Lately, the Ketogenic (keto) Diet, which restricts the number of carbs while increasing the consumption of fat, has become a trendy way to lose weight and regain a healthy lifestyle. Lowering your intake of carbohydrates can have many health benefits, as weight loss, migraine relief, improved sleeping, mental clarity, lower inflammation, etc. It’s also a health fad that one must proceed with caution.
It’s important to understand why our bodies need carbs. Carbohydrates supply our bodies with energy and are found in foods like fruits, vegetables, bread, pasta, and dairy products. Our bodies use these foods to make glucose, which is a primary source of energy. Glucose is a type of sugar that can be used right away for energy or stored away to be used later.
But not all carbs are created equal. The best carbohydrates are those that contain a lot of fiber, like vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. These types of carbohydrates take longer to break down into glucose, so they don’t instantly flood the body with sugar and instead release it more slowly. They also supply the body with the nutrients it needs.
Refined, or popularly called “bad carbs”, have been processed to remove the healthy part of the grain (fiber) and often include added sugar. Common examples of refined carbohydrates are processed foods, white bread, cakes, and cookies. These are the carbs we want to eliminate because they flood our body with too much sugar.
When there are insufficient good carbohydrates, the body usually responds by burning muscle tissue for the stored glucose our body contains. When those stored glucose resources start to run out, the body resorts to burning body fat. This usually leads to quick results on the outside, with seeing weight loss and the number on the scale go down, but it’s not a healthy maintain a healthy weight for the long term, and I want to address two big problems I see with this type of “diet”.
The first problem is that for most people, this isn’t sustainable. It’s a quick fix and not an intentional mindset to adopt a lifelong healthy lifestyle. With fads like Keto, a person over time feels deprived and super limited with what they can eat, so they commit to it for a bit but slip back into their old habits, putting the weight back on, which leads to guilt and shame.
The second problem is that when eating under the Keto guidelines, you can eat as much fat as you want, but like carbs, not all fats are created equal. Some fats like avocados, soybeans, nuts, and fish are “good fats” while others like fatty beef, cheese, cream, butter, and fried poultry skin should be avoided.
A friend of mine was following the Keto Diet and was losing weight, but when he went for a check-up up the doctor told him his cholesterol (the bad kind) had skyrocketed and he was a prime candidate for a heart attack. Yes, he lost weight, but it came at a cost to his health.
Another friend doing Keto said it was okay to eat microwavable fried pork skins, but under the Keto guidelines, she couldn’t have a carrot or a beet. This is simply not a “diet” that makes sense to say it’s okay to eat as much processed food as you have to cook in a microwave, but you can’t have a vegetable naturally grown in the earth created by our Maker.
So you have to ask yourself – do I only care about the scale, or do I care about my long-term health and learning how to sustain it?
Here’s the difference between Faithful Workouts and many other diet plans: we don’t try to provide you with another quick-fix or fad diet. If you look up the word diet, it actually comes from the Latin word diaeta which means “way of life”. A “diet” should not be a quick fix but a way of life! We can’t continue to approach our eating habits as something that we can change for a few weeks, then revert back to old habits and expect to maintain our results.
That’s why our nutritional plans and recipes are all based on one simple fact- God created our bodies and God created food, so eat what God created in its most natural state.
The majority of our recipes are gluten-free, dairy-free, and low-carb, but they are also sustainable. You won’t leave this meal plan feeling hungry, irritable, or frustrated when you choose to break free from the diet fads promising quick results and approach your health journey differently to nourish your body with real, whole foods together, and our 14 Day Starting Point is a great place to begin!
To learn more about Faithful Workouts and gain immediate access to our online cookbook, check out our FREE resources TODAY. Your road to better, lifelong health is just a click away!
