On a rather beautiful day recently, I was taking a walk through the woods with my older brother. We were talking about all sorts of things, then he brought up the Keto Diet.
He said, “Lee, what do you think of keto?” (Keto diet – very high fat and protein, while eating an
extremely low amount of carbohydrates. The hope is that this will eventually force your body into
ketosis – body burning fat for energy instead of glucose.)
He mentioned, before asking this question, that he has a friend who is trying to lose weight and has been practicing the keto diet on and off.
My response was something to the effect of “I don’t have any issues with people trying new diets to kickstart a weight-loss journey. The issue is that this diet has been marketed in a way that promises much more than it can fulfill. Keto can work for a time, but your body needs carbohydrates, especially if you are committing to exercise. Keto diet, like any extreme diet works, but “working” is unequivocally different from sustainable. (There are perhaps exceptions to this given your unique genetic makeup and gut microbiome. Some people can sustain eating higher fat, higher protein and lower carbohydrate. I am speaking primarily to the false promise of keto that has been advertised on a mass scale.)
The real issue
The real problem has nothing to do with keto, it has nothing to do with diets. It has everything to do with the false promise that has been attached to it. Dieting is not wrong; in fact it can do a lot of good. What is harmful is that we believe that extreme dieting will solve all of our problems if we do it “hard enough.” (This is not entirely our fault, this is how it is marketed/sold to the public) The promise is that: It will solve your health problems. It works off the assumption that your health problems are one dimensional in nature, and counts everything else as negligible.
If we try keto or paleo or any kind of diet under this frame of mind, we will be disappointed every single time. The promise will never be fulfilled because aiming at living a healthy life means to look at your entire life. Health is holistic in nature; and we must treat it as such.
Questions to consider if you want to start dieting
1. What do I think this will solve?
2. What other areas of my life are important to my overall health?
3. Is what I am attempting something that is sustainable?
The false promise presented to us by extreme diets, supplement companies, and rigid
workout programs manipulate our psychology by convincing us that this will be the “fastest track
to your goals.” Essentially, it is the get rich quick scheme of the health and fitness space. If you
want to be convinced of what I am saying, go talk to anyone who has been consistently going to
the gym for a decade. Go talk to someone who has been thoughtful about their eating for over a decade. They all say the same thing, ”I have been doing the same boring stuff for a long time.”
A formula that reflects what it means to improve, that I love, is: discipline plus grace plus time
equals growth.
If you want to get in better shape, take better overall care of your body, the best thing to
do is to start at your current level of consistency. Whatever you can be consistent at is the best
place to start.
If you swallow the false promise, you will, in three months, spit it out.
Lee Ramsey has a passion for fitness as a way to help people grow and change into more adaptable, capable and resilient versions of themselves. He is owner of Sanctify Fitness in Covington and a regular fitness columnist for the NKyTribune.