How long should you stay on keto is a much debated topic amongst the experts. Most will say that if you are going to eat a nutritional diet that allows you to go into ketosis that you can stay on it for long periods of time. Many will suggest that you eat the ketogenic diet for the rest of your life. I have to agree with those experts based upon the research I have done.
Others suggest that you rotate a few weeks on keto followed by a few weeks off. I personally disagree with the later. Based upon how long it can take to get into ketosis, if you are cycling on and off, your body will just start burning fats when you rotate back to eating carbs. In order to reap the most benefits of ketosis, you will need to be in keto for an extended periods of time.
Why is keto safe to eat long term
If you are following my suggestions as well as the recommendations of other experts, you will be eating foods that will give you energy and the nutrition that you need to live a long and healthy life. Simply by cutting out most carbohydrates and sugars, you are significantly reducing or even eliminating the risk so some diseases and cancer. There are quite a few studies that link sugar as a significant factor to developing a whole variety of diseases, you can check out my blog on some of them here. By reducing your sugar intake, you will be reducing your risk of a number of diseases. If you reduce your risk of diseases, you will also be hedging your bet for a longer life.
By eating a lot of vegetables, some meat, healthy fats and very few carbs and sugars you are on the right path to get the proper nutrition. With proper nutrition, comes a healthier body. If your body is healthier, it will also be functioning at its best. When that happens, you are less likely to suffer from colds and the flu. That is simply due to the fact that your immune system is able to deal with those viruses. I am not saying that you will not get a cold or the flu. Your symptoms will likely be reduced if you do get a cold or flu.
Eating the ketogenic diet is safe long term because of several reasons.
- If you are eating a proper keto diet, you will be getting the nutrients needed to be healthy.
- You are not flooding your body with sugars which have numerous unhealthy side affects.
- Reduced inflammation. By eating keto, you will reduce the inflammation in your body. Your joints will notice the reduction in inflammation. Reducing the inflammation in your body allows your immune system to function correctly and will just make you feel better overall.
- There are no long term side affects. Since you are not putting anything in your mouth that is not natural or has health benefits, there is nothing to cause a side affect.
- You are avoiding many of the pitfalls that most don’t. For example, high-fructose corn syrup and most trans-fats. While there are other things that you will be missing out on, you will be all the healthier because of not eating those two things.
Keto is a lifestyle change
If you decide to start the ketogenic diet, and I strongly encourage you do, it should not be treated as a traditional “diet”. What I am saying is that most people “diet” to lose weight. While you will lose weight eating keto, the bigger purpose is to make you healthier. Don’t get me wrong, when I started keto, my main goal was to lose weight. After doing more research into ketosis and its benefits, I began to realize that keto isn’t a “diet”, instead it is a change of mindset and should change your behaviors. That was and is still hard to do, as humans we resist change.
My wife and I have made some pretty drastic changes to the way we eat. Not only have we changed the types of foods that we eat, we also do intermittent fasting and eat a lot more organic foods. Before going on keto, I would never buy organic unless it happened to be on sale and was cheaper than the non-organic food.
While the changes we made were very simple, the application was very difficult. Sometimes it is hard to justify paying a good bit more for organic foods, but after seeing some research about the negative side affects GMO, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and some fertilizers can give us, it became easier to justify.
I just want to eat keto to lose weight, then return to normal eating
If you treat the keto diet as a “diet” and you use it to lose weight and go back to eating your old diet. 
You will gain everything back that you lost fairly quickly. There are two main reasons for that.
The first is that when you lose weight, you are not actually getting rid of the fat cells. Your fat cells are depleted of water, but they are still there.
The second, which goes with the first is that the fat cells are not holding fluids that they did when you were eating sugar. The sugar causes the cells to store sugar and water (along with other things). So, if you lose the weight you were wanting to, and go back to your old diet you will lose all of your gains. As soon as you start eating sugar, those fat cells will plump right back up. The weight you lost will come back fairly quickly, much faster than you were able to lose it.
Just a quick example of this, my wife and I went on a two week vacation. We decided that we would eat what ever we wanted (average American diet). In just those two weeks, we both were able to notice that our bellies had expanded a good bit. We both gained about 15 pounds, in just two weeks! It then took us 2-3 months to get back to where we were before our vacation. I used this as an example just to show how quickly you can lose your gains if you go back to eating your old diet.
You are the only person that can determine if the ketogenic diet is right for you. If you do decide that you believe in the benefits of eating a healthier diet, it will be up to you to make the changes needed to your mindset to make the changes permanent. In my opinion, the biggest way to improve your mindset is education.
Diet misinformation and ignorance
I firmly believe that the average American is completely ignorant of what they are actually eating. Some just don’t care. Even if you were to read some labels, there are terms that most don’t have a clue what it is. If you don’t know what it is, why would you eat it? Just because the government has said that it is ok? The government has lied about the food pyramid that most of us grew up with. Our schools taught us that the food pyramid was the way we should eat to be healthy. Its no wander that Americans are confused by what a healthy diet is because of how much misinformation has put out.
The food pyramid many of us grew up with has been proven to be inaccurate information. The information was manipulated to show only the data that the doctor wanted. Essentially the doctor omitted information that was contrary to what he was trying to prove. That one study potentially has put the health of millions of people at risk. The government not only didn’t verify the study and didn’t perform any additional studies to verify his findings. The government just pushed this misinformation out all across the country. They even convinced other entities like the American Heart Association to accept this misinformation.
In the last 20+ years, there have been hundreds if not thousands of studies done that show that eating healthy is not what we were taught in school. I started this blog to make more people aware that they have been lied to most of their lives. By changing their diets, they will be reducing their risk of disease and possibly cancer. Here is my blog where I discuss a large number of health issues related to sugar.
I know most people realize that they should make a change, they just don’t know what that change should be. Hopefully more people will share the benefits of the ketogenic lifestyle. We need to accept that keto is not a “diet”. Keto is a change in your lifestyle based upon how we have been eating for thousands of years.
Here is a study where researchers studied 39 men and 44 women whom were obese and ate the ketogenic diet for 24 weeks. This was to test to see the long term effects of the ketogenic diet. The results may surprise you.
To learn more of the benefits of the ketogenic diet, check out my blog on keto here.
