You may already know a lot about the benefits of a ketogenic diet, and you might have even followed it with positive outcomes. However, without knowing one piece of critical information, this diet can be harmful to your health. The key point is for how long you should follow the ketogenic diet. Some people view the ketogenic diet as the healthiest diet and choose to keep it for life, which may entail some serious risks.
Why Can a Ketogenic Diet Help You Lose Weight Fast?
The ketogenic diet is regarded as a very effective way to lose weight quickly. It differs from the general diet in that the ketogenic diet has two major features, including high fats and very low carbohydrates.
The percentages of dietary calories in a keto diet are approximately 70 to 80 percent from fats, 5 to 10 percent from carbohydrates, and 10 to 20 percent from proteins. Sometimes, the lipids in a ketogenic diet even provide as much as 90 percent of the daily calories.
If we use the daily dietary intake of 2,000 kcal as the standard, a ketogenic diet requires that the carbohydrate intake should be between 20 to 50 grams, and not exceeding 50 grams. This means a strict control of carbohydrates. As you may know, a medium-sized banana has 27 grams of carbohydrates.
When the daily intake of carbohydrates is restricted to less than 50 grams, insulin secretion will be significantly reduced. When the availability of carbohydrates is low, and the storage of glycogen is depleted, the body is forced to undergo certain metabolic changes, such as “gluconeogenesis” and “ketosis.”