Keto is all the rage! Between celebrities and nutrition personalities, keto is being touted as the healthy and effective way to manage weight. You’d think by now, after the low-fat phase of the 80’s and 90’s, and fad diets like Adkins, Nutri-system, and the like, we would be starting to get sceptical. However, most of my clients still report having tried 5-10 extreme diets in the past without long-term success. Often these cure-all diets have not only caused them to gain weight, but to experience symptoms of fatigue, poor sleep, digestive issues and more.
What is keto?
The ketogenic diet was developed about 100 years ago to treat epilepsy and was largely considered a medical treatment until late. Now, the keto diet has taken center stage for weight loss and people are filling their refrigerators with butter and bacon.
The keto diet moves the body away from burning glucose for fuel and towards burning ketones, generated by fat, instead. This means that keto-subscribers are eating between 70-85% of their calories from fat in most cases. Foods like avocado, meat, butter, oils, some nuts and seeds and low-carb vegetables and fruit are staples.
The dark side of keto
As a nutritionist, I see a lot of upside in the keto diet. One of the biggest benefits is that it moves people away from eating processed carbs and sugar. Those foods increase blood sugar, lead to inflammation, and cause weight gain.
However, keto is not a silver bullet. There are plenty of ways the mess this diet up and do damage to your body.
First, per the World Health Organization (WHO), processed and red meat are carcinogenic, AKA, they cause cancer. In fact, the WHO blames these foods for causing as much cancer as smoking. So, even on a keto diet, bacon, sausage and steak is not leading you to health, even if your shedding pounds. This is the line that needs to be drawn between “Clean keto” and “Dirty keto”.
Clean keto is a very high plant-based approach to eating fat. This means consuming nuts, seeds, oils like flax, coconut, avocado and olive, as well as plenty of low-carb vegetables, avocado and some low-carb fruits like berries. Meat, fish and eggs are used as a condiment instead of the main meal. In addition, these foods should be organic, free-range, pasture-raised or wild as much as possible.
On the other hand, dirty keto is composed of a lot of meat, processed meats, poor quality eggs, farmed fish, rancid oils and few plants.
One of the primary factors that few people are considering when they jump on the keto bandwagon is their microbiome. The microbiome largely relies on a variety of fibers to survive and produce essential micronutrients, neurotransmitters and short-chain fatty acids. These microbiome-byproducts are critical to our long-term health. A low-quality and high-animal based keto diet is a disaster for longevity and healthy aging.
And then there’s another problem
These fad diets don’t take into account that we are all biochemically and genetically unique. It doesn’t make sense that there would be one diet that works for everyone – there are just too many factors that determine our nutritional needs.
Consider that we all have genetics that can impact what vitamins and minerals we absorb and that most of us have some food sensitivities or that our nutritional needs change based on age, sleep, stress level, etc. As much as we would all love an easy nutritional approach that allows us to eat bacon everyday and feel great, the science just doesn’t support that.
After my many years working as a nutritionist, the clearest lesson I’ve learned is that optimizing body composition, energy, brain function, and overall health means learning how to tailor your diet to your unique needs. This doesn’t mean that a low-carb and high-fat diet is not right for you, but there are many more factors to consider before making that determination.
Optimal health means meeting your body’s changing needs and catering your nutrition to boost your wellness potential. That’s why I created a free 7-step program to guide you through identifying your PERFECT nutrition. By identifying the balance of nutrients and foods that meet your body’s needs while optimizing digestion and absorption, you will experience your very best health.
I’m Megan Barnett. I don’t want my blogs to start with my name or my credentials. This information should be somewhere on my website or in the description of youtube videos, but not used as an intro to my blog.
I hold an undergraduate degree in conventional dietetics and a graduate degree in functional medicine. I’m currently working with people in clinic who are either trying to reverse chronic disease through nutritional therapy or simply optimize their health.
Over the years, I’ve become more and more excited about all of the new research coming out; it continues to help us better understand that nutrition used to have a very standard, canned protocol for everyone. Today, we’re able to individualize nutrition to the individual, whether it’s through the microbiome, genetics, lifestyle, or the lifespan. My passion is to apply the most current research and information to my clinical treatment protocols so that I can help people optimize their health and achieve their goals.
Many of my clients come into my office believing they have a really good grasp on nutrition based on what they’re seeing publicized on Facebook, Instagram, or a magazine cover — but in reality, these are just trends. We have to dial it down and understand that there is no one-size-fits-all diet, and unfortunately, diets like the keto diet, paleo diet, and low-carb diet can cause more harm than good.
When you take the keto diet, for example, it’s important to think about not only the micronutrients you’re getting from your food, but also where the body is distributing these crucial nutrients, vitamins, and minerals. We live in a time where individuals often find themselves under chronic stress; we live in a time when individuals’ immune systems are really vulnerable, which is why, in the functional medicine community and beyond, we’re seeing a lot of autoimmunity and inflammatory diseases. That being said, when you take on a new diet without truly understanding the processes occurring within your body, you could be putting yourself at risk for health complications.
When individuals start utilizing the keto diet, they’ll often get really high levels of vitamin A. We see a lot of animal organ meat, such as liver, being used in a keto plan, and these foods are fairly high in vitamin A. This, in itself isn’t a bad thing, especially when you consider that a significant portion of people living in the United States are deficient in numerous vitamins and minerals. However, when you also add in the previous information about the chronic stress or vulnerable immune system, you can see where the problem lies.
When the body finds itself in the face of some kind of stressor, whether it be chronic, external, or, say, a result of autoimmunity, it will do what it can to survive, which means that it will allocate resources to the most crucial functions in your body. So even if you’re getting a lot of vitamin A through the foods recommended in a keto diet, your body will still have to choose to bring it to either the most crucial organ system or the most critical function. It’s going to look at where the highest priority is.
And then, of course, because many individuals are getting their information about the keto diet via social media instead of through their health care provider, they’ll often neglect to include crucial food groups that can restore balance to the body. Prebiotic fiber, for example, is something I usually see missing in a keto diet. So here, you have high levels of vitamin A being distributed to the most crucial functions while the rest of the body stays deficient in very important vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients. You might be able to see how this can lead to some health issues or hinder optimal function.
The thing is, your body– regardless of what diet you’re going to try– will have to make a lot of decisions regarding the allocation of resources. And these will be decisions you’re not even aware of, especially if you’re generally micronutrient-deficient. Overall, this isn’t to say that you should avoid a keto diet at all costs. I think the key here is to partner with a functional health care provider or practitioner who can help you navigate all the information that’s already out there to help you come up with a diet or nutrition plan that addresses your needs. In this way, you’ll be able to target your specific deficiencies and include foods that can promote balance within.