The keto diet is a good option when you want to lose weight while maintaining performance. Still, if you are an athlete and young you want to take advantage of your high testosterone levels and combine them with protein for muscle growth.

 

Keto batch cook

 

 

The keto diet is a relatively new trend which has its roots in the successful treatment of patients with seizures. While this effect seems quite proven other claimed positive effects of the diet like slowing down cancer, Alzheimer’s and diabetes are still being investigated and the body of long term studies to support these claims still has to grow. 

 

The basic idea of the Ketogenic diet, or short keto diet, is to replace the carbohydrates in your diet through fat. By this, you want to achieve that your body switches into a state where the preferred source of energy is fat instead of carbohydrates. The effect is that your body becomes a fat-burning machine and you lose weight at the places where you normally store surplus fat. 

 

To get into Ketosis on a daily basis is very hard. Depending on the diet you are on the usual recommendation is to stay under 20g of carbohydrates to achieve this. You only look at a big of crisps the wrong way and you are already over that threshold. Eating one apple will also have the same effect. Therefore there are different approaches to the diet of which some make it more palatable than others. 

 

The standard Ketogenic diet divides your macronutrients in 75% fat, 20% protein, and 5% carbohydrates. Calculate whatever the recommended daily intake is based on your gender, age, height, and weight and distribute the calories on the macros accordingly. This version of the diet is very hard to maintain without changing your lifestyle completely and saying no often when food is offered at social occasions. 

 

Another take on the keto diet is the cyclical Ketogenic diet. Here you stick to the diet for five days and allow for more carbohydrates on two days of the week. You might as well call it the “I am allowed treats at the weekend” keto diet. 

 

Another version of the keto diet is the high protein keto diet. Here you apply a split of 60% fat, 35% protein and 5% carbohydrates. This is a version which might be favored by anyone who wants to build muscle. 

 

Things which you can eat on the keto diet: 

 

 

Things which you can’t eat 

 

 

 

 

Keto is said to have positive effects on the following diseases: 

 

 

I am no doctor so consult with your specialist for your specific case before deciding to go on the Ketogenic diet. The body of evidence for epilepsy seems to be strong while I always take the claimed benefits for diets to help with cancer and heart disease with a grain of salt before there is a lot of evidence to support it. If you want to sell a diet you have a way easier time if you claim it slows down cancer. So almost any leaflet of diet spinners claims this. What I can say is that I did see a marked improvement in my wife’s fibromyalgia symptoms when we stuck to the keto diet. 

 

What I can also vouch for is that the keto diet helped us to lose weight before our wedding. I went down by 7kg in 2 months and see wedding pictures look fabulous. I won’t talk about my wife’s weight because a wise man just simply does not. What you have to keep in mind is that any diet will work if you stick to it and there is quite a large body of evidence to support that. The weight loss is usually closely tied to the awareness of how much food is eaten and a concerted effort to control it rather than the types of food themselves. 

 

Another benefit of the keto diet is that you can still eat fat. 

 

Steak? No problem. 

Berries with cream? Yes, sir, here we go. 

Platter of cheese? Bring it on 

 

If you like meat a lot and want to do a diet, keto is a great option. 

 

As you eat air of fat there is also a very low risk for you to eat too little calories. Fat is very highly condensed energy which comes in a high calorie per gram count. So eating a lot of fat will get you to your daily calorie prescription fairly fast. This is an area where vegetarians can really struggle without taking supplements. You have to eat a lot of cabbage to make it to 2000 calories. Not so much if you put a nice cream sauce on it. 

 

 

 

As with every diet, the biggest con is that you are depriving yourself of an entire component in your diet, carbohydrates. If there is no medical reason to reign this intake in, the risk-reward might be a little of. If your main goal is weight loss this can also be achieved, and maybe even easier is you don’t have to change your cooking, by taking control of your portions, cutting out desserts and alcohol. 

 

There are also claims that a higher intake of fat makes it more likely for you to get kidney stones. Your gut health might also be negatively impacted. 

 

A big personal downside to the keto diet for me is that it becomes very hard to have a proper side to your main meal. Most side dishes have a lot of carbohydrates in them so you end up only eating the meat and cheese. This went so far for my wife and me that we needed to take a break. It also doesn’t really work when you are pregnant. 

 

 

There are alternatives to the keto diet if you don’t find this appealing. Some of them are: 

 

 

The low-fat diet was the trend which was based on studies that a high intake of fat would lead to cardiac arrest and other problems in your blood system. With the surge of the keto diet, these studies are being contested. Still, for decades, low fat was the way to go when you were on a diet. What food producers did not tell you was that they still wanted their products to taste nice so that you keep eating them. Things usually taste nice when they either have fat or sugar in them. When you combine both in a cake it is extra delicious. As food producers couldn’t add fat they opted for sugar. 

 

If you like sweet things you can try juicing. Juicing is a diet where you only take in food in liquid form in the form of juices. As with every diet, the idea is to cut out certain foods to make you lose weight and be healthier. The main effect is that you switch from stuffing anything in front of you in your mouth to making More deliberate decisions. 

 

Weight watchers or slimming world are dieting concepts where foods are being attributed points. For each day you get a certain number of points which you can use up. It doesn’t matter what you eat, as long as you don’t go over your daily allowance of points. You can even bank your points and budget for a week. Once a week or month you will meet with your local group to be held accountable for progress. My wife tried it and I went to one of the meetings with her. She didn’t stick long to it. To be honest, me and my wife usually like to do our own thing. For someone who likes to meet with other people to talk about their struggles on a regular basis this concept might be more appealing. There are many examples where weight watchers worked. Again, this is back to portion control, if your goal is weight loss. 

 

 

Hockey is a form of team sports which distinguishes itself by using a hockey stick. With this hockey stick, the players try to score goals using a puck or ball. In most countries, hockey refers to the field game played on foot. Sometimes it is also a shortened version for Ice hockey which is used in Canada, The United States, Finland, Sweden, Latvia, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. 

 

 

Hockey has all the benefits of other team sports. It teaches you how to work in a unit, respect each other’s time and show up regularly to improve. In addition to that, you also learn about eye to hand coordination and get toughened up for life. 

 

 

Having a bunch of people chasing a ball or puck with a whacking stick in hand is not for everyone. Most forms of hockey are tough, fast and bear a high risk of injury. 

 

Some alternatives for hockey are 

 

 

If you live somewhere where it is very cold or close to an ice rink you can try ice hockey. This game is very fast, requires a lot of skill and with the NHL has also prospects of getting you good money if you are good at it. The only downside is that you need to learn how to ice skate, which is not for everyone. 

 

Field hockey is another alternative in which you can stand on your own two feet. Just be prepared that you need to be tough. Field hockey is played with no protection while you still use hard wooden sticks to whack things about. 

 

Roller hockey might be an alternative when it is warm or when you are not close to an ice rink. Again, learn to skate before attempting to swing a stick whilst doing it. 

 

If you live in Ireland you might want to get into the GAA and ply hurling. This game takes using a hockey stick, which is called hurl, to the next level. You play on the grass on the scale of a football field and it’s brutal. 

 

The keto diet is good to lose weight while maintaining performance. Otherwise, you might want to keep the carbohydrates for fast energy in your body. It can also be a good diet if you don’t want to scale back your meat, butter and cream intake while still losing weight.