Pros and cons of a Keto Diet

i hear it makes your breath reek! con for sure. and i can't imagine all that meat is good for your heart. on the other hand i hear it's very satisfying.

Once you choose a "diet", especially one as restrictive as this, following it exactly as you intend, every single day, begins to become very cumbersome. If your willpower isn't iron clad, then you will likely lose interest and be discouraged with your results. If you do notice a difference, it is likely because you just lost weight in general, and you are correlating it to the change of diet... Which you are actually monitoring now vs. before.... But you wont be any healthier.
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My advice is to eat a rich variety of whole, minimally processed foods found in nature. Be an omnivore as nature intended, and don't overeat. It's as simple as that.

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The ketogenic diet is a high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate diet.

First question: What is high? What is adequate? What is low?

Second question: Have you done your research regarding the importance of fiber in your diet? Did you fit that into your meal plan?

Third question:

Have you accounted for adequate micronutrient intake? A diet devoid in adequate micronutrients from a rich variety of whole foods, vegetables, fruits, grains, etc. will surely carry long-term effects if not supplemented with a really, really good multivitamin and tons of fiber intake if you're primarily eating dietary fat and some protein for your diet.

Con - cuts out a lot of healthy nutrient dense foods. Carbs help support muscle retention and recovery. And fat is not filling for volume eaters.

Pro - i may help you sustain a deficit if fat satiates you. Great for those with BG issues.

Nope- tried it in the past and hated it-felt way too restricted. I presently eat a whole food diet full of variety from all food groups- only complex carbs and low sugar. I have found that eating around 100 carbs a day works well for me. So I still watch carb intake but this gives me enough to allow for a lot of variety. I know that the keto diet works great for many people-it's just not my personal preference.

I did keto pretty religiously for the better part of a year. I've since switched back to a whole grain, low calorie diet and find it works better for me for weight loss and navigating life in general.

For me, the pros:

-It was very nutrient dense. I was super worried about cutting out fruit until I started researching and discovered that a lot of vegetables can give you the same nutrients without the sugar. For instance, you always hear about vitamin C in oranges but I had no idea I could get it from bell peppers. I tracked my nutrition via cronometer and was very happy with the results.

-I didn't have to count calories.

-I was never hungry.

-The food was very tasty thanks to all the fat.

-I had a lot more energy.

For me, the cons:

-It was too much prep work for me. I tried to cook all my meals at the beginning of the week because there weren't a lot of non prep snack foods that weren't expensive. This may work for some people but it just got too labor intensive for me and I missed being able to grab a granola bar or an apple on my way out the door.

-It was expensive. Grains cost a lot less and make meals stretch your dollar. Eating that much meat was hard on my bank account, and then besides I had some keto convenience foods and pricey sugar substitutes. When I went to McDonalds, I'd have to order two chicken sandwiches instead of one because I wasn't having the bun. I did find some B1G1F coupons that I used for a while, and that helped.

I dabbled in some of the crazy keto "makeover" foods and then bought all kinds of ridiculous ingredients that cost me a fair amount, too. Granted, one can just keep it simple and it may be doable. I kept it simple for a long while and then found I was just craving things and that's when I tried all the crazy recipes.

-I craved a few things I could never have, or else it would derail my whole diet. Toward the end of my stint I just ended up cheating every few days, which defeated the whole purpose, and I went nowhere. Low calorie diets are not as filling and satisfying, imo, but they do allow me to have a snickers bar or a handful of tortilla chips once in a while without losing all of my progress.

-It was really difficult to go to friends and family's house, or even fast food places on the run. I always had to pre-pack a cooler full of foods and eat something separate from everyone else. Mom's making her famous lasagna? Pack a cooler. Friends are making a late night taco bell run? Pack a cooler. It just got old. Life is much easier when I can portion out anything that's available and work it into my calorie count.

-Ketosis made my breath smell terrible and I was worried my body had a funky smell too.

For me it was:
Pro: cheese, salami, bacon!
Cons: IBS hated it, no energy for runs or lifting, couldn't eat my favourite foods, made anxiety worse, thought too much about food, bad breath.

Pros:

-Can increases insulin sensitivity in the insulin resistant.
-Can help some with sweets cravings

Cons:
-Unnecessary if you don't have either of the 2 issues above as keto has never been proven to have a metabolic advantage in any study where protein and calories were held constant.
-Highly restrictive leading to long term compliance issues.
-Doesn't develop successful long term eating habits unless you plan on doing forever (most aren't).

Christine_72 wrote: »

... Last week, i had a day where i ate around 400g of cauliflower and broccoli, absolutely not a large amount, and for that small bowl, the carbs equaled 27g. How can people claim they eat lots more vegetables since starting keto, unless of course they ate little to none before starting??

The net carbs (total carbs - fiber) in your 400 grams of cauliflower and broccoli are somewhere between 8 and 17 grams, depending on the relative amounts of the two veggies. That would be a seriously supersized serving for me but I wouldn't have any difficulty accommodating it in my keto menu.

The plant-based portion of my keto dinner tonight was 150 grams of yellow squash sauteed with 40 grams of onion, 85 grams of green beans, and a good sized salad with 45 grams of lettuce, 20 grams of baby spinach, 50 grams of tomato, 39 grams of cucumber, and 18 grams of green onion. The entree, hamburger steak, was pan-broiled with 33 grams of baby portabella mushrooms and the dressing for my salad was a couple of tablespoons of spinach dip made with Greek yogurt. The net carbs for all of that was a grand total of 13 grams. Breakfast today was bacon and eggs, so no carbs. Lunch was a fathead pizza topped with pepperoni, chopped onion and red bell pepper, and portabella mushrooms for only 5 net carbs. So that's 18 grams for the day, which is well below the 35-gram limit I've set for myself to stay in ketosis. There's still room for a bedtime snack.

Pros: I love nearly all vegetables and find the meals satisfying.
Cons: Expensive. I love fathead pizza and have been known to binge on it, but it's a lot more expensive to prepare than regular pizza. And though I don't have sugar cravings anymore, there are days when I would kill for a bagel.

wolfruhn wrote: »

Keto is how much of mankind lived for tens of thousands of years.

It is one of the most natural ways of eating for the human body and the body works best on ketones not glucose, for example your heart and brain.

Peer reviewed source for this?

Pros:

Loads of fiber, vitamins and minerals from the high intake of leafy green vegetables and other low carb vegetables. I never ate so many veggies in my life until I went on Keto!

Sharpened clarity of thinking - no more brain fog due to too many carbs.

Ward off the risk of cancer with very low carbs.

No hungry feelings anymore, because there are no longer any swings of insulin and blood sugar as I used to experience on a carb based diet.

Sustained energy throughout the day, lots of energy!

No longer craving the things I used to need a fix for, like ice cream, chocolate, and so on.


Cons:

You do need to make an effort to keep some variety going across different meals, if you're prone to getting bored. Same with lots of things in life really.

Everyone's experience is different. I did keto for contests (this was back in the late 80's) and didn't experience the above at all. In fact, most of it was opposite.


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AlabasterVerve wrote: »

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lemurcat12 wrote: »

AlabasterVerve wrote: »

I eat less vegetables now just because I eat less than I did before but a day that looks like this (fruit & vegetables in the morning, salad for lunch and roasted vegetables for dinner) isn't unusual and I imagine it is a lot of vegetables for most (low carb or not):

Spoiler

Summary: 2.5 pounds or 14 servings of vegetables, 37 net carbs

That's similar to how I was eating when ketoing, and I believe I was in ketosis, but I kept getting the message for others that "keto" should be lower and I wasn't doing it right, and all the people posting about starting kept getting the advice to stay below 20 or certainly below 50 g carbs total.

I totally agree that if you stick to below 50 g net and focus on getting those primarily from vegetables that it can be done. It's the advice that you should aim for below 20 and even that as low as possible is better, that 5 g carbs is something to consider a perfect day, that I found problematic. NOT for people who want to try carnivore or who think they have a problem with veg (not my business, different things work for different people), but as what seems to be the message some places for how keto should be done.

I DON'T mean the main keto/low carb thread here, where I think all kinds of ways of low carbing are done and people are non judgmental, but many parts of the keto world and in many of the challenges I saw on MFP. I basically could not have done most of the keto challenges, since too many veg. Which is fine, since I had been around enough not to be discouraged from what I was doing, but I think this does tell some newbies they are better off NOT eating many veg.

I think the 20g carb limit allows for more than enough vegetables and is reasonable in that it ensures ketosis - which is important when telling people to eat to satiety. It's more restrictive than need be for a lot of people I imagine but it's a reasonable suggestion for a ketogenic diet.

That said, I do really, really hate the less-carbs-the-better-fat-bombs-protein-turns-to-sugar keto mentality you'll find some places but there's more sources for good information than bad I think (for those who care, some don't).

I think we are largely in agreement, although I really disagree that 20 g carbs allows for enough vegetables. I would have had to limit veg sharply, and I don't think telling people that they need to worry about the carbs in their veg is a good thing.

I'd also say that looking ONLY at carbs in vegetables undercounts it, as avocados are highly promoted within keto (which I think is great, but they had more carbs than I realized personally) and of course nuts have carbs. Also, vegetables (even non starchy veg) vary a LOT in carbs -- brussels sprouts have a lot more than spinach -- and some of the differences are not intuitive (focusing only on carbs would push you to iceberg vs. kale, for example). I prefer promoting a wide variety of vegetables, and not worrying that I can only afford cucumbers, not cauliflower or whatever today, and I also like being able to eat as seasonally as possible, so that's another reason why I think trying to keep under 20 g as the definition of keto ends up meaning that people aren't as open to eating them or even adverse, not great when many, many people who try it are probably already not eating enough and would be better off eating more nutrient dense carbs rather than just deciding anything with carbs is bad. (Okay, soapbox over.)

But I also don't think 20 g (especially 20 g net) is necessary for ketosis (especially if one is not really sedentary or small already, and people are unlikely to be both, IMO).

But can you be in ketosis (or do a version of a LCHF diet) and eat lots of vegetables if you prioritize it? Absolutely.