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Keto: The Future Of Dieting?

by Donna Mastriani on Mar 05, 2025

A Keto diet has become very popular over the years as more celebrities embrace it and show the rest how much weight loss can result from it. A ket diet involves consuming more fats, less protein, and even less carbohydrates. When it comes to your macros (protein, carbohydrates, and fats), carbohydrates are the ones you can theoretically survive without.

What is a Keto diet?

Typically, your body uses glucose (blood sugar) as its primary fuel source. You can consume carbohydrates like sugars and starches to get glucose in your diet. Your body then breaks down carbohydrates into glucose and uses it to fuel your body. However, if you have excess glucose that your body can use, your liver stores it for future use. If you adopt a keto diet, it means that you'll consume very minimal amounts of carbohydrates and replace most of your carb intake with fats. Doing this sends your body into ketosis, a state where the body uses fat as its primary source instead of glucose. Low-carb intake means that you have very low levels of carbohydrates in your body, which results in the fat storage in your body going immensely down. When your body can't find carbs to fuel it, it starts breaking down fats, producing a compound known as ketones. Ketones then become your brain's primary source of energy. When your body turns fats into ketones, it can use fats from your diet or body fat stores. Usually, your liver produces small amounts of ketones on its own. It's important to note that when your glucose levels decrease, so will your insulin level. When this happens, your liver will level up the production of ketones to ensure your brain has sufficient energy to use. So, when your body is in ketosis, your blood contains high amounts of ketones. Adopting a keto diet teaches your body how to burn fat and use it as fuel in the place of glucose. A standard keto contains around 70-80% of fats, 5-10% of carbohydrates, and 10-20% of proteins. When adopting a keto diet, you'll have to be aware that lots of nutrient-rich foods contain high levels of carbohydrates. These include fruits, whole grains, and vegetables. However, you'll have to cut them from your diet or eat minimal amounts of these nutrient-rich foods. Foods that you'll mainly consume in a keto diet include:

Nuts and seeds
Eggs
Cheese
Butter and cream
Oils like olive oil
Meats and fish

Types of keto diets

There are various types of keto diets that you can partake in. These include:

Standard ketogenic diet: This is the most common keto diet. It includes high fat, moderate amounts of proteins and very little carbs.
Cyclical ketogenic diet: This includes cycling your keto diet to specific days of the week. For example, most people doing this have five ketogenic days and two high-carb days.
Targeted ketogenic diet: This diet includes adding carbs around your workouts to fuel them.
High protein ketogenic diet: This is similar to the standard keto diet, except it includes adding more protein. The ratio of food intake includes 60% fat, 35% protein, and 5% carbs.

Of these four keto diets, only the standard and high-protein ones have been studied and proven to work. Targeted and cyclical keto diets are more advanced and mainly used by athletes and bodybuilders. When on a keto diet, it's necessary to keep an eye on your protein consumption. That's because protein can also be converted to glucose if consumed in high quantities, which will delay your body's time to enter into ketosis. You will also need to be keen on your carb intake. The best way to do this is by filling up with foods that contain fats like meat, nuts, eggs, fish, and healthy oils. This will prevent you from having glucose in your body and quickly send you into a state of ketosis. Intermittent fasting can also help your body enter ketosis. There are many forms of intermittent fasting, but they all include limiting your food intake to a certain number of hours per day. This can range from 8 hours to 4 hours. These include fasting for 16 and 20 hours respectively. Knowing whether your body is in a state of ketosis is simple. You can do so by taking a urine, blood, or breath test. These tests will show you whether your body is in ketosis by measuring the amount of ketones your body produces. Some signs will help you know your body is in ketosis. These include increased urination, decreased hunger or appetite, dry mouth, and increased thirst.

Health benefits of a keto diet

Since the ketogenic diet has been studied immensely, many benefits are associated with this type of diet. These include:

Diabetes and prediabetes

The keto diet is notorious for helping in weight loss. Excess fat in the body is often linked to metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and prediabetes. So, adopting a keto diet can prevent excess weight that ultimately results in these illnesses. In a study involving 349 people with type 2 diabetes, the results showed that they all lost an average of 11.9 kgs over two years, and their blood sugar management improved, which led to less use of sugar medication among the participants.

Cancer

Studies are underway to check how this diet can help slow tumour growth. The logic behind the keto diet helping with cancer treatment is that some cancers cannot metabolize ketones. Therefore, a keto diet can reduce the circulation of glucose levels and induce ketosis, starving cancer cells of energy. Normal cells will, however, still utilize ketones for growth and survival. Keto Broke Down

However, for the this diet to be utilized in cancer therapy, more studies still need to eb more studies undertaken to help prove that it works and that people can hopefully get good results by recovering.

Neurological conditions (epilepsy, alzeihmers, parkisons)

Multiple studies show that a ketogenic diet can help children with epilepsy by altering the "excitability" part of their brain. It, therefore, reduces seizures in epileptic children. A ketogenic diet can also slow down the advancement of Alzheimer's disease and reduce its symptoms. More research is needed on the effects of a keto diet on Parkinson's disease. However, a single study showed that it improves the symptoms of the disease.

Foods to avoid on a keto diet

When starting a new diet, knowing which foods you can consume and which you can't can be hard. Here are some foods that you need to avoid in your diet:

Fruits
Sugary foods
Sauces and condiments with sugar
Grains and starches like rice and wheat products
Unhealthy fats like processed vegetable oil
Sugar-free diet foods like puddings and syrup
Alcohol
Beans and legumes
Root vegetables and tubers like carrots and potatoes
Low-fat or diet products like mayonnaise and dressings

Final thoughts

A ketogenic diet is your best friend if you've been looking for a good diet to help you in your weight loss journey or to manage your insulin levels. A ketogenic diet puts your body in a state of ketosis where the body utilises fat for fuel instead of glucose, thus resulting in fat burn. When adopting this new diet, you need to be aware of your food sensitivities because they can cause symptoms, making it hard to try out this diet. You can do that by taking a Food sensitivity test. This test will help you know which foods you need to eliminate from your diet to prevent having uncomfortable symptoms.

Author: Donna Mastriani, S.N.H.S. Dip., Nutritionist / Care Manager

Donna has a diploma in Advanced Holistic Nutrition and 10 years customer service experience so is perfect as the Customer Care Manager, who manages the 24/7 team for global support.