By Richard Tardif
It’s a fantasy. Go ahead and eat fast food with while increasing fats all day and still lose weight? Give me two sausage egg-McMuffins, double the cheese, two hash browns, and a Diet Coke, but I’ll toss the buns and by supper, I’ll have eaten some more meat because unlike the Keto plan, dirty keto says it doesn’t matter where the fats, protein and carbohydrates come from…Yesssss, with a hand pump!
It’s the latest version of the high-fat, low-carb keto diet, but is it good for you in the long-term? And can you still burn fat while eating processed foods? That’s the question everyone is asking.
On a regular keto diet, you focus on macronutrients, with fats (75 percent of your daily calories), some protein (20 percent), and a very small amount of carbs (less than five percent). According to keto proponents, and there are plenty, restricting carbs puts your body into ketosis, according to keto proponents. This is known as a metabolic state where you burn fat, not glucose, for fuel. Rapid weight loss and reduced inflammation is said to be the result of continued adherence to keto.
Dirty keto follows the same breakdown of fats, protein, and carbs, but with one difference. It doesn’t matter where those macronutrients come from. Instead of choosing good fats like wild salmon and avocado for lunch, you might reach for a fast food cheeseburger without the bun.
The easiest comparison is to say clean keto diets focus on organic vegetables, grass-fed meat and butter, and healthy fats like coconut oil and olive oil, while dirty keto lets you perude in pork rinds, Cheezies, chips – processed foods.
Logically, this doesn’t seem helpful.
What is really happening when you do the dirty deed, is that you’re missing micronutrients (like vitamins, minerals, and enzymes), which are equally as important to your overall health. While it may be possible to stay in ketosis while doing dirty keto, the body will eventually respond in a negative way to the processed foods, the way it always had. This negative response is weight gain and a downturn in health, which is the very reason in the first place someone may turn to keto.
Live. With. It.
Richard Tardif is an award-winning journalist, author based in Montreal
