If youre like 50 percent of American adults, youve tried to slim down in the past year. Many people search for a shortcut to dropping pounds, and although some studies show dieting doesnt lead to long term weight loss, certain diets do seem to enable weight loss safely and quickly. One diet thats done the trick for thousands of people is the ketogenic diet.
Eating keto involves replacing carbohydrates with lots of fat and moderate levels of protein. However this isnt a free pass to load your plate with salami or cheese. Instead, a healthy keto diet includes lots of greens, olive oil, nuts, and some fish. The dietary approach kickstarts a biological process called ketogenesis, where the body burns fat for fuel, not its usual favorite energy source, glucose.
Some studies suggest that the keto diet is more effective at helping obese individuals lose weight than a low-fat diet. However, long term data on the mental and physiological impacts of going keto are missing. Physicians have cautioned against drastically cutting carbs and eating so much fat especially saturated fat noting that the diet could lead to nutritional deficiencies or threaten heart health.
Furthermore, people may lose weight in the short term but whether they keep it off in the long term isnt clear. Due to its nutritional drawbacks and unsustainability, the keto diet landed second to last on U.S. News diet ranking of the best diets overall. But it was ranked number three when it came to best fast weight-loss diets.
Despite the risks and restrictions, the diet is soaring in popularity.
Part of the reason why its become so popular is that theres this almost evangelical quality to the people that get on it, Ethan Weiss, a cardiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, and founder of Keyto, a company manufacturing breathalyzers to monitor ketone levels, told Inverse in July.
Its almost like people have felt they have discovered the fountain of youth, and they want to share it with everybody. Thats very unusual in weight loss.
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How to choose a 2020 diet based on science - Inverse
