Top 5 Rookie Keto Diet Mistakes

Keto diet is one of the most trendy and popular diets today. Magazines feature stories of celebrities and even ordinary people who dramatically lost weight through the ketogenic diet. It is, however, extremely easy to make this diet extremely unhealthy.

Keto is a high-fat, low-carb diet. If not done properly, that is, you’re consuming the wrong foods and you’re not in ketosis, it can be a profoundly unhealthy diet. My goal is for you to understand some keto diet mistakes and provide you with the resources to do keto the right way. 

1. You’ve never read a keto book.

You’d find a lot of information about keto diet online and the problem is many people get started after reading a few articles or hearing about it from a friend. Chances are, they are not in ketosis because of lack of information or worse, misinformation.

There are many trusted sources for the keto diet out there, but the books I recommend are The Plant Paradox by Dr. Steven Gundry and Fat for Fuel by Dr. Joseph Mercola.  There are many others.   In The Plant Paradox, Dr. Gundry talks about how to do a vegan keto diet in chapter 10. In Fat for Fuel, Dr. Mercola presents how the body works at a molecular level and provides a thorough guide for getting started with a ketogenic diet plan and sticking to it.

2. You assume that protein and fat are the same when it comes to ketosis. 

People also make the mistake of thinking that keto has to be high-fat, low-carb, and high protein diet. The problem is we’re not capable of storing all that much protein in our body. When our body gets an excessive amount of protein, it gets converted into sugar and it’s going to affect your success with the keto diet. Studies also suggest that animal protein consumption shortens lifespan. [1]

I recommend the The Longevity Diet: Discover the New Science Behind Stem Cell Activation and Regeneration to Slow Aging, Fight Disease, and Optimize Weight by Dr. Valter Longo. The book outlines a healthy eating plan that will help you live longer through nutrition. It also discusses the fasting mimicking diet at length.

I am actually about to do my fifth fasting mimicking cycle myself. It's been the most profound intervention that I've done for my overall health and I highly recommend it to my patients. If you'd like to find out if you are qualified for that, see if you qualify by following this link. I'd be happy to guide you through a fasting mimicking diet as a way not only to improve your health and decrease your weight, but also experience being in a ketogenic state for three to five days. The fasting mimicking diet is a safe and profound way of understanding ketosis without necessarily starting a ketogenic diet.

3. Relying on butter, cheese and meat.

A lot of people who are on the keto diet just eat butter, cheese and meat, thinking that they just need to eat a lot of fat. What happens often is people eat an excessive amount of unhealthy fats. Making things worse, are the toxins in these fats. 

Animal fats, butter, and cheese are going to have an enormous amount of toxins, especially if you're buying the run-of-the-mill variety from conventional sources. This is dangerous. We have to pay attention to our overall health, not just metabolism. 

4. Thinking that saturated fat is perfectly fine on a keto diet. 

In the keto and paleo communities, there seems to be an overemphasis on maligning the science that has shown that saturated fat is dangerous. However, saturated fat is not good for you in the amounts many people on the keto diet are eating them. There are also people with genes like the APOE4 gene, that certainly shouldn’t be consuming saturated fat as they can get huge spikes in LDL cholesterol. 

It is possible to do a vegan keto diet so you can avoid saturated fats. Refer to chapter 10 of The Plant Paradox by Dr. Steven Gundry MD for a guide on how to do this. 

5. Not understanding the effect of chronically high insulin levels on keto production.

When your insulin level is high, you will not be able to go into ketosis. High insulin level can prevent ketosis even at low carb levels. This means you could cut your carbs way down and you might be even avoiding animal protein, but chronically high levels of insulin resulting from years of bad diet might not get you into ketosis for quite a while. This can cause you to feel bad because you’re on a low carb diet.

You may think that it’s just carbs that raise insulin. But foods like cheese, eggs and steak that people often rely on for keto diet can also raise insulin levels. Hyperinsulinemia or high insulin levels not just prevents you from reaching ketosis, but it also increases your risk for heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Get your insulin levels tested.   If you doctor won’t order it for you, reach out to me directly, and in certain circumstances, I will order the test for you.

There is also a way to measure your ketone and glucose levels. Check Keto Mojo.

If you want guidance on how to do fasting mimicking diet or get your genes tested to see how these may affect the way you lose weight, sign up for a free consultation with me.

Sources: 

1 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2803089/