For a couple of months now, I’ve been hearing the painfully repeated adage that comes up when any ‘fad’ diet goes into ‘non-fad’ mode.
THE KETO DIET IS UNSUSTAINABLE
Bullshit. My view is that it’s not just untrue, but an intentionally concocted ‘scare’ aimed at introducing some new fad diet. That’s all there is to it.
Fundamentally any diet consists of 3 key components:
- Safely decrease calorie intake
- Remove ‘fat holding’ tendencies of the body (which Keto does automatically by virtue of the way it works)
- Increase calorie burn rate while reducing hunger
That’s all there is to it. NOT A SINGLE diet does anything extra, and I’ve tried all the veg ones (I’m vegetarian).
Here’s how any diet works overall
- Daily: You consume 2000 calories a day on average
- Diet starts, calorie consumption drops to 1200-1500 range. After a few days intake drops further to 500-800 range.
- Basic exercise and daily routines consume approximately 2000 calories [1]
- Effectively, you have a calorie deficit of 500 – 1500 calories. 1 gm of Fat = 8 calories, so you can burn between 63-180 gm of fat per day
- The higher fat burn is only possible if you have zero carbohydrates – which is what keto focuses on eliminating
- Increasing protein intake results in a further fat burn – because the body processes [2] consume more energy to convert protein into usable glucose / ketones
So effectively you can at best burn 200gm of fat per day, roughly adding up to 1.4Kg per week.
This is the normal working of the human body. What diets like Keto or Raw diets focus on is the removal of carbohydrates and consumption of more ‘filling’ foods higher in fibre, fat and protein, which automatically reduces calorie intake + increases calorie burn.
I’ve personally been on the Keto diet since early 2018, and found it immensely useful. Furthermore I do a weekly ‘cheat’ cycle, usually on the weekends when I gorge on mom’s awesome cooking. It works so well! My weight was 97kg back in early 2018 and now is down to a super manageable 76-77. My height is 174cm – so this is a rather healthy weight for me.
The worst my weight gets is for 2 days immediately after the cheat day – apparently an additional 2 litres of water is ‘retained’ to help process the carbs. So yes I weigh 79 on Mondays and 76-77 the rest of the week 🙂