SDA Health Column| David Perez-Espinosa
Do you know that guy who used to weigh over 250 pounds a few months ago, who you saw walking around the other day at 170 pounds? That same guy who says he goes to the gym like once a week for spinning classes?
“Doctors hate him, find out how he broke the laws of nature and made up his own!” Yeah, that guy. Chances are, our mutual friend here is on a ketogenic diet. Most people recognize the Atkins Diet, South Beach diet and the Paleo Diet. Well, this is basically just a more scientific sounding name for the same thing.
A ketogenic diet is a low-carb, high-fat, adequate protein diet. The key is to keep your carb consumption at or below 50 grams per day to get your body to start something called ketosis.
During ketosis your body swaps fuel sources (glucose to ketone bodies) and stops storing fat. Unfortunately there is a downside to this – it can take a while to get your body to start ketosis (about a month or more sometimes).
Meanwhile your body, much like a disappointed child on Christmas day, will stew in anger (sometimes violently) because it is not getting what it was expecting. If you survive the flu-like symptoms and energy drought long enough for your body to realize that getting a Harry Potter book for Christmas was not so bad, ketosis will begin and you will once again feel right as rain.
At this point, your body is no longer storing fat which is therefore melting away even if you are not exercising. This is not to say that you can sit on the couch and eat bacon all day and lose weight. Actually, yes, you can do that, but you should not because it is unhealthy.
This is where things get complicated. Your body requires X amount of vitamins and minerals daily and it is your job to make sure that you supply your body with the nutrients it needs to operate as best as it can. A ketogenic diet is limited when it comes to fulfilling your nutrient quotas.
Many diets recommend against eating fruits, grains of any kind and eating out now becomes a game of Russian Roulette because as soon as you even smell a cheese burger your body will revert to its old ways and you will gain all that weight back as quickly as you lost it.
My take on the keto diet is: Although I will concede that it is indeed very possible to meet all your nutritional needs with this diet, unless you are extremely well educated in all but the minutia of this diet and have unwavering determination, this diet is not a good idea to follow. In other words if you learned anything from reading this, this diet is not for you. A well balanced diet will lead to a well balanced life.
SDA Health is a weekly column that runs on Wednesdays and is written by members of the Student Dietetic Association.
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