This is a serious warning.
Aside from politics, one of the most frightening modern trends is the popularity of low carb (including the keto diet) eating for weight loss.
Scientific studies show people on low carb diets have a higher “all-cause” risk of mortality.
That means, on average, you’ll die sooner.
That’s not worth the weight you lose in the beginning – which is mostly water anyway, NOT fat.
The US News and World Report recently ranked the keto diet as #34 out of 35. #35 also highly restricts carbohydrates, so it’s akin to the keto diet and Atkins diet.
Fortunately, low carb diets are extremely difficult to follow for a long time.
I tried the Atkins diet years ago, when he recommended what was essentially a keto diet. No carbohydrates at all – just protein and fat. After a few weeks of binging on meat and eggs, I developed an insatiable craving for carbohydrates, and – thankfully – returned to eating normal food.
What are Low Carb, Keto Diets?
Your body prefers to use glucose (sugar) as fuel. When glucose is available, your body burns that glucose.
But if you’re overweight, you want it to burn stored fat.
When it does burn primarily stored fat, that state is called ketosis. “Keto” is just short for ketosis.
The way to force your body to burn fat is to stop eating carbohydrates, because, in your body, all carbohydrates turn into sugar.
With no sugar to burn, your body breaks down both stored fat and protein, burning both for energy.
In theory, the fat-burning part is good – what so many people need.
However, there’s a tiny catch: to reach ketosis, you have to stop eating carbohydrates.
Which means eating lots more fat than normal. As Dr. Atkins wrote, you can eat anything that’s not a carbohydrate. Which means meat, fish, dairy and eggs. Some low carb diets allow some vegetables. The keto diet focuses on eating mainly fat, so you’re low in both carbs and protein.
When you’re eating low-carb, your body burns the fat you eat first for energy – before what’s stored around your waist.
Therefore, eating more fat actually slows down the burning of your stored fat.
Why should your body make the effort of taking fat out of storage when you’re devouring huge amounts of new fat with every meal?
Blocks the Beneficial Effects of Exercise
A position paper from the International Society of Sports Nutrition points out the keto diet is “ergolytic.” That means it makes exercising more difficult for both high and low-intensity workouts – and impairs performance. People who exercise while on the keto diet feel more tired, and suffer from mood disturbances.
One study compared people performing strength exercises for eight weeks. The control group gained 3 pounds of muscle, as you’d expect. The group on the keto diet failed to increase their strength and muscle mass, despite all their hard work. In fact, they LOST muscle mass.
Your Bathroom Scale Can’t Tell Fat Pounds from Muscle Pounds
It measures only your body’s total pounds. It cannot tell you what percentage of those pounds is composed of fat, water, and muscle mass.
When you go on the keto diet, you do lose total pounds. Sadly, it’s mostly lean mass. That is, water and muscle.
You need a DEXA scan to measure your fat versus muscle.
Scientific studies – including one financed by low-carb advocate Gary Taubes – prove that eating a low carb diet SLOWS the loss of body fat.
Researchers have compared people on a low-fat diet to people eating the same number of calories on a low carb or keto diet (which are high in fat).
The results are consistent. Over time, people on a low-fat diet lose 80% more fat.
On a daily basis, you lose 16 MORE grams of fat (4 pats of butter) on a low-fat diet than you do a low carb diet.
What’s worse, people eating keto lost LEAN mass – their muscles, making them weaker. In one study, the muscles of CrossFit athletes shrank by 8%.
The Keto Diet Must Be Safe – They Used It to Help Epileptic Children, Didn’t They?
Back in the 1920s, doctors discovered the keto diet helped control seizures in children with epilepsy. Therefore, we do have a history of how the diet affects health.
It’s not pretty. There’s a good reason modern pediatricians don’t put epileptic children on a keto diet unless they just don’t respond to any medicines.
The epileptic children developed deficiencies in 17 micronutrients, vitamins, and minerals. Children have developed scurvy on the keto diet, and some have died from selenium deficiency.
These children also have stunted growth, bone loss, and kidney stones.
Another Key Deficiency of Keto Diets is Fiber
There’s no fiber in meat and fat, so people on keto diets develop constipation.
That’s bad enough, but without fiber, the microbiome in your gut starves. They must feed on the fiber you eat. Therefore, the lack of fiber leads to many serious consequences. They include weight gain (and you thought you were on this diet to lose weight), leaky gut syndrome and higher inflammation (the most reliable marker of serious illness and aging).
This starvation of your gut bacteria reduces the short-chain fatty acids they produce, leading to gastrointestinal disorders. (Which are known as the most common “side effect” of the keto diet.)
Studies have shown eating more cholesterol and saturated fat leads to a higher risk of dying from cardiovascular disease. A high-fat diet impairs the functioning of your arteries. You have a 50% higher risk of heart attack or stroke.
Having too much fat in your blood can trigger pancreatitis.
One Good Thing About Low Carb Diets
They force people to stop eating refined carbohydrates – mainly refined flour and sugar. Refined carbohydrates are bad for you, and are highly common in modern diets.
If you did nothing else but stop eating all refined grains and sugars, you’d lose weight just from doing that.
Remember back in the day? When women went on diets, they simply stopped eating candy and desserts – and it worked.
The Big Problem is Demonizing ALL “Carbs”
Read or listen to a low carb advocate, and you’ll hear them rail against “carbs” as though they’re the devil.
That’s a covert form of deception used to manipulate you.
Because not all carbs are the same. Refined carbs are unhealthy and fattening – true.
But complex carbohydrates come with fiber, vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients and other healthy stuff we haven’t even discovered yet.
Complex carbohydrates are simply food from plants – fruits, vegetables, nuts, beans, and seeds.
Avoid all diets – and diet hucksters – who try to deceive you into thinking kale is as fattening as doughnuts.
