Today I will briefly touch on several Keto diet myths. Keto diet gets a bad rap all over the internet, but not for any good reason.
If you are eating a fairly clean version of Keto, it is by far the healthiest choice, and pretty much the same diet that humans have been eating for thousands of years.
If you know you are ready to try Keto, then I have a bundle that will help you. It has beginner tips, a planner for creating goals and tracking progress, a full week of recipes and a shopping list. Check out Fearless Keto Diet Kit.
Hello and welcome to Fearlessly Holistic.
My name is Irma and I want to share my journey to improved health by eating whole foods, moving my body and eliminating stress as much as possible.
It is my hope to inspire you to make daily changes.
Why? Because eating fresh, seasonal food and getting some sunshine is the best way to increase longevity. But you do not want just a long life. You want a quality long life.
I like to focus on simple concepts and moving forward one step at a time for sustained progress. If that sounds good to you, then be sure to get your PDF copy of my KETO FOOD GUIDE printable by signing up below and get started eating more quality fats.
**My blog posts are my opinion and the results of things that I have tried that either worked for me or didn’t. My opinions are for informational purposes only and are not intended as medical advice. Medical advice should always be obtained from a qualified medical professional for any health conditions or symptoms associated with them**
The current food guidelines would have you believe that Keto is unhealthy because it eliminates grains.
This confuses people, because there is a lot of talk about “plant based” diets, which eliminate meat protein, but this seems to be A-okay.
It’s not. Animal protein is superior to plant-based protein in every way.
Plus there is that whole thing about how it takes 19 ingredients, most of them created in a lab, to make plant-based meat substitutes. Ewwwww.
Keto is Unhealthy for Your Heart
Ugh, this one is the worst offender. Because seriously, if people have been eating meat and the food they grow in their gardens since the beginning of time, how could we have survived as a species if the diet caused everyone to die of a heart attack?
Answer: Keto is NOT unhealthy.
In fact, high carbohydrate diets are the number one cause of long term health problems, as well as being a big cause of weight gain. Just ask a farmer what they feed animals to fatten them up before slaughter…it’s grains.
When you begin to follow the Keto diet, the first thing that occurs is your insulin level drops.
This is beneficial to your heart because higher levels of insulin help the body store more fat. When you eat more than you should or weigh more than you should, your body has to produce greater amounts of insulin.
As a result of this, your body can become insulin resistant.
Since insulin is what tempers the metabolism of certain cells within your body, it impacts your heart health.
This happens because the higher the glucose load your body deals with, the more damage it can cause to the heart and the more it encourages plaque within your arteries.
So, to recap:
- High carbohydrate foods cause glucose (blood sugar) to rise,
- This triggers the pancreas to excrete insulin to bring it down to normal levels.
- Eating a high carb diet daily over time creates a situation where the pancreas cannot keep up and
- Type II diabetes is the result, along with heart disease, obesity and other health issues related to excess inflammation in the body.
The solution: Limit carbohydrates to vegetables and low-sugar fruit (berries). This is a major concept of Keto diet.
Keto Diet is High Protein
Incorrect. Keto is intended to be a high fat and moderate protein diet.
The Ketogenic diet was first created to help children with epileptic seizures and the high fat is intended to feed the brain good quality fats, which helped with the seizures because your brain is made up primarily of fat. #brainfood
One of the reasons people think Keto is synonymous with high protein is that you can eat lots of protein foods such as eggs, chicken, beef, cheese and other meats for very few carbs.
This means dieters often fill up on these foods, and probably aren’t tracking their macros very well.
If they were, they’d realize that the majority of their meals are made up of healthy fats, not proteins.
The macro count for healthy fats is approximately 70% of your nutrition for the day, with the remaining 5% being carbs. Healthy fats are beneficial for your body, while too much protein can be damaging.
One of the benefits and most alluring things about the keto diet is that you don’t have to go low fat.
Fat is flavorful, so consumers love to be able to eat marbled meat, like a steak, without having to feel guilty.
One of the first steps when going Keto is use a food tracker app, like Cronometer, to figure out how many grams of protein you need to eat daily to maintain your muscle mass.
Because if you do not eat enough protein, your body will cannabilize protein from your muscles. This is why so many Vegans look like walking skeletons…they are either not eating enough protein or not combining foods properly to create complete proteins.
Healthy fats are foods like avocado, butter, coconut oil, eggs (the yolk primarily), and well marbled meats. Read my post on Healthy Fats.
Keto Diet is Unsustainable
Wow. Just wow. I have no idea where this one came from, but someone please explain to me how eating the same types of foods that people have been eating for millenia is unsustainable?
The issue at hand here is that some people only eat dirty Keto, which means eating any crappy food that maintains their macro percentages.
But that is not true Keto; it is just laziness.
I admit that when I first tried Atkins, I was super stoked to be able to have low carb granola bars and sugar free chocolate treats.
But I learned, like so many people do, that artificial sweeteners can cause their own harm. And many taste nasty in my opinion.
Real Keto, the Keto diet of the Atkins diet (which started the Keto diet craze), is clean food.
Yes you can have bacon and sausage for breakfast, but it was NOT recommended for every day.
The basics of Atkins Induction (phase 1 is the only phase that is technically Ketogenic) are:
- Add your height and weight into a food tracking app to get figure out how much protein to eat daily.
- Keep carbohydrates to under 20 grams per day. Carbs are to come from veggies (2 cups salad + 1 cup of other veg)
- The rest is fat from a variety of sources: animal protein, eggs, some dairy, cooking fat, avocado and combining these items.
So basically the same foods that people grew on their family farms.
Why Do Dieticians Hate Keto?
Simple. They get kickbacks from cereal companies for promoting “heart healthy whole grains”, which FYI is a marketing ploy. The is no proof that grains are heart healthy.
If you ever visit someone in hospital, check out their breakfast menu.
You will see such nutritious items as Froot Loops, sugary juices, muffins…there are no Keto breakfasts being offered.
Seriously, who would think that people recovering from injuries or surgery would be helped by eating a diet high in items create the health issues that result in Type II diabetes.
The crappy food promoted by dieticians are cheaper.
This article from Fat Head explains it better than I can.
These days, the concept is that you are only going to be there for a couple of days (in the hospitals I worked in, that was 3 to 5 days), so the food you get should not impact your health that much.
Unfortunately, many people can be stuck in hospital for weeks or months, and require loved ones to bring in healthy food.
Many of my health issues came about from eating the Standard American Diet.
Most of my health issues are resolved from switching to Keto.
Conclusion
Eating clean food is a major part of holistic living, and Keto is a big part of that…if you are eating clean Keto, that is. I mean there is no point in trading one type of poor health for another.
And do not forget about my Keto Diet Kit: get recipes, a shopping list, tips, and a planner to set goals, track progress, and success tips.
Eat the best food that you can afford to give your body the building blocks it needs for optimal health, longevity, and looking good for as long as possible 😉
Holistic approaches never just address symptoms of specific health problems, but instead aim to return or keep the patient in a state of balanced health between mind, body, and spirit. Grab your KETO FOOD GUIDE by signing up below.
Holism targets overall wellness, and when we are well, we only get better with age.
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Until next time, here’s to our health!
-Irma
