When my metabolism started to slow down, I was willing to try anything to control my weight gain. Keto diets appear to be a miracle cure. Who doesn’t want to eat bacon every day? You can lose weight without being hungry. But is a keto diet too good to be true? Let’s look at some keto diet risks.
Quick fixes can lead to long-term problems
Any time you lose weight quickly, you risk the problem of slowing your metabolism rate. This causes you to gain weight more quickly when you are no longer dieting.
How many times have you gained more weight back after your quit your diet? There is a real reason for that problem!
Keto diets can cause nutritional problems that are hard to diagnose
Our body is complicated. Take, for example, calcium. For your body to use calcium supplements, you also need magnesium and
vitamin D. This combination is similar for every element in your body.
Doing keto properly, you should be eating green leafy vegetables and you’ll get the nutrients that you need. But many people think that a keto diet is a license to eat fatty meats and cheeses, but forget that they need to incorporate vegetables. Here’s a list of keto foods that are rich in calcium.
Trace mineral deficiencies are just as significant but even more difficult to diagnose. When you remove all fruit from your diet, you eliminate many trace minerals. Over time this can cause symptoms, for example, heart palpitations.
Doctors treat symptoms
Our medical system (AKA, your doctor) is trained to quickly access your problem, then fix the problem. If you complain of heart
palpitations, they will verify the problem by monitoring your heart rate, then recommend a pacemaker. Oftentimes, they do not investigate the root cause of your problems which could be an imbalanced diet.
What you can do
I recommend that everyone on a keto diet should take a vitamin supplement. You know that are at high risk for trace mineral imbalances. A vitamin and mineral supplement will help to offset the imbalances.
Your best bet is to make improvements. Make subtle changes to your diet that will improve your overall health at a pace that you can maintain. Here’s a recipe that I posted for low-sugar cookies. This is an example of a subtle change that will have a positive affect on your health in the long run.
Bottom line, the medical community does not know the long-term effects of keto diets. Are the unknown side effects worth the short-term gains?
