“Can I follow the ketogenic diet for my weight loss ?”, I would be lying if I say that I haven’t heard this sentence coming from my client at least once in my career. It’s the most fascinating diet anybody would want to follow as it is trending and tastier way of shading pounds. Why?
A ketogenic diet is a diet that is high in fat, has a moderate amount of protein, and very fewer amount of carbohydrates. Yes, you read it right. It is HIGH IN FATS, you can have a generous amount of cheese, oil, and butter. Now the next question which may strike your mind is how consuming high fat is associated with weight loss, confusing isn’t it?
So having cheese, butter, or cream and yet you lose weight will interest anybody.
But as a Dietician, I want to tell you why you should or shouldn’t opt for the keto diet for your weight loss.
Firstly how this diet was invented, let’s have some information about it.
So in the olden days whenever a person uses to get seizures, they were isolated and often their families kept them inside a locked room not giving them any food thinking that their body is possessed with spirits.
And what they noticed was that the seizures got reduced dramatically and there was a significant weight loss as well. People with good intelligence studied it and found out that as there were no carbohydrates given, the body used stored fats in the body for energy.
Carbohydrates when breakdown provides glucose which is needed by the brain to function normally. But in this case, fats break down and give ketones. In carbohydrate-deficient conditions, the brain uses ketone bodies instead of glucose as an alternative to work. The increased level of ketone bodies lowers the episodes of epileptic seizures.
So the term Ketogenic was given by Dr Russell Morse describing the diet which leads to a high level of ketone bodies in the blood.
This particular biochemistry behind this diet led the Ketogenic diet to become the original therapeutic diet for epilepsy, especially in small children. Doctors and dieticians use to provide enough protein for normal body growth and sufficient calories as it was a growing age.
Monitoring of ketone bodies in the urine was very important as excess ketone bodies can lead to ketosis which is an adverse effect of this diet.
Some other adverse effects may include
- Hypercalciuria is excess calcium in the urine.
- Hypocitraturia is low citrate levels in urine.
- Low ph levels in urine.
- Constipation and
- Weight loss
So weight loss is one of the effects of this diet.
So now if you ask me if the Ketogenic diet is good or bad.
It’s good as it has shown wonderful results in epileptic cases and reduced its severity in people.
If someone wants to go for this particular diet. I would recommend you to consult a qualified dietician who will help you to adjust the ratio when you start or end the diet.
One question you need to ask yourself is that for how long you will continue this diet.
Because any healthy weight loss is a result of consistent changes in lifestyle habits.
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