What Happened to KETO? Does KETO Still Work in 2024?

[00:00:00] Speaker A: In 2016, the ketogenic diet became really, really popular, and a lot of people were losing a lot of weight and finding health through an entirely new way of eating. It's January of 2024, and the word on the street is that the keto diet isn't working anymore or isn't working as good as it did. What in the world happened? [00:00:19] Speaker B: Yeah, why not? [00:00:21] Speaker A: Welcome to episode 30 of the Duster Mud podcast. Today, we're going to dive in to what we think some of the things that have happened to keto these days and what's happened to people and why they're not seeing the results that they did when it first came on scene. [00:00:35] Speaker B: Yes. I think it's important to start with just a foundational understanding. What is ketosis? What is keto? [00:00:42] Speaker A: Okay. [00:00:42] Speaker B: Ketosis, it is a state that your body enters. It's a natural state, and in that state, it burns fat instead of glucose, and it produces ketones. And that entire state of being is called ketosis, okay? [00:01:05] Speaker A: Which is incredibly different from ketoacidosis, which is something that people whose bodies really don't work well get into. [00:01:16] Speaker B: That's right. At that level, the amount of ketones in your bloodstream becomes toxic. [00:01:22] Speaker A: Okay? [00:01:23] Speaker B: And dietary ketosis is not the same as ketoacidosis. So dietary ketosis is a healthy state of being where ketoacidosis. Not healthy. [00:01:37] Speaker A: Not healthy. Okay? So let's break this down to. I like to use analogies. Let's break this down to our bodies and how they work. Let's just say that our body is a car, okay? And our body is not just a car. I mean, we're not talking about, like, a 1969 mustang here, all right? Those things guzzle some gas. [00:02:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:02:07] Speaker A: Right? We're not even talking about a diesel f 350. Whatever. [00:02:13] Speaker B: It guzzles, too. [00:02:14] Speaker A: It guzzles. Let's make it a hybrid. In 2024. Hybrids are pretty popular, and they will run on both gasoline and battery power. Right, so it can switch back and forth. [00:02:34] Speaker B: That's right. [00:02:35] Speaker A: All right, so let's use our bodies as a car as we go forward in this to be able to understand when we're burning. What? [00:02:43] Speaker B: Okay. [00:02:44] Speaker A: All right. [00:02:44] Speaker B: Yes. Using the hybrid car as an analogy, when we are burning carbohydrates, that's like burning gasoline in the hybrid car. So as long as you're putting gasoline in that hybrid car, there's really no reason you don't need to burn or you don't need to use the battery. You're just using the gasoline. The car keeps driving just like a normal car does. Our bodies are like that as well. So as long as you're putting carbohydrates into our bodies, it's just like putting gasoline into the car. They will continue to burn carbohydrates, and your body runs on carbohydrates. However, like a hybrid, if you run that hybrid out of gas, it can switch over and run off of battery power. Our bodies do the same kind of conversion. If you run out of carbohydrates, if you run out of glucose that you're feeding your body, your body switches over into battery power and it starts to burn fat, your stored energy. Right. We've talked about in previous podcasts how your body only stores a couple thousand calories of glucose. However, it stores a couple hundred thousand calories in fat. That's on a normal size person, right? So there are hundreds of thousands of stored calories in fat, right? And so as your body transitions over to using your battery, now you're burning stored energy, your stored energy, you're burning fat, and your body enters into the state of ketosis. [00:04:28] Speaker A: Very cool. So what are some of the things that happen as we get into this way of eating? Once we understand what's happening and we get into this way of eating, but we're living really busy lives, and it seems that, and it's gotten really popular, so much so that the food industry has gotten involved and the food industry being involved. We were cheering it on there for a while, like, oh, good. There are things, there are options out there that are not just sugar laden, they are not wheat flour laden, they are lower in carbohydrates. And we were pretty glad. However, it has become quite ubiquitous at this point. [00:05:19] Speaker B: The keto food. [00:05:21] Speaker A: Processed, processed foods. So now there's so many keto processed foods. What has that done to us? [00:05:27] Speaker B: Well, the way that the industry has found to do this is by using a concept called net carbs, or net carbohydrates. And in order to get to a net carb, what you do is you take the total number of carbohydrates, and then you subtract fiber because your body doesn't digest fiber, right. And so what they have found is there are different kinds of flowers that have really high fiber contents. And so they will make these products, highly processed products with a flour that has a high fiber content. And then because your body doesn't digest the fiber, they then said, well, you can just subtract those carbohydrates out. [00:06:24] Speaker A: Okay. [00:06:25] Speaker B: And you end up with a net carb. Another thing that you can subtract out when you're dealing with net carbs is something that we talked about a couple of episodes ago, and that is sugar alcohol, erythritol. Right. [00:06:38] Speaker A: Being the primary one, your sugar alcohols. [00:06:41] Speaker B: Your body does not digest them. So it's something that you can subtract out and get to a net carb instead of a total carb. [00:06:51] Speaker A: Right. However, just because it's not digested doesn't mean that it doesn't affect your system in some manner. In some manner. Because our systems are so complex. Really complex to the point of we're still finding things out and how they respond to things. [00:07:09] Speaker B: Right. And in our sweetener discussion, we talked about how some of the sweeteners, your body still sees them like sugar, it doesn't digest them, but your body actually raises your insulin levels because it thinks that it's sugar. [00:07:25] Speaker A: Right. [00:07:27] Speaker B: In the net carb discussion, the type of sweetener really does matter, and that's why we really harped on in that discussion the natural zero calorie sweeteners that your body doesn't do the same thing with as some of the artificial zero calorie sweeteners. [00:07:50] Speaker A: So I'm guessing then that, okay, I'm going to eat this cookie. That's three net carbs. [00:07:57] Speaker B: So what can happen with your body with that is although there's fiber, your body can start to do things with that fiber. Your body starts to raise insulin levels with the fiber. Your body actually probably digests some of the fiber, maybe not all of it, but there's probably some of it that's being digested, actually. And so you're eating something sweet. The reward center of your brain is triggered. It says, oh, yay, you just fed me something sweet. The next thing that that does is triggers the, I need something else sweet. I need something else sweet. [00:08:44] Speaker A: You're just effectively not turning off that craving. The craving stays there. [00:08:49] Speaker B: That's right. [00:08:50] Speaker A: So in 2000, something we really want to get rid of. [00:08:53] Speaker B: Right. In 20, 16, 17, there weren't all of these processed substitutes. The substitutes weren't there. There really weren't a whole lot even of the sweeteners there. And so even in 2019, when we started keto, there weren't a whole lot of the natural keto sweeteners. There were a few. There were a few, not much. And so as we were learning about it, one of the key things that we learned was basically get off the sweets. [00:09:31] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:09:31] Speaker B: And we did for quite a while. [00:09:33] Speaker A: Quite a while. We didn't have much of any. [00:09:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:36] Speaker A: Right. And so with all of the processed foods coming in and all of the convenience coming in, I think there's just a tendency to overeat because if it's only three net carbs, but there are still calories there. There is still a response. Our body is still responding. Has to deal with all of the things in the cookie. [00:10:07] Speaker B: Right. [00:10:08] Speaker A: Or in the snack or whatever kind of meal it happens to be. [00:10:13] Speaker B: That's right. [00:10:15] Speaker A: And in those packages, it's just not whole food. [00:10:19] Speaker B: No, it is not whole food. That's true. [00:10:22] Speaker A: Which our body tends to deal with much better. Okay, so the net carb trap, that is one of the reasons that keto in 2024 doesn't seem to work like it did in 2016. [00:10:40] Speaker B: Yeah. The more you get away from Whole Foods, I think the less the whole thing is going to work. And the food industry has found a way to make money, continue to make money selling processed foods. [00:10:58] Speaker A: Right. Which is the business that they're in. [00:11:02] Speaker B: No harm, no foul. Right. Like, I'm not. I'm not saying that. I'm not making a moral judgment on the food industry based on what they are doing. [00:11:11] Speaker A: Right. [00:11:11] Speaker B: What I'm saying is if folks are finding that although they're eating a whole lot of keto foods because it says keto on the label. [00:11:22] Speaker A: Right. [00:11:23] Speaker B: That could potentially be one of the issues, is that your body is not dealing well with the processed foods. [00:11:34] Speaker A: Right. [00:11:35] Speaker B: Especially if you're looking for weight loss. Like, if you're trying a ketogenic lifestyle in order to lose weight, then these highly processed foods might be an issue. [00:11:48] Speaker A: An issue. Another issue is, and we heard this back four or five years ago, the concept of dirty keto. [00:11:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:11:56] Speaker A: So dirty keto basically is I'm going to eat all of the processed type foods. I'm still going to eat my fast food. I'm going to eat highly processed meats and such as that. I'm just going to withhold the bread. I'm going to withhold the fries. I'm not going to go for the onion rings. I'm going to cut out all of the doughy things, but I'm still pretty much going to eat all of the same stuff. If I want to go to the subway house or get pizza or maybe I'll get a bowl instead. If I'm going to go through fast food and get my chickfila or McDonald's or whatever, I'm still going to eat the exact same way. I'm just going to cut out all the fluffy stuff that would be considered dirty. Keto Diet Coke would be considered dirty. There's no sugar. There are zero calories and no sugar. So that would qualify as a keto beverage or a, well, a pizza bowl, lots of pepperonis and lots of processed things and such as that. I'm just going to just don't put it on a piece of dough. And that can work if you do it, maybe sparingly. [00:13:29] Speaker B: Yeah. What you end up with is poor gut health. Right. Your gut microbiome is being affected by the quality of the food that you're putting in. And so you could easily end up with poor gut health with that type of food. [00:13:48] Speaker A: Right. [00:13:48] Speaker B: A lot of times you're going to get a lot of the seed oils that we talked about in our last. [00:13:56] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yes. You're definitely going to get those. [00:14:00] Speaker B: You're feeding your body inflammatory things with the seed oils and then additionally your nutrition level just might not be there. Right. [00:14:13] Speaker A: Like the vitamins and minerals. [00:14:15] Speaker B: Where are your vitamins and minerals coming from? If you're eating hamburgers without the bun, where are the vitamins and minerals coming from? [00:14:29] Speaker A: Right. [00:14:31] Speaker B: Look, trust me, I understand that there are times when you have to do this. When active duty in the air force, I had to go temporary duty. And there are times when you just. [00:14:47] Speaker A: Have to eat and we're not perfect, and we don't eat 100% clean all of the time. We also travel. We go out. Oh, you remember that one time? [00:15:04] Speaker B: Yeah, you told me about that one time. I was temporary duty, driving a long drive with another gentleman, and we stopped at Burger King. [00:15:16] Speaker A: That's what was available. [00:15:17] Speaker B: Because that's what was available. [00:15:18] Speaker A: Right. [00:15:18] Speaker B: And you got to eat. That's right. I ordered two baconators with cheese. Double, sorry, two double baconators with cheese. No bun, no fries. [00:15:34] Speaker A: Now, is that the healthiest thing in the world, to eat? No, it is not. [00:15:40] Speaker B: But it was low carb and I needed food. [00:15:45] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. [00:15:46] Speaker B: I didn't have anything with me, and so I ate. And his comment was, that skinny fool just had two double baconators with cheese and look at him. Yeah, and I did. I ate all of it. And I don't know, nutritionally, I got fuel, really is what I needed. If I did that all the time, I can't imagine that I would be healthy. [00:16:20] Speaker A: No, I think you would feel like crap. [00:16:22] Speaker B: I would not feel good, and I would not have the nutrients that I would need. [00:16:27] Speaker A: Right. [00:16:28] Speaker B: But we don't do that all of the time. [00:16:30] Speaker A: No. To do it when you need to do it and to do it occasionally. Look, life is life. [00:16:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:16:38] Speaker A: Life is life. [00:16:39] Speaker B: So this one is another potential place where keto is not working. It could be that highly processed foods. [00:16:51] Speaker A: It could be dirty keto right at home cooking. If you can swing it, do some meal prepping, cut your stuff up ahead of time, put it into ziploc bags so you can cook it quick when you get home. [00:17:07] Speaker B: On travel, I was able to take a lot of my foods with me for the airplane ride. I would have cheese and meats in ziploc bag, a few nuts bags. I would take nuts. I took packs so that I could have a bulletproof keto coffee for breakfast. I was able to take a lot of foods with me, but I just wasn't able to catch every meal, every time. [00:17:35] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. [00:17:39] Speaker B: The answer to that is home cooked meals. [00:17:41] Speaker A: Home cooked meals. [00:17:42] Speaker B: Real food. [00:17:42] Speaker A: The answer, real whole food, home cooked meals. And in fact, if you're interested, the last video that we just put out, we did a home cooked meal. It was a 15 minutes meal. Hamburger, eggs, cheese, lots of seasoning. And it is amazing. And it doesn't take long. Keep it simple. That's my main thing. Got to keep it simple. [00:18:10] Speaker B: So another one is potential trap is your individual carb limits? Everybody is different. And so we talked about a long time ago that Dr. Colbert, in his book the Ketozone Diet, discusses the idea of your individual keto carb limit. And one of the things to just understand is your body is different than everyone else's body, and the limit for your body for how many carbs you can take in is going to be different than other people's. [00:18:54] Speaker A: Right. [00:18:55] Speaker B: And Dr. Colbert discusses in the book, some people may be able to take in 70, 75 carbs in a day and still maintain ketosis. Other people may be 15. If they get above 15, it may kick them out of ketosis. And you mentioned 20. [00:19:17] Speaker A: I did. As a baseline average number that they have found that if you're 20 or below total carbs, not net carbs, total carbs, 20 or below. Most people will find themselves in ketosis. [00:19:36] Speaker B: That's right. The majority of people, if you maintain less than 20 grams of carbohydrates per day, the majority of people, almost everybody, your body will go into ketosis. Right. [00:19:51] Speaker A: In fact, your body will go into ketosis overnight. [00:19:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:19:55] Speaker A: You usually wake up in ketosis. So if we can just carry that on through the day, we're winning. [00:20:02] Speaker B: Yeah. And sort of associated with the idea of your individual keto carb limit is the idea that, well, I eat low carb for breakfast and lunch, but I eat a normal dinner. [00:20:19] Speaker A: That does not work. You're sending your body too many signals. [00:20:27] Speaker B: Well, it's just like that hybrid vehicle. If you're constantly putting gasoline in it on a daily basis, then it's going to run off of gasoline. It may run off of the batteries for a minute, but then it's going to run off of gas. As soon as you put the gas in, it starts running off of gas. And so just like that hybrid, if you're constantly pouring gasoline into your body daily by carbs, excessive amounts of carbs, even if it's just one meal, your body will never make that actual transition over into a sustained state of ketosis. And again, not saying that that's bad. Discuss what are your goals, especially if you're looking for weight loss. Your body's never going to start burning your own stored fat using your battery. It's not going to do that as long as you're putting that carbohydrate gasoline into your motor. Right. It never has to. It doesn't need to. It's constantly getting gasoline. It does not need to transition over to battery power. [00:21:39] Speaker A: Right. [00:21:39] Speaker B: And it takes about anywhere from four to six months of a strict ketogenic diet, being in ketosis. And then you can start to add a little bit of carbs back. [00:21:55] Speaker A: During that four to six months, you have trained your engine to run on ketones to burn the fat as a preference. [00:22:04] Speaker B: That's right. [00:22:05] Speaker A: To do that first. [00:22:06] Speaker B: Yes. [00:22:07] Speaker A: That way, if I give it something else, if I put gas in it and then it burns it out, it will quickly just revert right back to its stored energy. [00:22:21] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. It will use the gas and then it will say, yes, back to battery. [00:22:26] Speaker A: It won't say, I need more gas, I need more gas. And sit there in a stupor. [00:22:31] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:22:33] Speaker A: That's one thing that we have found is we don't get into the ups and downs. We don't get into the stupor at all. [00:22:45] Speaker B: Right. [00:22:46] Speaker A: Even if we have a little bit, which we don't eat a whole lot. But even if we were to eat a few more carbohydrates, we're still metabolically flexible to take in the carbs, deal with the carbs, and then get right back to fat burning and there's no big dip. [00:23:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:06] Speaker A: And that's really what you're after long term, is spend those six months strict, ease back, find out what your threshold is on how many carbs can my body have a day and still stay within, get back into ketosis and then creating the metabolic flexibility to live life, right? [00:23:33] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. And a lot of people do that on purpose. They get themselves to where their body prefers to burn fat and produce ketones, and then they do start cycling carbs back and forth. And they believe that that to be the more healthy option, to do carb cycling to maintain metabolic flexibility. And a lot of people do that. [00:23:57] Speaker A: Right. [00:23:58] Speaker B: Again, what are your goals here? If your goal is weight loss, especially if you're trying to lose the fat, if you're wanting to run off of the battery, don't put gas in. [00:24:13] Speaker A: Right. [00:24:14] Speaker B: If you're trying to lose the fat, don't tell your body, let's start using gasoline again right now. When you get to the state that you're happy, like, I don't need to lose any more weight. Okay, then if you want to add some carbs back in, do some carb cycling, maintain metabolic flexibility. All of the things that you'll hear folks talk about, if that's what you want to do. Awesome, right. You've met your goals. Go ahead and do that. What we find in our bodies is we prefer the state, our mental state and our sense of well being. We prefer it when we're burning ketones, when our body. Sorry. Is burning fat and producing ketones and our brain is operating off of ketones. We prefer that as our normal state to the state that we get from a carbohydrate glucose. [00:25:15] Speaker A: Yeah, way prefer it. [00:25:16] Speaker B: Metabolic state, right? Yes. Really? It's two different metabolic states. A ketosis state or a non ketosis state. And we preferred the ketosis state. Just the way that we feel. [00:25:30] Speaker A: Yeah. The glucose state is miserable to us, to me. [00:25:38] Speaker B: We do not prefer that. [00:25:39] Speaker A: No. [00:25:39] Speaker B: So we don't do the carb cycling? No, we don't do the. I need to maintain metabolic flexibility by adding carbohydrates into our diet. We don't do that because we don't like the way it feels. [00:25:52] Speaker A: No, not at all. That's all. Yeah. So maybe those are a few of the reasons that we are finding in 2024 that keto just doesn't seem to be working as well as it did. I believe that keto is exactly the same as it ever was. And in the 1920s, when it was discovered that it worked initially on children with epilepsy, and they found that it was very, very useful. Other diets. Atkins. It works. Keto works. Whole food, real whole food with high fats, not seed oils. It works. Yeah, it absolutely works. And we would just encourage you, if you're considering switching your way of eating to a more keto lifestyle or more keto way of eating. We would encourage you to try to stay away from the net carb trap for sure. [00:26:56] Speaker B: At least at first. [00:26:57] Speaker A: Yeah, get yourself on whole food. [00:27:00] Speaker B: I would go pure, pure at first. [00:27:03] Speaker A: Go as pure as you can at first. And try to stay away from the fast food stuff because what they make just isn't amazing. Really healthy for you. And stick with whole foods. [00:27:18] Speaker B: Yeah. And just realize that the idea of having a keto carb limit where you are wanting to eat a certain number of carbohydrates in a day above what would normally be considered keto, might hinder your goals, especially if it's a weight loss goal. And just think about it as carbohydrates being gasoline and fats being battery power. And how are you wanting to burn your body, your vehicle? [00:28:00] Speaker A: What's your energy source? [00:28:01] Speaker B: Yeah, what's your energy source? Maybe that would be helpful for you. [00:28:04] Speaker A: Right? Well, thank you guys for hanging out with us. And this channel is growing and it's super fun for us. If you are enjoying this, if you haven't subscribed, about half of the people who watch have not subscribed. [00:28:22] Speaker B: Yeah, that's true. [00:28:22] Speaker A: If you're watching and you haven't subscribed, go ahead and hit the subscribe button. And that way you'll know every time we put a new video out. And if you really are enjoying it, share this with your friends and your family. That would be super amazing. And until next time, bye, y'all. [00:28:38] Speaker B: Bye, y'all. Bye.