Keto Clarity: Your Definitive Guide to the Benefits of a Low-Carb, High-Fat Diet (36 page)

After attempting so many “gimmicks,” as she describes them, to lose weight over nearly four decades—calorie-counting, low-fat diets, weight loss pills, diet shakes, protein bars, and those rah-rah support meetings that left her more broke than healthy—Lynne decided enough was enough when the reality that she carried 344 pounds on her five-foot-four-inch frame had her “very afraid” in September 2009.

“I was beyond discouraged,” Lynne told me. “I was exhausted from extremely stressful situations in my work environment and at home. And I was struggling to balance the challenges that life was throwing at me.”

One of those challenges was taking care of her ailing mother, who suffered from type 2 diabetes until she succumbed to the disease at the age of seventy-four. It was at that point that Lynne vowed to do something to prevent herself from experiencing the same fate, because that was “not the way to die.” But all of the conventional dietary and lifestyle advice she had been given by doctors—namely, eating a low-fat diet and exercising more—were making her “hungrier, sicker, and fatter” than ever before.

“I was exhausted all the time. I felt like a complete failure,” Lynne admitted.

In November 2009, Lynne went to see Dr. Eric Westman, who she had heard was having great success using a low-carb, high-fat ketogenic diet to manage his patients’ obesity, type 2 diabetes, and other chronic diseases.

Dr. Westman opened Lynne’s eyes to the stark reality that the low-fat diet she had been following in an attempt to lose weight and get healthy, was in fact the exact reason why she was having so much trouble getting her weight under control, and, ironically, it was putting her on the path to the same health problems that she had watched her mom go through. That was all it took to motivate her to give a ketogenic diet a try. By eating a 1600-calorie diet of 90 percent dietary fat, 8 percent protein, and just 2 percent carbohydrates, Lynne lost a total of 200 pounds. More importantly, she has kept that weight off for more than four years.

“I have lived—thrived!—in a steady state of optimal ketosis,” she shared. “Thanks to Dr. Westman, I have learned to eat a well-formulated ketogenic diet enjoying delicious, fresh foods high in good dietary fats, moderate in protein, and very, very low in carbohydrates.”

After years of fighting constant hunger on every eating plan she tried, hunger is no longer an issue for Lynne: now she eats only one meal a day and has “embraced intermittent fasting.” This has brought her fasting blood sugar levels down into the 70s, with regular blood ketone readings between 1.8 and 4.0 millimolar. Her energy levels are through the roof and every measurable sign of her health is spectacular, including normal blood pressure and outstanding cholesterol ratios.

“These kind of improvements in my health are hard to believe for those who don’t understand the science behind a ketogenic diet and nutritional ketosis. But it is true,” Lynne stated.

Lynne eats lots of coconut oil, olive oil, butter, heavy cream, cream cheese, hard cheeses, whole eggs, and sometimes a few macadamia nuts. Protein is limited to small portions; she says she treats it like a condiment for her high-fat meals. As for vegetables, from time to time she consumes a few non-starchy ones, such as lettuce, kale, spinach, onions, tomatoes, green beans, squash, zucchini, broccoli, and bell peppers.

“I have the best health of my life and my healthiest years are still ahead of me,” said Lynne. “Healing is indeed possible when you find the right diet for you.”

And from the results she has seen, obviously a low-carb, moderate-protein, high-fat, ketogenic diet is what’s right for Lynne.

As my grandmother used to say, when the you-know-what hits the fan, for heaven’s sake change what you are doing and see if things get better. If you keep doing the same thing, don’t expect different results. In my opinion a ketogenic diet would be a good choice for many people facing common chronic health problems.

– Dr. Bill Wilson

Freda Mooncotch
Chicago, Illinois – Age 40

Freda says the ketogenic diet “gave me back my life” after she struggled with adrenal burnout that had her sleeping most of the time for a period of eighteen months. In late 2012, she was still experiencing low energy and fatigue when she stumbled across the ketogenic diet. She immediately began adding in more fat to her diet in the form of raw cream and milk. When Freda noticed that her energy began returning and she was experiencing greater mental clarity and better memory than ever before, she knew she had found something special that could potentially get her out of her health rut.

In June 2013, Freda officially began a low-carb, moderate-protein, high-fat, ketogenic diet. Within a month, she was registering blood ketone levels in excess of 5.0 millimolar. What started off as a simple experiment to see what would happen has now become “a way of life” for Freda. Because of the increased energy from being in a state of nutritional ketosis, she was able to go back to school to obtain her undergraduate degree in nutrition and exercise science.

“Going back to school again was only a dream before I started on nutritional ketosis,” Freda shared. “Now it’s a reality and I will never go back to eating any other way.”

While she admits there are times when she goes out of ketosis, when that happens she can “feel the change.”

“It’s like day and night,” Freda said. “I go from Bradley Cooper in
Limitless
to Leonard in
Awakenings,
when the promised cure is starting to wear off and he realizes there is no chance for him to live his life. That scares the crap out of me.”

Now, Freda says, being in a ketogenic state makes her more aware of the difficulties so many people have in getting their health under control.

“They are living on the brink of Leonard and just want their energy back,” she noted. “Nutritional ketosis has given me an edge on life and has really helped me become the best version of me with ease.”

More energized and motivated than ever before, Freda now helps others get their life back with ketogenic coaching sessions.

Peggy Holloway
Omaha, Nebraska – Age 61

Peggy says she is “living proof that a ketogenic diet works” and has seen nearly everyone in her family “reverse health problems” using this nutritional approach. Peggy herself was on the verge of diabetes in 1999 after years of following a low-calorie, low-fat diet, and she watched her sister gain weight and develop type 2 diabetes despite doing what she thought were all the right things.

“I spent my adult life dieting according to the prevailing wisdom in order to avoid the horror of the fate that befell my grandfather and father in their later years, when they eventually died from complications from severe insulin resistance,” she said.

After watching her sister suffer with digestive issues, energy swings, brain fog, and an inability to lose weight without starving, Peggy began researching an alternative to the diet advice she had been given her entire life. She came across the work of Dr. Robert Atkins and considers him a hero for “leading me to an understanding that the crux of all of my family health problems was insulin resistance and carbohydrate intolerance.” Interestingly, her brother also discovered the low-carb, high-fat diet at the same time, and it helped him overcome chronic fatigue syndrome.

Switching to a whole foods–based ketogenic diet helped Peggy resolve gastrointestinal issues, brain fog, and blood sugar dysregulation while maintaining a healthy weight for well over a decade. Her partner, a seventy-two-year-old retired family physician named Dr. Ken Peters, supported Peggy’s efforts but continued to eat the Standard American Diet up until 2011, when he noticed he couldn’t get rid of some “stubborn belly fat” that no longer responded to cutting calories and exercising more. He shed about thirty pounds in three months by eating low-carb, but he tried going back to carb-loading prior to the Bicycle Ride Across Nebraska. He “hit the wall” and had no energy, and he realized he needed to do more.

That’s when he started listening to what Peggy was sharing about the exercise performance benefits that come from being in ketosis, which she learned about from Dr. Stephen Phinney and Dr. Jeff Volek’s book,
The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance
. He started eating a ketogenic diet and “is now a total convert.”

“The best side effect of our ketogenic lifestyle is the enhancement we have seen in our athletic pursuits, which we consider almost miraculous,” Peggy said.

Consuming more fat in the form of egg yolks and pork belly, as well as putting butter and coconut oil in their coffee (a concept known as “Bulletproof Coffee” that was popularized by online health entrepreneur and Paleo podcaster Dave Asprey), both Peggy and her partner have been able to enjoy multiple long-distance bicycle rides with plenty of energy and without any carbohydrate-based snacks to fuel their exercise. In fact, she was amazed by how much energy they had after the rides and the lack of muscle soreness that would typically follow a long-distance ride. And they’re no spring chickens, either, which makes this accomplishment all the more astonishing.

“We are sixty-one and seventy-two, respectively; neither of us has seen a physician for a medical problem in years; and we take no medications for chronic disease,” Peggy explained. “We are naturally so excited to share this with everyone we can because we want everyone who is suffering from following the conventional advice to eat low-fat, low-calorie diets to experience what we have. And we have the science to back it up!”

I don’t understand why cutting out foods with added sugars and refined and heavily processed foods and replacing them with natural fats, a variety of proteins, low glycemic load vegetables, and fruit is bad or can have negative metabolic effects. I haven’t seen evidence to that effect. It makes no sense. This is what humans have been eating forever.

– Jackie Eberstein

Dane DeValcourt
Lafayette, Louisiana – Age 40

Dane’s ketogenic success story involves a tremendous triple-digit weight loss but also, perhaps more important, an incredible turnaround in a rare disease he has been living with his entire life. In January 2013, at the age of thirty-nine, he weighed in at 293 pounds, and he knew that something needed to be done so he would be around for his little girl. At the same time, he was dealing with McArdle disease, an extremely rare metabolic condition. Also known as glycogen storage disease type V, this condition prevents the muscles from tapping into glycogen stores for energy. This leads to severe fatigue, muscle cramping, and the onset of muscle soreness with virtually any activity. It’s a very painful condition, and in Dane it also led to degeneration in his vertebrae that required neck surgery.

In February 2013, Dane set a goal for himself to get down to 250 pounds. After failing to see any success after one month of eating healthier by conventional nutritional standards (a low-fat, high-carb, calorie-restricted diet), a friend in the medical field suggested that he try a low-carb, high-fat, ketogenic approach. The results were nearly instantaneous: as he switched from rice and bread to steak and bacon, the weight began pouring off of him. Plus, Dane’s energy started to increase, and he even began exercising, even though McArdle disease used to make it too excruciating. After just ten months, he had lost a total of 110 pounds. But, more importantly, Dane was able to partially resolve the muscle pain and weakness from McArdle disease.

“Being ketogenic has helped me deal with McArdle disease because now my muscles are fueled through the fat I am eating in my diet,” he explained.

These days, Dane eats what he describes as a very low-carb, high-fat, Paleo diet filled with real foods like those our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate. The radical changes he’s seen in his life simply by implementing the principles of ketosis into his diet have made his story compelling to everyone he meets.

“Ketosis has had a tremendous impact on my life, and everyone I know asks me about it and listens intently to what I have to say,” Dane said. “My friends and family all say what a great example I am [of] how to do things the right way and have been extremely impressed by my results.”