In the early 20th century, research has discovered that putting some patients
with epilepsy on a high-fat low-carbohydrate diet helped control
their seizures. When you're on this diet or when you're fasting, you're considered
in ketosis. Instead of burning carbohydrates for energy, your body turns
fat into molecules called ketones and uses those instead. Today for most people,
the keto diet has nothing to do with epilepsy and everything to do with
losing weight. While the keto diet has been exploding in popularity recently
the science behind it like most diets is complicated and for some people it's not
clear whether it's either healthy or beneficial. With all this in mind, I
decided to try the keto diet myself. To kick things off, I met with Dr. Ethan
Weiss. He's a cardiologist at UC San Francisco and he's also created a device
called Keyto that tells you if you're in ketosis. So this is a device that looks a
lot like a vape pen. We get told that a lot. This little symbol right here is the
chemical symbol for acetone. So acetone is the chemical that we're measuring in
breath and this device allows you to do that. So in a very simple way of
explaining it, there's there is a sort of chemical signature (yea) in the breath (yes).
Once and when you're on the diet, you can sort of as you get more deeply
invested in it you can see that in how much you'll you're producing and
potentially measure it. - And this tells you what your keto level is. So basically
that's your score. So if I messed up and I accidentally ate a Buttered Salmon with
some kind of sugary sauce on it (yeah, yeah), then I might in fact see that in the
school that I get. The one thing that we're hopeful is that the result of this
is people are gonna eat less crap. So there's gonna be less sugar, less refined
carbohydrate. I would absolutely say it's not for everybody and anyone who makes a
big nutrition change like this should talk about it with their doctor but I'm
comfortable being on it. I'd be comfortable my kids being on it. I'm
comfortable my patients being on it. So I used the Keyto determine my baseline
levels and find out where I was starting from.
Good.
Keep blowing.
Keep blowing until you're gone.
Perfect.
And It'll
2! Interesting. So can I throw some foods out you and could just say 'love it.'
You know, maybe in moderation, or not so good. Yea. That's good. Test me. Yeah. Good.
How about avocado? Avocado is great.
Tomatoes? Tomatoes are probably okay. Potatoes? Bad. Corn? Bad. Berries?
So berries are okay. I know I'm going to miss fruit as I eat a lot of it and I
frequently treat myself to ice cream and chocolate at the end of the day. I'm a real
sweet tooth, so I'm gonna have to find a keto-friendly indulgence that I can have.
Another thing on this is certain starchy veggies, like potatoes. So I'm here at the
grocery store and I'm gonna pick up everything I need according to my Keyto
meal plan so that I can get started with my keto diet. So this is basically the
happy place for a keto dieter. We just really want to be loading up our shopping cart with cheese.
Yeah. Okay, I would normally pick something like this up when I'm in a
grocery store but this has just got too much rice. Probably my, my biggest
sacrifice this week has been in tomatoes, which please, don't judge me, they are my
favorite food. I know that's a little bit weird but I'm obsessed. So I've had to
really cut down because they are also quite sugary. This is pretty much the bad
section right in front of us. All done. So it's day 2 and I blew in my Keyto
device and I scored a 2, which is definitely an increase. Yesterday, I was
on a 1. Ah, so I think I'm getting a little bit better. It says I'm in- on my way
to light ketosis. This morning I had a very fatty low sugar yogurt and lots and
lots of coffee and that's pretty much all I've had today. So I'm feeling a
little bit tired and a little bit sluggish and I think that's normal. A lot
of people say they experienced a little bit of a keto-flu in the first week as
their body is transitioning away from being reliant on on sugar. The one thing
I do really miss is chocolate. So we'll see how that how that goes as I get
deeper into the week. Pudding. It's day three on the keto diet and I'm about to
get up and make myself the same breakfast for the third day in a row,
which is cheesy eggs with avocado and oil. I'm making this even though I'm sure
there are other breakfast options because this is the thing that I can do
quickly before work and I want to just kind of get it done and get out the door.
Day five hard and not really looking forward to the weekend. A bit sick of
eating cheese and nuts. We made it today eight of the keto diet. So I will say
that I'm doing a lot better and I'm not quite as tired as I was this weekend.
When I think I was really hit hardest by this keto-flu that happens when your
body is transitioning away from carbohydrates into this new energy
source. So it's day 13 on the keto diet. I actually feel quite good today. I've also
lost a few pounds but that might be down to just eating at home or and and kind
watching what I'm eating than anything else. So day 13 things are looking good.
I then talked to Dr. Yoni Friedhof, Founder and Medical Director of the
Bariatric Medical Institute, to get some clarity on the science behind the diet.
There's definitely no evidence to suggest that keto is better than any
other diet at the management of weight. All diets work by way of a reduction in
calories, including the keto diet. And if a person happens to enjoy living a keto
lifestyle and in turn doing, so reduces their calories, good for them. The other
issue in regard to these diets is they really do provide people with this echo-chamber and, and culture and
identity and those things, like religions in a sense, confer a lot of belief which in many cases supersedes and outpaces actual
evidence. And if you do go on a keto diet it probably is worth having your
Cape, Co-Founder of the healthcare company, 98point6, the potential drawbacks of
the keto diet became very real. There were two things that I changed that
probably were were the reason why I loved the diet. Number one was I- I
started to drink bulletproof coffee in the morning, which I adored and then in
the afternoon. The way I would get through the afternoon
was I would snack on cheese, which I also adore and unfortunately both of these
changes to my diet had an offsetting and negative impact on my blood work. So you
went in to your doctor and you had your standard annual physical and what did
the tests show. All of the tests pointed in the direction of basically concluding
that unfortunately for my body and my metabolism that the diet wasn't healthy.
It was making me smaller, yes, but the impact on my blood was such that you
know that my doctor couldn't recommend and, in fact, my doctor joked with me. He said Robbie it's true that we'll be
able to build a smaller coffin for you, but it'll be a coffin nonetheless. So
I've been on keto diet now for about two weeks and I cheated this weekend and so
I definitely had more carbs. But for the most part, I've been pretty strict and on
keto and fortunately for me I had this device and it comes with this
accompanying app, where you can look at certain foods and just make sure that
they're okay and for me this is really important to have because I just don't
know how I would have done keto otherwise. It's a little bit of a
challenging strict diet. So having something where I could just make sure
that I was eating the right foods coupled with the sensor which was giving
me these points scores and when I saw that my scores are getting better at
motivates I need to keep going. I actually think I needed this this
positive reinforcement or I wouldn't have been able to keep it up for quotes-
quite so long. So as far as how it went for me: The first week was really, really
hard and I definitely felt like crap, both on this third day and the fourth
day. By week two, I started to notice a few of the more positive impacts and I
lost a little bit of weight, not a ton but a little bit, and I had higher energy
throughout the day. I didn't get the typical 4 or 5 o'clock, slumping over
my desk feeling that I usually get. I actually just felt like pretty good. So
what I've learned from my two weeks on keto is that it's been great to just eat
it home more and also just to pay attention to the things that I'm putting
into my body and because of that I feel a lot healthier. So going forward I'm
going to be doing a diet that's a little bit lower in sugar but offers a bit more
flexibility than I had on keto. And I think just in general I've learned to
pay closer attention to what I'm eating. So that's what I'm going to do next.