What is ketogenic?
Carbohydrates (sugar), fat, and protein are three important energy-supplying substances for the human body. Normally,our body prioritizes the breakdown of carbohydrates to provide energy, followed by fats, and finally proteins. After carbohydrates (sugar) provide us with energy, they will only turn into carbon dioxide and water, and will not produce any toxic or harmful components in the body, which can be said to be a very clean energy source. Because our bodies have a poor ability to store sugar, if we don't eat carbohydrates for a long time, the sugar reserves stored in our muscles and liver will soon be depleted, and our bodies will need to use fat to provide energy. If carbohydrates are a clean energy source, then fat is a much less clean energy source. Fat has fatty acids, which produce a lot of acidic residue ketones (ketone bodies) when it provides energy to the body. The process of consuming fat to produce energy and producing ketone bodies at the same time is called "ketogenesis". So, we can simply equate ketogenesis with fat digestion. Image from pixabay.comWhat makes a ketogenic diet ketogenic?
The ketogenic process actually relies primarily on fat for energy. What exactly is a ketogenic diet? The "ketogenic diet" is a relatively extreme low-carb diet. It consists of eating three meals a day with little or no staple foods, and instead using fats and proteins to provide energy, making sure that it is not carbohydrates that are the main source of energy, which will inevitably result in a lot of ketone bodies being produced. Was the ketogenic way of eating even originally intended to treat epilepsy? The ketogenic diet first gained popularity back in the 1920s, when there were no effective antiepileptic drugs available, and the only way to treat epilepsy was to severely limit a patient's carbohydrate intake to no more than 20 grams a day to mimic the body's state of starvation. This portion is about the same as a small bowl of white rice. Why 20 grams? For the average person, when consuming less than 50 grams of carbohydrates for 3 to 4 days, the body will run out of stored glycogen and will gradually use it as a source of energy by breaking down large amounts of fat. The process of breaking down fat produces fatty acids and a large number of ketone bodies, which are generated in the liver, excreted by the kidneys, and flow from the blood to all organs and tissues throughout the body and the brain for energy supply. So, the basic requirements of a ketogenic diet are low carb, high fat, and moderate protein. Specifically, it is 70~80% fat + 10~20% protein + 5~10% carbohydrates, while controlling the total daily calorie intake at about 2,000 calories. (Image from pixabay.com)The ketogenic diet eats high fat, so why can you lose weight?
The main principle of the ketogenic diet is that fats are used to replace carbohydrates to feed the body. After the body consumes glucose, it begins to burn fat to feed its body, and the body enters a ketogenic state. Eventually, the body is put into a state of high speed fat burning. So, the essence of the ketogenic diet is that the body breaks down the fat to produce energy, in order to achieve the purpose of fat loss, weight loss. Precisely because ketogenic is a kind of targeted consumption of fat diet , so it can quickly reduce our body fat rate, if coupled with the appropriate intensity of exercise, that casually lose more than a dozen pounds of fat is indeed not difficult to lose weight, the effect of weight loss is very fast and obvious. By the end of the 20th century, the ketogenic diet was not only introduced into research on the treatment of diabetes, Parkinson's syndrome and other diseases, but Dr. Robert C. Atkins of the U.S. also used some of its principles to create the Atkins Diet, which encourages people to lose weight by not eating carbohydrates. (Image source: pixabay.com)Is the ketogenic diet the recommended way to lose weight?
From the current research, ketogenic diets can be effective for weight loss and weight reduction in the short term. However, in the long term, there is no significant difference between the ketogenic diet and other diets in terms of their effect on weight. A meta-analysis published in 2006 (***447 participants) also showed that while the low-carb diet group lost more weight than the low-fat diet group in the first 6 months, this difference disappeared within a year.In 2013, a meta-analysis involving 1,569 participants found that patients assigned to a low-carbohydrate diet could lose more weight in 6 months than those assigned to a low-fat diet. But the effects didn't seem to be any more dramatic in the long run than on a traditional low-fat diet. Moreover, the advantage of faster weight loss on low-carb diets over low-fat diets was not apparent after 24 months, and a 2014 meta-analysis showed that various weight-loss dietary patterns, high-carb or low-carb, showed little statistical difference in effect over the long term. Of course, the effects vary from person to person. The same recipe, some people lose a lot of weight, some people eat useless, may be due to differences in genes and body type.In 2017, a study conducted a meta-analysis of the effects of different dietary methods (including ketogenic, DASH and other methods) on weight loss found that, in the short term these methods have weight loss, but in the long term, the effect is not obvious, and there are no differences between the different methods differences. (Image source: pixabay.com) In 2018, Stanford University conducted a larger research experiment. 632 healthy adult overweight volunteers were randomly recruited and divided into two groups, who were made to follow low-fat and low-carb diets respectively through dietary instruction sessions and were tested for their genotype and insulin sensitivity. After the 12-month experiment, it was found that the low-fat group lost an average of 5.3 kilograms, while the low-carb group lost an average of 6.0 kilograms. However, the difference between the two groups was not statistically significant. Another reason the ketogenic diet is held up as a weight-loss magic pill is the supposed appetite-suppressing effects. The theory behind this claim is that when the concentration of ketone bodies in the blood is elevated, the nerve center suppresses the appetite. However, at present, most of the research results show that this effect is false. The reason for this is that we don't know how high the blood ketone concentration has to be to significantly suppress appetite. Daily ketogenic diets are far from being able to raise blood ketone concentrations in the body high enough to suppress appetite. Overall, the ketogenic diet can still be effective for weight loss in the short term, but in the long term, it is not very effective for weight control. (Image source: pixabay.com)Not effective and possibly harmful to your health?
Many people would say that the ketogenic diet is still used by many doctors. But in reality, the ketogenic diet that we refer to a lot of the time these days is not the same thing as the ketogenic diet that doctors use. The ketogenic diet is a very strict diet when used for clinical treatment. It not only requires that more than 70% of a practitioner's daily energy needs come from fat, but further requires that the fat-to-protein ratio (the percentage of calories a nutrient provides to the body as a percentage of the total calorie intake) be kept at 4:1 or 3:1, and that carbohydrate sources be kept to a strict 5% or less or less than 20 grams of calories consumed. This means that one large apple may result in an excessive amount of carbohydrates for the day. In fact, clinical ketogenic diets need to be supervised by both a doctor and a dietitian, both to keep the patient's body in a "ketogenic" state and to monitor possible risks so they can be dealt with in a timely manner, and because it's hard to maintain such an extreme diet over the long term. Such extreme diets are difficult to maintain in the long term. The ketogenic diets on the internet nowadays are basically just carb-restricted, with no control over other nutrients, and no guidance from a doctor or dietitian, which can easily lead to health hazards. Currently, the possible hazards include:Easy to acidosis: Ketone bodies are a kind of acidic substances, the amount of the body is very small under normal circumstances, but if the ketogenic diet is used for a long time, the ketone bodies accumulated to a certain extent, the blood may become acidic and thus the phenomenon of acidosis. Increase the burden on kidneys: Excess ketone bodies in the body must be discharged through the kidneys, so for people with kidney disease, ketogenic diet is absolutely prohibited, or it may accelerate the development of kidney disease. For people without kidney disease, long-term high ketone bodies will also increase the burden on the kidneys, as to whether or not it will cause damage to the kidneys, this can be really hard to say. Severe rebound after normal diet: For those who are successful in ketogenic weight loss, if they start to return to normal diet, they will find that they quickly gain back weight and are fatter than before the diet. This is due to a short period of rapid weight loss, normal metabolic balance is disrupted and rebound with a vengeance can easily occur. (Image source pixabay.com)Can you go on a ketogenic diet with a doctor's guidance?
In fact, too little carbohydrate intake is not a healthy eating pattern in itself and can be harmful to your health. A study found that carbohydrate intake and mortality present a "U-shaped" relationship, eating too much or too little will significantly increase the mortality rate, the lowest mortality rate of carbohydrate intake is the total energy intake of 50-55%. China's dietary guidelines also believe that cereal-based is an important feature of a balanced dietary pattern. Cereals are rich in carbohydrates, with a daily intake of 250~400 grams of cereals and potatoes, including 50~150 grams of whole grains and miscellaneous legumes, and 50~100 grams of potatoes; the energy provided by carbohydrates in the diet should account for more than 50% of the total energy. Overall, the ketogenic diet can only help you lose weight in the short term,but the long-term effect is not obvious. Moreover, blindly adopting a ketogenic diet may cause health damage to your body. It is for this reason that the star of the Ketogenic Diet said that he would not be able to do it all over again. Extended reading: Fan E. Excel 3 days to lose 17 pounds of weight loss method is worth emulating? Inventory of the three big pits on the road to weight loss stars, Netflix recommended those weight loss methods, really all reliable?References:
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