatal.
So there are real risks to the ketogenic diet and, and just trying it out, but let's, you know, let's get into some of the literature, y'all know that I'm so evidence based and I love the keto literature. I love and, and hate it because, you know, with any scientific study, with any group of literature, Our strengths and limitations to what's what's in the literature.
So Kevin Hall is an amazing nutrition researcher I am obsessed with. I love his work and he did a great study on keto that came out in 2016. And, you know, he had two groups. He had a group of males that were on the ketogenic diet. I'm pretty sure the study was for about four weeks. So it was about a month long study. And so they had one group on the keto diet, which is high fat, low carb, and then they had a high carb low fat diet, which again, high carb is like about 45 to 50% carbs, not the same level of fat and it was isocaloric. So both groups were consuming the same amount of calories, even though they had different macro distributions and they found that the ketogenic diet did not support greater body fat loss in response to.
This isocaloric, same calorie, ketogenic diet. So it didn't lead to greater body fat loss compared to just being on a higher carb diet, and all this was in 2019. So even more recently, they saw that people that were on the keto diet had higher total cholesterol, higher LDL, which is our, you know, bad cholesterol, higher C reactive protein, which is an inflammation marker in the body.
After being on keto for four weeks versus, you know, you know, they were comparing a ketogenic group with a non keto group. So, you know, it really is messing with our cholesterol levels. It's messing with our fat levels in the body, it's increasing inflammation. It's not good. A lot of people say that when they're on keto and they go low carb, it's like their brain fog is lifted.
They have all of this mental clarity and mental sharpness. But it's interesting when that's been tested. Scientific, you know, controlled environment. IIACCS did a study about this in 2019, they found that keto wasn't actually better at improving mental performance.
So this was interesting. So even though people claim to be sharper and more productive and have this mental clarity it's not actually improving your mental performance. It's not actually cognitively. So it's just interesting, that in a controlled setting, they're, they're finding the exact opposite.
One thing that I wanna note is that all of these are short term studies and, you know, so even in these short term studies, they weren't able to demonstrate that the ketogenic diet was more beneficial for sustained fat loss. And, you know, but, but these are short term studies. So we don't know, like even though in these four weeks or so, we're not seeing great results. You know, we don't know where people are a year after following the ketogenic diet or five years.
Right. We really don't know. So that's a limitation in the literature, but what's another red flag with the ketogenic diet is that they are not approving. Whenever you submit a proposal for a scientific study, it has to go through a review board to see, is this study ethical, you know, is there cause for this study or is it going to cause more harm?
And there are review boards that are denying studies, longer term ketogenic diet studies from being started and being researched because the ketogenic diet is inherently so restrictive and dangerous, and there are a lot of risks. So they believe that there are just too many risks. We can't put subjects or study participants through this environment, through this diet. So, you know, that should be cause for concern too. if they're not even approving the research to study this long term, should this be a diet for you to do long term? You know, it's just, I'm just planting the seed.
I'm just putting it out there. Now. A lot of people will say. Oh, yeah, I tried keto, but I didn't really do full keto. So they were kind of like keto ish. Like they were just trying to have a little bit more fat or they're just trying to be lower carb. It's like, they weren't necessarily trying to go overboard.
Like they weren't putting butter in their coffee, having steak for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, literally having alar as an afternoon snack. So. There are people that are like, okay, I'm not going that keto crazy, but I am going lower carb. So this is what we call keto ish and Gardner et all in 2018, studied this where they, you know, they had a high carb diet where it's about 45 to 50% of, you know, your calories coming from carbs. And then they had a low carb diet where, where it's slightly lower, whether that's 20 or 30% of your calories coming from carbohydrates every day.
And the calories were kept consistent. So the macro distribution was changing, but the calories were consistent for the two groups. And they found no difference in weight loss between the two groups. And no differences in other health measurements when they would check their blood and, you know, inflammation levels and things like that.
So it did not matter whether you were on a “higher carb” or lower carb diet, if you were keto-ish or not there was literally no difference when it came to weight loss. So I definitely wanted to point that out too.
Something else that I'll say, just looking at so many nutrition, scientific studies all the time. It is very, very difficult to study nutrition. It is so hard to know if people are actually following the diet, people lie, they feel bad if they weren't able to follow it, people don't remember what they ate and what their exact intake was.
And, you know, and if you control their intake, more in a scientific study, that's good. Cuz it's in a controlled environment, we know exactly what they were eating and how much and what their daily habits were. But that means that they are so removed from their daily life. But when you have someone that's in their daily life, it's hard to control and really know, are these people telling the truth and you know, are the participants actually doing what they're supposed to be doing? Are they adhering? To the experimental group that they're in, but it's hard to control cause they're in their daily life. So it's, it's a give and take. And that's something that researchers in, especially in the field of nutrition are really struggling with so not every study is a good quality study. Not every study is generalizable and able to be extracted. The results of every study aren't necessarily able to be generalizable or extracted to the general population possibly because, you know, it was maybe done in such a controlled environment. So, it's important to note that, you know,
Gardner and Kevin Hall, you know, these two researchers, have done a lot of nutrition studies and they're very transparent about the level of adherence to the diet of their experimental groups. And most of the time the adherence is very, very low. So even if you see like, oh, like there was one study that Kevin Hall did. I think this one came out in 2018 could have been 2020. They looked, he looked at three different diets and he followed these three groups for a year, which was good because that was a longer term study. We loved to see 12 months, although that's just a year where people, you know, five, 10 years out, we don't know. Right. So, but just for a year and the adherence was like 30%.
It's like what? So it's like 30% of the group was following the diet and, you know, once you're in a group, we have to analyze your data. So the data was definitely skewed and they were able to talk about that in the paper. It's like, well, here's what we got. But you know, if we take out all of the people that didn't follow the diet, like, or, and we just include the people that did do the diet, like, there's almost no people. So it's like, yes, we're studying these people doing a diet for a year, but they didn't really do the diet for a year. So it's like, can we even trust these results? Like these, these diets are so inherently restrictive. They're so hard to study. We don't know if they're working or not, but I think that just goes to show that clearly they're not working.
If you can't even get people to do it for a year. Right. It's so funny to me, like, I'll have people say to me, they're like, oh yeah, I tried that diet. It worked for a little bit, but you know, you know, it's, it's not working for me now. Oh, you know, I'll just go back to what was working for me before. And it's like, well, if it was working for you before, wouldn't you still be doing it.
Like, there's clearly a reason that like, is it really working if you're not still doing it? If it's not still working. You know, that's just, just a couple thoughts, a couple things. I had a video TikTok go viral recently about the keto diet and here are some, you know, real life testimonials from people that we're commenting their experience on the ketogenic diet on my TikTok. And it's just wild to see people's stories because I could go on for days about why the keto diet is bad, why it's a no for me and all the research studies, but sometimes I think it's also nice to hear about real people that have been through.
The ketogenic diet and have, and have tried it themselves and in their daily life are kind of their own scientific study, you know, versus just looking at studies that are in a more controlled environment. And here's what people had to say on my TikTok. This person said I'm obese. I lost 125 pounds in keto, got an eating disorder from it and then gained a hundred back because of ravenous binging.
Another person said I did keto for four months, lost 40 pounds. I successfully kept 30 off, but while I was still on keto, I would almost pass out every time I stood up. And that concerns me so much because it's like, oh, I lost the weight. And I was able to keep some of it off. But, I only almost passed out every time I stood up. It's like, what? Is that worth it, then it's not this person's fault at all. It's diet culture. You know, it's just really sad that the society that we live in, this other person said I lost 50 pounds on it, gained a hundred back, then needed gastric bypass surgery.
And even now I struggle mentally with eating fruits and vegetables because carbs. Oh, I did the keto diet and got results really quickly, but gained it all back. I don't think it's worth it. Another person said keto gave me diverticulitis, and now I have permanent gut damage. My dad and stepdad are on keto.
He had a stroke a few months later. They're still on it. Oh, lord have mercy. I dropped 75 pounds in six months, gained it all back and developed an eating disorder. I'm a diabetic, which means the whole point is paying attention to my carbs and I can eat more carbs than keto. And that should tell you something.
Yeah. Def definitely tells us something. Oh, I did keto. I did the keto diet and almost had to have my gallbladder taken out. Never again. Ugh. Poor thing. This other person said my husband started having blackouts when he was doing keto with his parents. After I told him it was unsafe, people keep telling him it's great.
Ugh. I lost a lot of weight on keto, but ended up with binge eating disorder because of the restrictions my dad's been on this diet and intermittent fasting, intermittent fasting is commonly done with keto. We can dive into that in another episode, but oof. Do I have thoughts on that? So make sure to subscribe to the podcast, you get notifications when we have new episodes on these things. My dad's been on this diet and intermittent fasting, and he is a completely different person now, irritable and angry and basically always hangry. Ugh, that's so hard. Okay. This person said, which I thought was interesting. There's also new studies coming out. I don't know if this is exactly true, but we're gonna, you know, read it out there. There's also new studies coming out that people who did keto long term are now more sensitive to glucose, basically. Pre-diabetic afterwards. That's really interesting because they were restricting carbs for so long. So now that they're allowing carbs back into their life, now they're more sensitive.
So now it's like the insulin that, oh, you know, we talked about this on a previous episode where you have so much glucose in your blood insulin, your hormone comes to take, goes into your bloodstream, takes the glucose out. It's like insulin, can't be working fast enough to keep up with this, you know, with the glucose load.
That's really interesting. You know, I believe that because in my personal experience, when I was dealing with all my gut health issues, which we will have multiple episodes on my gut health issues. Woo. I have been through the ringer. We're good now, but it took years to heal my gut, but for about a year and a half, I had to cut out foods that had a high level of FODMAPs in them.
FODMAP is an acronym for a carb binding protein. That's in a lot of fruits and vegetables. So I had cut out several things. For a year and a half I cut out asparagus and cauliflower. And to this day, I cannot have either of those things without having severe bloating and, and gas and indigestion and just a horrible bowel.
It's like, we don't need to get into all the details, but yikes. It's like, because I had cut them out. I didn't have that much of a problem with those two foods before and, you know, moderation obviously. But. Now it's like, I cannot even tolerate them. Super interesting.
I was so sick on keto. I almost had to go to the hospital. Another person said, wow, keto made my hair fall out. Keto was fun. I lost weight, gained gallstones and then lost my gallbladder. My hair fell out. I developed gout in my big toe and been in a binge eating disorder afterwards. Whew. The keto is fun. I agree.
Obviously sarcasm. Keto isn't sustainable. I lost 90 pounds, gained it all back and more. And so did my husband, another person said I'll never forgive keto for reversing my Accutane treatment. Woo. Another person said my mom had to stop doing keto because her hair was falling out. That's another common side effect.
I went on keto for a couple months, quit it and had my period for over a month. And I'm on birth control. So literally she is on a pill that is supposed to regulate her period, but she can't now has really messed up her hormones. That's so interesting. My dad was diabetic and his doctor put him on keto.
He died after three months. Oh, my God, like that just absolutely breaks my heart. It's really sad. Keto made my binge eating disorder. Like a lot of these are, you know, unique stories, but also variations on a theme. People are seeing, you know, weight gain more weight was gained than where they originally started.
They're seeing that they have ravenous eating patterns. They're binging, their, if they had an eating disorder in the past, it's definitely being dragged up or it gave them an eating disorder. Or they're having their hair full out. They had to get their gallbladder removed. They're being sent to the hospital.
In some cases it was fatal heart stroke and heart attack like, whew, yo, this is why Keith toe is a no for me. So if, if you're listening to this right now, if you're listening to this right now, and you're struggling with dieting, if you're struggling with binge eating disorder or another eating disorder, or just disordered eating, like if you haven't necessarily been diagnosed with an eating disorder, but you know that you have disordered eating patterns or a history of dieting.
And you know that you need support with this. Take my quiz, see which one of our health coaching programs can be for you, especially if you've been diagnosed with PCOS or diabetes, or just kind of into this keto craze or considering doing keto or a doctor recommended keto to you. Definitely. There's no reason for it.
I think there's more risk than reward and, you know, so we need to get away from dieting and we need a better approach and you know what? You need a customized approach. There's no one diet that works for everyone. 90% of diets fail. Like you don't need a diet, you need a non diet approach.
And that's when we offer here at Be About Being Better. So definitely take my quiz. We have it linked below in the show notes. It's also in the link in all of my bios on social media. And if you're not currently following me on social media, definitely follow me on Instagram and TikTok. That's where I hang out the most, it's @abbie.stasior.
And y'all know, you know, we recently launched the podcast. This is episode four. Thank you so much for being here and listening to this. I would love feedback. Y'all know my company name is be about being better. This is the Be About Being Better podcast. I'm always looking to make things better. I'm always looking to improve things, and I really want this to be a podcast that you want to listen to, that you're looking forward to.
I wanna hear from you. I wanna know with these four episodes, what did you like? What didn't you like? What do you wanna hear more of? What questions do you have? And I'm gonna be, you know, kind of fielding my Facebook group for questions every single week.
And, you know, talking with y'all directly about what questions do you have? What do you like and not like, so if you wanna give specific feedback, I mean, definitely leave a review. Podcast below. Super appreciate that those help us so much. And I read all the reviews, but where we're really gonna be having conversations is in my Facebook group.
So I have that linked below. And in that group, you know, we have over a thousand people in this group and it's fabulous. I love our Be About Being Better community. We run free challenges there from time to time so you can get some accountability. You can meet our assistant coach, Jamie. She's very active in that group as well. The, the, the, the group is engaged and now we're gonna be looping in the podcast, I need some podcast support. I want your advice. I wanna know what you wanna hear more of what you want me to talk about? What personal questions you have. Y'all know, I'm, I'm an open book.
So definitely open to talking about all personal things as well, and that will just help us make the podcast even better. So thank you so much for listening, for joining the Facebook group for taking the quiz if you need support and I'll see you in the next episode.
