I believe Keto can help everyone.
This article is written by the new gentler, humbler, and kinder version of me. Until very recently, I argued everyone should be on the ketogenic or keto diet. As a fat loss and nutrition expert, and like many people in other fields, I argued that my approach is right and everything else is wrong. My followers praised me and those advocating different approaches sometimes heckled me.
My combative style has damaged relationships with sweet loving souls, very dear to my heart. I’ve learned the hard way that enmity towards others’ beliefs, opinions, and views, does not attract most people. We can all be better humans. I’m working on myself and try to be better each day. I’m still a strong advocate and believer in the keto diet but would like to frame it in a more moderate way. Please read on.
Nearly ten years ago, at age 43, I did a 12-week body transformation contest where I achieved my goal. I lost nearly 40 pounds, got ripped, and looked great. Many people wanted to know how I did it, so I wrote and published Get Fit, Lean and Keep Your Day Job (http://getfitlean.com). It’s a comprehensive plan that works, although I’d like to go back and change one part of that program. The macros were too high in carbohydrates and protein, while too low in fat. If there’s one sin that will keep me out of heaven, it’s the thousands of egg yolks I’ve thrown away over the years.
Like most people at that time, I believed what we’ve been told for decades; saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for you. However, I no longer believe that, and science has since exonerated fat and cholesterol as being good for you. So currently, I contend that saturated fat and cholesterol are great for us. I think whole eggs are Mother Nature’s perfect food. Please stay with me here and allow me to expand on this idea.
Let’s connect the dots. Lucy, grandmother to us all, lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle on the Ethiopian plains 3.2 million years ago. Humans domesticated agriculture and began eating grains about 10,000 years ago. So, for 99.7% of human history, our ancestors were eating very few carbohydrates. What’s most interesting to me is that paleontologists have found no evidence of any of the modern non-infectious diseases in the fossil record.
It appears that in the pre-agriculture epochs, there is no trace of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, obesity, Alzheimer’s, Dementia, Parkinson’s or for that matter, cancer. The trouble started after we domesticated agriculture. The Egyptians described and recorded type 2 diabetes in the 15th century BC. It’s only accelerated from there. Today, there is a global pandemic of non-infectious disease. One-third of the US population is either pre-diabetic or confirmed as type 2 diabetic. That’s 100 million people in the US alone. It’s perfectly correlated with the increasing consumption of carbohydrates. Globally, people are eating more bread, pasta, grains, rice, and other starches than ever before. I believe that the biggest problem is carbs. Here’s why.
Eating too many carbs elevates your blood glucose. Elevated blood glucose is inflammatory. Inflammation is thought to be the biggest contributor to all the non-infectious diseases I’ve listed above. I believe the single biggest thing you can do to ensure long-term health and avoid succumbing to non-infectious disease is to stop elevating your blood glucose. Stop overeating carbohydrates. Therefore, I believe the solution is keto. Here’s why.
A properly formulated keto diet means eating a lot of fat, moderate protein and very few carbs. Your macro %s are typically 70/20/10 (fat/protein/carb). Following a keto diet you can put yourself in a state of nutritional ketosis. Because you’re no longer fueling yourself with carbs and relying on blood glucose as your energy source, your body breaks down fat from your diet or from your body’s fat stores, and produces ketone bodies. You’ll then burn ketones as an alternative energy source – and ketones are a high-yield energy source, producing 38% more ATP than glucose. Remember, elevated blood glucose is inflammatory. Ketones are anti-inflammatory. That’s right, it’s widely believed that ketones protect and prevent non-infectious disease. In fact, in human clinical trials, San Francisco based Virta Health is having great success reversing type 2 diabetes.
Let me point out what Keto is not and dispel some misconceptions. Keto doesn’t mean no carbs, it means very few. I don’t think it’s possible to over eat micronutrient dense green leafy vegetables. Low glycemic fruits like blue berries and raspberries, packed with vitamins and minerals, are also on the menu. Keto doesn’t mean that you have to eat red meat or any meat for that matter. Have a couple whole eggs every day or some cold-water fish like salmon or sardines and you’re there. You can be vegetarian and still do keto because nuts, oils, and whole fat dairy products (if you’re lacto-vegetarian) are keto-friendly. What’s important is that you’ve got some source of saturated fat and cholesterol in your diet. Last, keto doesn’t mean high protein. Proper keto is moderate protein. Excess protein can be converted to blood glucose thereby defeating ketosis (our bodies have no such mechanism for converting fat to blood glucose).
I’ve been into fitness and nutrition for over 35 years and I’ve tried every diet plan under the sun. Since discovering keto about 5 years ago, I’ve never felt better and it’s never been easier to stay lean. When I did the body transformation contest 10 years ago and was still fueling myself with carbs, I felt like I was starving. I got lean with pure calorie reduction. By comparison, doing keto is easy because dietary fat is satiating, and your body uses the fat you eat as fuel, rather than storing it on your body. Most importantly, I want to live a long disease-free life and I believe keto gives me the best chance.
Let me return now to gentle, humble, and kind. I recognize that many people have a very different view. Much of the mainstream medical community still supports the notion that saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for you. I believe that shoddy science, shady politics, and big agro business interests led people to believe grains are good, and fat and cholesterol are bad. It’s easy to search online and find a “study” that supports whatever your preexisting beliefs might be. Unfortunately, in today’s world it’s very difficult to determine what’s true and what’s not. I realize this makes figuring out what’s actually a healthy diet very difficult.
Some people might also point to individuals that defy all of what I’ve warned against in this article. There are people that who eat pasta, bread, and sugar drinks their entire life and live to a ripe old age. There are also cases of people who’ve smoked cigarettes their whole life and live to be 90. We all have different tolerances and a different spectrum of resistance to the effects of elevated blood glucose. There will always be statistical outliers, but betting against the odds is risky business. More and more science points to the notion that preventing and treating many disease entities lies in controlling the toxic and inflammatory effects of elevated blood glucose and insulin response.
I’m not going to argue that I’m right and every other view is wrong. I’m not going to argue that keto is healthier than every other diet plan. I hope you consider all the evolutionary evidence I’ve outlined above and I hope you do try keto. Please go to my website, https://www.ketonescore.com, sign up, and try my free online algorithm that can help you get into and track your level of nutritional ketosis.
It’s my belief that keto can help us all feel better, look better, and prevent non-infectious disease. Most importantly, I believe keto can help us all live long healthy happy lives. I hope everyone reading this will believe it too.
Yours in fitness and health,
JD Griffin
Author, Get Fit, Lean and Keep Your Day Job
CEO and Founder, Keto Score
This article is written by the new gentler, humbler, and kinder version of me. Until very recently, I argued everyone should be on the ketogenic or keto diet. As a fat loss and nutrition expert, and like many people in other fields, I argued that my approach is right and everything else is wrong. My followers praised me and those advocating different approaches sometimes heckled me.
My combative style has damaged relationships with sweet loving souls, very dear to my heart. I’ve learned the hard way that enmity towards others’ beliefs, opinions, and views, does not attract most people. We can all be better humans. I’m working on myself and try to be better each day. I’m still a strong advocate and believer in the keto diet but would like to frame it in a more moderate way. Please read on.
Nearly ten years ago, at age 43, I did a 12-week body transformation contest where I achieved my goal. I lost nearly 40 pounds, got ripped, and looked great. Many people wanted to know how I did it, so I wrote and published Get Fit, Lean and Keep Your Day Job (http://getfitlean.com). It’s a comprehensive plan that works, although I’d like to go back and change one part of that program. The macros were too high in carbohydrates and protein, while too low in fat. If there’s one sin that will keep me out of heaven, it’s the thousands of egg yolks I’ve thrown away over the years.
Like most people at that time, I believed what we’ve been told for decades; saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for you. However, I no longer believe that, and science has since exonerated fat and cholesterol as being good for you. So currently, I contend that saturated fat and cholesterol are great for us. I think whole eggs are Mother Nature’s perfect food. Please stay with me here and allow me to expand on this idea.
Let’s connect the dots. Lucy, grandmother to us all, lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle on the Ethiopian plains 3.2 million years ago. Humans domesticated agriculture and began eating grains about 10,000 years ago. So, for 99.7% of human history, our ancestors were eating very few carbohydrates. What’s most interesting to me is that paleontologists have found no evidence of any of the modern non-infectious diseases in the fossil record.
It appears that in the pre-agriculture epochs, there is no trace of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, obesity, Alzheimer’s, Dementia, Parkinson’s or for that matter, cancer. The trouble started after we domesticated agriculture. The Egyptians described and recorded type 2 diabetes in the 15th century BC. It’s only accelerated from there. Today, there is a global pandemic of non-infectious disease. One-third of the US population is either pre-diabetic or confirmed as type 2 diabetic. That’s 100 million people in the US alone. It’s perfectly correlated with the increasing consumption of carbohydrates. Globally, people are eating more bread, pasta, grains, rice, and other starches than ever before. I believe that the biggest problem is carbs. Here’s why.
Eating too many carbs elevates your blood glucose. Elevated blood glucose is inflammatory. Inflammation is thought to be the biggest contributor to all the non-infectious diseases I’ve listed above. I believe the single biggest thing you can do to ensure long-term health and avoid succumbing to non-infectious disease is to stop elevating your blood glucose. Stop overeating carbohydrates. Therefore, I believe the solution is keto. Here’s why.
A properly formulated keto diet means eating a lot of fat, moderate protein and very few carbs. Your macro %s are typically 70/20/10 (fat/protein/carb). Following a keto diet you can put yourself in a state of nutritional ketosis. Because you’re no longer fueling yourself with carbs and relying on blood glucose as your energy source, your body breaks down fat from your diet or from your body’s fat stores, and produces ketone bodies. You’ll then burn ketones as an alternative energy source – and ketones are a high-yield energy source, producing 38% more ATP than glucose. Remember, elevated blood glucose is inflammatory. Ketones are anti-inflammatory. That’s right, it’s widely believed that ketones protect and prevent non-infectious disease. In fact, in human clinical trials, San Francisco based Virta Health is having great success reversing type 2 diabetes.
Let me point out what Keto is not and dispel some misconceptions. Keto doesn’t mean no carbs, it means very few. I don’t think it’s possible to over eat micronutrient dense green leafy vegetables. Low glycemic fruits like blue berries and raspberries, packed with vitamins and minerals, are also on the menu. Keto doesn’t mean that you have to eat red meat or any meat for that matter. Have a couple whole eggs every day or some cold-water fish like salmon or sardines and you’re there. You can be vegetarian and still do keto because nuts, oils, and whole fat dairy products (if you’re lacto-vegetarian) are keto-friendly. What’s important is that you’ve got some source of saturated fat and cholesterol in your diet. Last, keto doesn’t mean high protein. Proper keto is moderate protein. Excess protein can be converted to blood glucose thereby defeating ketosis (our bodies have no such mechanism for converting fat to blood glucose).
I’ve been into fitness and nutrition for over 35 years and I’ve tried every diet plan under the sun. Since discovering keto about 5 years ago, I’ve never felt better and it’s never been easier to stay lean. When I did the body transformation contest 10 years ago and was still fueling myself with carbs, I felt like I was starving. I got lean with pure calorie reduction. By comparison, doing keto is easy because dietary fat is satiating, and your body uses the fat you eat as fuel, rather than storing it on your body. Most importantly, I want to live a long disease-free life and I believe keto gives me the best chance.
Let me return now to gentle, humble, and kind. I recognize that many people have a very different view. Much of the mainstream medical community still supports the notion that saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for you. I believe that shoddy science, shady politics, and big agro business interests led people to believe grains are good, and fat and cholesterol are bad. It’s easy to search online and find a “study” that supports whatever your preexisting beliefs might be. Unfortunately, in today’s world it’s very difficult to determine what’s true and what’s not. I realize this makes figuring out what’s actually a healthy diet very difficult.
Some people might also point to individuals that defy all of what I’ve warned against in this article. There are people that who eat pasta, bread, and sugar drinks their entire life and live to a ripe old age. There are also cases of people who’ve smoked cigarettes their whole life and live to be 90. We all have different tolerances and a different spectrum of resistance to the effects of elevated blood glucose. There will always be statistical outliers, but betting against the odds is risky business. More and more science points to the notion that preventing and treating many disease entities lies in controlling the toxic and inflammatory effects of elevated blood glucose and insulin response.
I’m not going to argue that I’m right and every other view is wrong. I’m not going to argue that keto is healthier than every other diet plan. I hope you consider all the evolutionary evidence I’ve outlined above and I hope you do try keto. Please go to my website, https://www.ketonescore.com, sign up, and try my free online algorithm that can help you get into and track your level of nutritional ketosis.
It’s my belief that keto can help us all feel better, look better, and prevent non-infectious disease. Most importantly, I believe keto can help us all live long healthy happy lives. I hope everyone reading this will believe it too.
Yours in fitness and health,
JD Griffin
Author, Get Fit, Lean and Keep Your Day Job
CEO and Founder, Keto Score
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