I’ve been wanting to write about the keto diet for a really long time.

It’s been the diet craze of the last year or so, and everyone seems to be giving it a try. Don’t believe me? Check out the Google trends results on ketogenic diets since 2018. Many of you have suggested it to me as a diet you’d like to try as we coach you through a nutrition plan.

I’ve waited until now to write about this diet simply because I wanted to give it time and really learn about what keto is, how it impacts people, what type of progress you can make, and what drawbacks (if any) exist.

In this article, I’d like to break things down and explain the keto diet. I’d also like to explain why I don’t recommend the keto diet for most people.

For Starters

Let’s start off with this: the keto diet CAN absolutely work for you. You can lose weight. You can develop better habits. You can develop a better relationship with food. You can improve your health. You can make a ton of progress.

All of those statements are 100 percent true. I don’t want this article to come off as me acting like this diet has no merit.

It absolutely does.

But so does every other diet.

Diets work, or don’t work, based on your ability to adhere to the plan. There’s nothing magical about any diet, other than it puts you in a calorie deficit, which allows you to lose weight and body fat over time.

That’s it. That’s literally it for every single diet ever created.

Get in a deficit, be consistent over a long period of time, make adjustments when necessary, continue to be consistent, and progress will come.

The keto diet can provide this for you.

What is the Keto Diet?

The keto diet — short for “ketogenic” diet — in simple terms is a diet comprised of high fats, very low carbs, and moderate protein.

It’s similar to an Atkins style diet (remember Atkins?) in that it’s low-carb. Low-carb diets have been popular for a long time. There are different variations of how you can approach the keto diet, but that’s generally the gist.

If you’d like to get more in-depth, the concept of keto that makes it stand out is that you aim to get your carbohydrates low enough that it puts you in a state of ketosis. Ketosis is, “a metabolic process that occurs when the body begins to burn fat for energy because it does not have enough carbohydrates to burn. During this process, the liver produces chemicals called ketones. The ketogenic, or keto, diet aims to induce ketosis in order to burn more fat.” (Source, Medical News Today)

For the purposes of this article, we’ll focus mainly on the keto diet for achieving weight loss. There are other health benefits and conditions where keto can be beneficial as well, but the majority of people I come in contact with are utilizing (or thinking about utilizing) the keto diet to lose weight.

Advantages of the Keto Diet

Before we get into why I don’t recommend the keto diet, let’s look at some of its advantages. If you’re a fan of the diet and note other advantages not listed here, please share them!

First and foremost, this is an elimination diet. Elimination diets are rooted in simplification, which can be a big advantage.

If you struggle to put together your own diet plans, or if you get overwhelmed by understanding nutritional information, an elimination diet can make things simple and easy.

It completely eliminates certain foods.

You CAN eat these foods; You CAN’T eat these foods.

It’s spelled out for you in a way that leaves little grey area. If you eliminate major carb sources such as grains, pasta, candy, snacks, fruits, etc. and focus on eating mostly meat and dairy, you’re in the ballpark of keto.

Additionally, I think the keto diet is great for a jump start to your weight loss pursuit. The vast majority of people who try the keto diet and consistently adhere to it lose a lot of weight in the first month or two. The weight loss is often a combination of fat loss, water loss (removing carbohydrates from your diet will decrease the amount of water retention in your body), and loss of muscle glycogen (stored carbohydrate in your muscles), and it comes off quickly.

ConscienHealth classifies keto as “impressive in the short term,” and that just about the best way to put it. Long term is where the problems begin to surface.

Things start to plateau. That’s where we get into the reasons I don’t recommend the keto diet.

Why I Don’t Recommend the Keto Diet

The main reason I don’t recommend the keto diet to most individuals is rooted in the latter stages of the diet. First and foremost, this diet lacks an exit strategy, which is incredibly important. In turn, it derails a lot of the progress you make early on.

What I mean by an “exit strategy” is: how do you transition out of this elimination diet and re-introduce carbohydrates?

Most coaches will agree that the keto diet is not a lifestyle diet. It’s a diet you can run for a period of time to get the results you want, but in the end it’s probably in your best interests to re-introduce carbohydrates and establish a more traditional diet (just without the highly processed foods and other indulgences that caused you to gain excess body fat the first time around)

When you’re done with keto, how do you transition?

Most people don’t know how, and bingeing occurs. You’re done with the diet, you’ve lost the weight you want, so you can FINALLY eat those snacks, desserts, and other treats you’ve abstained from for so long!

Bingeing leads to weight regain. Weight regain takes you right back to where you started, or somewhere close to it.

It’s just hard to control yourself when you eliminate certain foods, and then the time comes where you can eat them again. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s just reality.

I don’t recommend elimination diets, keto included, for this very reason. I think it’s much more effective to take your traditional diet and establish good habits within that framework that you can sustain.

Now, if your regular diet is one that already consists of low to very low carbs, keto might be one that is more sustainable. I’m not writing off the fact that some people CAN maintain this type of diet. It’s just that MOST people cannot.

We’ve barely even touched on the nutritional value of this diet, which is a huge factor as well. You’ll notice earlier I mentioned that fruits are part of what gets eliminated, because most fruits are high in carbohydrates. Limiting fruits, whole grains, legumes, and other food sources long-term can cause nutritional deficiencies and deprive your body of nutrients that prevent against cardiovascular disease, cancer, mortality, and more.

I don’t think hopping into keto, then hopping into another diet fad, and then another fad, and another, and another (or back and forth, over and over, and over) is a healthy approach. It leaves you yo-yo-ing for months and years without establishing any consistency within your diet.

Something else to consider with the keto diet is the flexibility it provides. Once you reach a plateau, it’s harder to make small adjustments to the diet because of the limited food sources the keto diet allows.

In a traditional diet, you can easily cut carbs to keep the weight loss process moving forward. When your carbs are already eliminated, you’re left to cut from fats or protein. We don’t want to cut out protein, because that’s what’s fueling our recovery after training each day.

So you have to eliminate fats. But your fats and protein are often combined in foods like red meat. So… cut that meat?

See what I’m getting at here? It can become quite challenging.

Coaching Cues

As I stated at the outset of this article, I don’t think the keto diet is all bad. There are a ton of benefits that can come from the keto diet in regards to weight loss. But with that said, it can come with many challenges.

I’d recommend you approach weight loss with a more traditional approach in mind. Get on a diet plan that you can manage today, tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year.

Here are some steps to get you started:

1. Monitor your current diet for a couple of weeks. Track your nutrition to see how many calories you’re eating, as well as your protein, fats, and carbohydrates.
2. Cut some calories from your diet, and feel free to do so via your carbohydrates. Perhaps you cut out 300 calories to start (approximately 75 carbs). Do this while exercising regularly.
3. Monitor your weight each day with a morning weigh-in, and see how things evolve over the next two weeks.
4. Keep it consistent until you reach a plateau, then eliminate more calories (perhaps some from fats and others from carbs this time).
5. Continually evaluate your progress and repeat this process.

Those steps outlined above are more sustainable and will teach you more about how your overall calories and macronutrients are effecting your weight over time. With that knowledge, you’ll be better able to manipulate these variables in the future when you want to re-introduce more calories (carbs, fat, etc.).

Or, if you’re dead set on trying keto, map out an exit strategy before getting started. Prepare yourself for that transition. Accept that you’ll only run this diet for 2-3 months, tops.

It may be helpful to hire a coach to help you monitor your diet and prepare for any obstacles you will face along the way.

Also, if you’re dead set on trying keto, talk to your doctor before starting. This should be assumed for any diet plan, but especially for elimination diets.

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Thanks for reading! I hope you found this article valuable. If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please contact me and let me know. And if coaching is something you’re interested in order to get a truly personalized plan that works you towards your goals, check out my coaching page and fill out a coaching application form so we can get on the phone and talk.

Thanks again!