Layne Norton, PhD nutritional sciences, wrote in his book:
“My father lost 30 pounds on a ketogenic diet, then added back 60 pounds because he couldn’t sustain the diet for more than four months. Once he went back to eating “normally,” he rapidly packed the pounds back on.”
That is why I think the keto diet is just wrong in any conceivable way. Probably even in ways, I haven’t even thought about (I’m talking extreme keto diet where you cannot eat more than 50 grams of carbs per day or else you will ruin the magic (meaning, made-up) benefits of ketosis).
Sustainability is the most critical factor in losing weight — any diet you cannot permanently adhere to is a shit diet. For most people, the keto diet is that kind of diet.
A 2021 study looked at adherence to ketogenic and Mediterranean diets and here is what they did:
As might be expected, average adherence was best during the first four weeks when all meals were provided by a food delivery service but the whole thing went tits up during the self-provided phase and even more so during the follow up:
There was considerable variability in adherence scores among the subjects — it actually increased for a few oddballs. But for most, keto was hard to sustain long-term and so the researchers concluded:
“A challenge during the ketogenic diet phase was the extreme carbohydrate restriction, which meant the exclusion of many commonly consumed foods, making it harder to follow in the long-term. This exclusion of foods made it more challenging for participants that shared meals with their families, with many participants finding that they often had to make separate meals for themselves and their families while on the ketogenic diet.”
The famous A to Z weight loss study (famous among the fitness geeks who have no detectable social lives, like me) also investigated the level of dietary adherence to…
