What's the keto diet good for?

NovusDies

The only benefit someone needs to really know when choosing a diet is whether or not it is sustainable for them. Nothing else matters. The failure rate of diets is too high to be adding in a lot of "facts" that might encourage someone to choose incorrectly.

Lillymoo01

NovusDies wrote: »

The only benefit someone needs to really know when choosing a diet is whether or not it is sustainable for them. Nothing else matters. The failure rate of diets is too high to be adding in a lot of "facts" that might encourage someone to choose incorrectly.

Well said.

JustSomeEm

Hey folks, Imma just leave this here: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/welcome/guidelines

Please review, focus on the OP, DON'T attack and insult other users, DON'T take the thread off-topic and DON'T be mean.



^Edited to add that I can't tell from this computer if this image is broken or not... If it is, it's just a meme asking folks to post respectfully.

Thanks,
Em

AnvilHead

FL_Hiker wrote: »

Not trying to be a smart butt here or anything , I'm actually curious. So I googled "keto diet" to try to find out what it was, I'd never heard of it before. And it said on Wikipedia (granted I realize wiki is not the best source of information) it was a diet designed for "epileptic children". So why are all these people doing keto? Do they have seizures or a health problem? What are the benefits? Why in the world did it catch on?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet
Thanks!

A lot of people are doing it because it's trendy right now, and because there's a lot of hyped-up woo regarding it's 'benefits' - most of which have no basis in scientific fact. Peer-reviewed research has repeatedly shown that there is no metabolic advantage to a ketogenic diet, and that it is no more effective for weight loss than any other diet/macro combination.

It caught on because many people experience a quick drop on the scale in the beginning stages as their body is depleted of electrolytes/water, which is mistaken for being miraculously fast weight loss.

For some people, it helps with satiety and/or adherence, which are important factors in successful weight loss. There is some evidence showing it to be helpful for certain medical conditions (along with a lot of unsubstantiated claims about it magically curing every disease known to man). Other than that, there are no magical, miraculous properties to a ketogenic diet.

The current fad is to combine keto with intermittent fasting - which is another highly over-hyped protocol with a lot of (scientifically unsupported) magical claims of wizardry surrounding it. You lose weight by consuming less calories than you expend, period - it doesn't matter what the macro composition is, or what time of the day you eat them.