Meet the keto diet.
However, in the epilepsy community, it’s known as the ketogenic diet and it can be traced back to the 1920s.
The modern day keto isn’t keto. Someone realized they lost weight on the keto diet and, toot, toot, all aboard the temporary weight loss train!
The ketogenic diet isn’t a diet. It’s a treatment for children and teens with uncontrolled (refractory) epilepsy. In 1994, it gained mainstream attention as a seizure control treatment when a young boy with refractory epilepsy was kept seizure free thanks to the ketogenic diet. I live with epilepsy, and I learned about the treatment as a teenager.
When a patient first goes on the ketogenic diet, their doctor refers them to a dietitian. The dietitian calculates the ketogenic formula for the patient, accounting for their height, weight, level of physical activity, medications and/or supplements and so forth. Each morsel is either restricted or monitored, and measured to the milligram.
Unless you can claim these measures, you’re not eating the ketogenic diet. Because this high fat, low carb diet is a wing and a prayer for families. Not a chicken wing, hold the sauce.
We need to stop taking diets meant for chronic diseases and assigning them cutesy names just because we want thinner thighs and flat stomachs. Because, in reality, these aren’t diets. They’re a treatment in the form of a fad diet.
Yes, the ketogenic diet can help with other diseases, however, seizure control is the primary intent.
Fitting into your size 4 dress by New Year’s Eve isn’t a disease.
And please stop flipper-flop dieting. One day you’re keto. The next you’re gluten free. Then you’re paleo. Then back to keto.
A moment on paleo. Do you know what paleo is? It’s food found in nature by hunting and gathering. When was the last time you saw a paleo chocolate chip cookies hanging from a tree? Never. But they’re in stores, so they must be out there, being gathered from trees.
Please stop stealing diets – our treatments. No one was interested in Celiac disease until they saw people becoming temporarily thinner. I can’t tell you how many times someone asked me, “Oh, you’re on the gluten free diet! How much weight have you lost?”
Um, my soul, which I’d sell for a real doughnut.
While eliminating gluten can help fibromyalgia, epilepsy, IBS, and multiple sclerosis, those with Celiac disease can’t eat Quaker Oatmeal for breakfast. Just because the bread is gluten free doesn’t mean the same can be said for the toppings. Each ingredient must be gluten free.
Restrictive ketogenic and Celiac disease diets aren’t fads. They’re not optional for people whose health depend on an ingredient or calculation. These diets should be called treatments. The word diet means your trying to lose weight. Eating healthy isn’t a diet. And neither is Celiac disease.
Because you can cheat on a diet.
Tammy W. Karatchuk 