How The High-fat Keto Diet Became A Weight-loss Trend
When he's in a hurry, he'll stop at McDonald's for a sausage and egg sandwich - minus the bread. A typical lunch is a burger with cheese and guacamole. McKinnon will wrap the burger in lettuce instead of a bun, but since he's trying to eat a three-to-one ratio of fat to protein, he'll load it with as much of his favourite condiment as possible. He credits the ketogenic diet, a low-carbohydrate diet designed to fuel the body with fat instead of glucose. Instagram or Twitter, it's an ultralow-carb, no sugar, no fruit, no beans weight-loss regimen.
Dan McKinnon says he decided to give the keto diet a try because he was intrigued by the high fat intake. It's also very popular. The Keto Diet by Leanne Vogel is currently the top-selling book in Amazon Canada's diet and weight-loss category, and a slew of celebrities, including NBA superstar LeBron James, are rumoured to be acolytes. Developed in the 1920s to treat epilepsy, the diet was generally abandoned after the 1938 discovery that the drug diphenylhydantoin could be used to control seizures.
Then, in the early 1990s, Hollywood director Jim Abrahams (best known for movies with exclamation marks in the titles, such as Airplane!) took his son, who suffered from intractable seizures, to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Doctors there had success treating the boy with a ketogenic diet, and his story was featured in a 1994 episode of NBC's Dateline and in the 1997 TV movie … First Do No Harm, starring Meryl Streep. By the mid-2000s, the diet was accepted as an uncontroversial, successful method for reducing epileptic seizures.
The diet's name comes from ketones, molecules produced by the liver in response to an absence of sugar, which the body then burns for fuel. An entirely unintended side effect for people with epilepsy on the diet is that, without glucose, the body turns into a fat-burning machine. Unsurprisingly, it eventually became a weight-loss trend. McKinnon says. Pre-keto, he ate burritos every day and capped the week with a pizza-and-Netflix date with his girlfriend.
Previous attempts at "the low-carb thing" left him constantly hungry, but he decided to give keto a try anyway, intrigued by the high fat intake (as opposed to the Atkins diet, which focuses on protein). Although his early days on the diet did involve what devotees call the "keto flu," a withdrawal phase of headaches and low energy that McKinnon describes as "total hell," he's now a complete convert. In fact, the diet's ability to sate appetites seems to be a key to its success and popularity.
On a typical day, Michelle Holden of Bradford, Ont., will eat 100 grams of fat and 50 grams of protein and will keep her carbohydrate intake ("religiously") under 20 grams. After bacon and eggs for breakfast, she says she's not hungry again until dinner. Keto followers say the diet’s high fat intake keeps their appetites sated for a long period of time. The 48-year-old event specialist and her husband began their diet in January after consulting their doctor to ensure it would be safe for them.
She emptied out her cupboards and cleaned out her fridge, saying goodbye to Wonder Bread, English muffins and her beloved morning tea and toast routine, then said hello to bacon. Giving up fruit has been her biggest challenge, and meal planning on vacation takes a lot of forethought. She and her husband get blood work done every three months to make sure his fatty liver disease and her risk of diabetes aren't being negatively affected.
Calgary nutritionist Danielle Kot doesn't remember when exactly she heard of the ketogenic diet, only that around January it seemed like "the whole universe was talking to me" about it. Weight loss wasn't her objective. She claims more energy, mental clarity and happiness since switching her diet, as well as being a better wife and mother.
Kot replaced the fibre of keto-shunned starchy, sugary fruits with chia and flax seeds and dark, leafy greens, so the rumoured constipation isn't an issue. Being invited for dinner at a friend's house is an unavoidable obstacle. Usually, she'll ask what's on the menu and either skip her diet for the evening or get the necessary fat earlier in the day. Like McKinnon, she puts butter in her coffee, plus coconut oil and MCT powder.
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