There are lots of misconceptions and wrong ideas about keto out there. Every time I do research on the lifestyle, I find more articles that offer up misinformation. Many authors of the articles are simply misinformed. Some seem to have a personal vendetta against keto. So, here are the top 10 keto myths I have found.
Keto Myths About the Impact on Your Health
10. Keto leads to ketoacidosis. This is completely wrong. Keto is when your body goes into ketosis and starts producing ketones. It’s when your body starts using fat for energy instead of glucose. Ketoacidosis is a life-threatening condition that happens if you take in so many carbs, your body can’t produce enough insulin to keep up. If you are doing keto correctly, ketoacidosis cannot happen. One does not lead to the other if you are doing keto even remotely well.
9. The high fat causes heart disease. There is more and more research that is showing that it is actually processed foods that increase your chances of heart disease, rather than whole foods that contain saturated fats.
8. Our brains need glucose to function properly. Dr. Berg talks about this myth on YouTube. Much of the Alzheimer’s research being done also reinforces that insulin is a contributing factor to the disease. Our brains can run on ketones, and many think that it runs more efficiently that way.
Talking about Keto as a Diet
7. You can’t do keto long term. In fact, people have been doing keto long term. Those who do keto to control their Type 2 diabetes, or epilepsy, or other health conditions do keto for an extended period of time. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – keto is a lifestyle, not a diet. Sure, losing weight is a great benefit of it, but it’s not the main motivation of many people who stick with it. We’ve done it for 2 years now, and we have no intention of ever stopping!
6. Keto is the new fad. It’s actually been around for decades. Fasting has been a treatment for epilepsy for as long as people have been struggling with it for centuries. Keto was found to be a way to emulate fasting without the pesky side effect of starving. It was introduced in the 1920’s to help children who had epilepsy. Once medications became widely used, they became more popular than this way of eating because they were easier, so using keto became less and less common. It is certainly not new, and the benefits of keto are not a “fad.”
5. Keto is a “lose weight fast” diet. Okay, once again, it’s not a diet. It’s a lifestyle. Yes, one of the benefits of doing keto is that you lose weight. Depending on other factors, such as whether your hormones are balanced or how damaged your metabolism is will determine how quickly you lose weight. But this is just one of the benefits. The amount of energy you have, and the consistency of that energy throughout your day is the benefit I enjoy the most. It’s not just about losing weight.
Keto Myths about What you Eat
4. You live on bacon. I wish! Yes, we can eat more bacon because it has fat and no carbs. That doesn’t mean we can eat it all the time. Everything is better in moderation, even bacon.
3. You can’t eat vegetables. This one drives me nuts. I eat more vegetables than I ever did before I started keto and I was living on the standard diet of North Americans. The vegetables that are most filled with vitamins and minerals (broccoli, asparagus, Brussel sprouts, etc.) are the ones that are lowest in carbs. We eat plenty of vegetables – just the ones that don’t have a lot of natural sugars in them.
2. You can’t get enough vitamins. Again, I’m taking in more vitamins from whole foods than I ever did before keto. Sure, there are some supplements I take (such as magnesium and potassium). Honestly, I probably should have been taking them before I started keto. My diet today consists of real food filled with vitamins and nutrients.
Is Keto Too Expensive?
1.Keto is expensive. It’s true that the way we eat is more expensive, but it’s more that eating real, whole foods is expensive. If you want quality meats, real vegetables, and nuts, it is expensive. But that’s not so much about keto as it is about eating foods that aren’t filled with sugar and salt. If you don’t indulge in the keto treats that are filled with sugar alcohols, and you make your food at home, it is much more manageable.
A Final Thought
These are the top 10 myths around eating a keto lifestyle. When I was doing research on this, I realized there is so much to say about each of these myths. Over the next few weeks, I’ll do a blog on each of these myths, taking a more detailed look at each one so you can be informed on why each of these is a myth.
Wendy
