Keto

Lately, I have been stumbling over the ketogenic diet
all over the Health internet. Didn't sound terribly appealing:
one stays in a mild form of ketacidosis all the time to
control weight, with a diet aiming for a calorie split of
65% fat, 25% protein, 5%+ carbs. Sounds like a bad Atkins
day as a life sentence. How would one even set up such
madness?

I do believe I've cracked the math of it: one starts with the
accepted fact that fats come in at 9 calories per gram, and proteins
and carbs at 4. One then looks up the percentage of calories
from fat in a given food. An egg, for example, is the perfect keto
food: at 70 calories, 45 of those are from fat while the rest is
protein; thus 65% fat.

Overall, one ends up ditching starchy vegetables, grains
and legumes but all to the good. One eats only once or twice a
day, because the aim is to reduce insulin release in both quantity
and frequency. It is called intermittent fasting. I'm talking to you,
homie!

I then googled what is wrong with keto. Well, our muscles store
glycogen from blood sugar so this diet is not for body builders, or
athletes without some tweaking. Someone in ketosis going hungry is
meant to use body fat - hence this is good for fat loss - but in a pinch
will break down muscle tissue. And the heart is a muscle. This seems
to be the great fear about keto: it might damage the heart.

More generally, there is disagreement about what the human
metabolism is meant to be: fueled by fat, or sugar. Clearly both
are possible, because we use both. Something to look into...