Kourtney Kardashian, Vanessa Hudgens and Halle Berry love the keto diet – but what are the side effects and what really happens to your body when you ditch carbs and eat all that fat?
The celebrity world’s preferred fad diet can train your body to burn fat not sugar for energy – but get ready to beat the ‘keto flu’ and learn how to dodge the ‘keto plateau’
The high-fat, low-carb ketogenic diet – or “keto” for short – has become a popular way to lose weight. Just ask celebrities such as Halle Berry, Kourtney Kardashian and Vanessa Hudgens who all swear by it.
But while keto does help some to shed the pounds, it’s a huge change for your body’s metabolism and that can come with some serious side effects you should be aware of.
If losing weight is your goal, keto can help you shed pounds fast. But as with most diets, there’s more to keto than meets the eye.
Keto basically replaces carbs with fat, so a typical keto diet contains around 70 per cent fat, 25 per cent protein and 5 per cent carbohydrates. That’s a drastic change from the diet that the USDA recommends for Americans which should contain less than 30 per cent fat and more than 50 per cent carbs. The key is to add fats from high quality sources such as nuts and fish, not oils associated with processed foods.
This is all a significant change for your body’s metabolism too. Usually when you eat carbs, like a starchy potato, enzymes in your mouth, stomach and small intestine break them into glucose, a form of sugar, which your brain and body use for fuel.
When you skip carbs, the first couple of days you often experience strong sugar cravings as your body is switching gears from burning carbs to using the only energy source it has left: fat.