My Wife and I have been considering trying Keto. What has your experience been with it so far? Hard to adapt? Weight loss success? Ease of Implementation?
What I can say of it is that I'm not the best spokesperson since I modified what the diet is to suit my own ends. For instance keto doesn't allow milk (due to lactose content) but I wanted to keep it in my diet for calcium and D. It also recommends 75% of calories to come from fat, which no matter where the science points these days freaks me out. I'm not going to deliberately eat fatty food just for the heck of it. So I eat more protein as a proportion of my diet than keto recommends also. Plus I do a cheat day once a week just to mix it up.
That being said, you'd be surprised how easy it gets to have practically zero carbs through much of the day. For instance the other day I had eggs and meat for breakfast, a keto bar and cashew milk midday with a few berries, and by dinner (another meat meal, so at time I verge on the carnivore diet) I actually said, hm, I've barely had any carbs at all, better go get an ice cream or something
Also, getting off the blood-sugar mayhem with these hunger cravings is excellent. You feel hungry, but not suddenly desperate for food like you would a few hours after having pizza.
As far weight loss there is another compounding factor, because I have pretty serious tendonitis in my Achilles tendon, which at first rendered me almost incapacitated. Now I can go for walks and do some biking finally, but it's a slow slog back into being able to do stuff pain-free. So my regular amount of physical activity is just not there. As a result my fitness level is in a holding pattern until I get back to multi cardio workouts a week. That being said, I might well be worse off had I been on a normal carbtistic diet, but that's counterfactual so moot.
The worse is the first week. If you can do that you're ok. But I wouldn't recommend it for long-term, it's a 1-3 month thing at a time. As I understand it, otherwise you put too much pressure on your liver synthesizing glucose from your glycogen all the time.
A ketoacidioc diet is based upon the idea that when you starve yourself you lose weight. Taking science into account, and being very careful, it can be successful.
Most all cells in the the human body depend on energy to run. Most all cells will do fine, but without complex or simple carbohydrates, nerve cells will do not.
Yes, all of your muscle or bone or tendons can run off of your fat. Those formally named cells? They can and often do have a very bad time if their own specific metabolism isn't being run by DJ Carbohydrate.
What you need to do is to train you body off if what's it's been running off of. Which is both simple and complex carbohydrates. When most of the body is used to running off of that and then all of a sudden it's not there, the body freaks out and starts running off of stored fat content. As an emergency measure.
So the diet is, you cut your body off of almost all carbohydrates. Almost all, because even the most extreme ones acknowledge that your brain still needs fuel. Your brain and nerve cells will straight up starve to death if you try giving them only fats and proteins. Look up ketoacidosis on wiki if you don't believe me. Run your metabolism and muscles off of protein. It's certainly possible. If you can actually stick to it? It'll work, guaranteed. Only to an extent, though.
Anyone with anorexic tendencies, or people who might not understand the concempt? Bad complications are on their way.