Feel pretty confident that you’d start shedding excess weight or improving your health if only you could just stick to it?

Have you concluded that you are the problem?

Have you decided that the reason you haven’t been able to build momentum is because you’re fundamentally flawed? That you lack moral fiber? That other people have something you don’t?

Ever asked yourself things like, “What’s wrong with me?” Or, “Why can’t I get my sh*t together?”1

How far has this gotten you?

How helpful has it been to blame everything on your perceived lack of discipline, willpower, or integrity?

I’m guessing it hasn’t been helpful. Like, at all.

If this perspective were effective for getting you to take consistent action, you would have reached your goal weight (or, as I prefer, your goal weight range) long ago. So if you’re still quite a way from it, it’s safe to conclude that you need a different strategy. That’s what I’ll give you here.

Note: This post focuses on weight loss, but the approach I’ll introduce you to here is effective for other intentions, too. So, if you’re using a low-carb or keto diet to accomplish some other aim and you’re not moving toward it because you’re having a hard time staying consistent and the record that plays over and over in your head is that it’s some kind of moral failing, these tactics will work for you, too.

Shame is no longer an option

If shame and self-loathing weren’t options, what would you say is standing in the way of you being consistent?

If saying negative things about yourself was not permitted…

If making yourself a problem that needed to be solved, or something broken that needed to be fixed, was not allowed…

What other possibilities would open up?

What useful things would you discover about your patterns?

What actionable insights might you uncover if you no longer allowed yourself to indulge in unhelpful responses like:

• I don’t have enough willpower.

• I’m not disciplined enough.

• I just need to work harder.

• I need to be stricter.

• I start out strong but always fizzle out.

• I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

What if you looked at things objectively?

What if you looked at things with logic and reason, instead of with emotion?

What if you gave yourself a freaking chance?!

What if you had no choice but to find other answers?

The following comes from one of my mentors, coach Betsy K., from the No BS Weight Loss Program:

Assuming nothing is wrong with me.

Did you hear the mic drop, or was it just me?

Assuming you’re not broken…

Assuming your moral character isn’t compromised…

If nothing was wrong with you as a person, what are your patterns trying to tell you?

How do they make sense?

How is it completely understandable that you eat when you’re stressed out? Or that you binge in secret late at night? Or that you go off the rails during holidays or when you travel? Or that you engage in whatever other food-related behaviors that leave you feeling ashamed, full of self-loathing or self-doubt, and that are keeping you from where you so badly want to go?2

If the answer could not be something to do with your worth as a person, what would the answer be?

If you don’t know what it would be, what are some possibilities for what it could be?

Do you see what just happened? Asking this question removes stigma and self-judgment and invites curiosity. Corinne Crabtree, creator of the aforementioned No BS Weight Loss Program, calls this “taking off the judge’s robe and putting on the scientist’s lab coat.” You ditch the moralizing and look at facts.

And if you don’t mind a few more words of wisdom from someone whose work has had a positive impact on me, personally and professionally, here’s an excerpt from Chasing Cupcakes, by Elizabeth Benton Thompson. (It’s one of my favorite books about mindset shifts and behavior change. Elizabeth is on Substack now – check her out!)

I cannot stress enough how helpful asking better questions can be for beginning to shift your behavior and take different actions. Emphasis on beginning to. Changing longstanding patterns isn’t an overnight process. Don’t expect it to be, or you’ll erroneously classify completely normal, predictable slips and setbacks as failures.

How This Looks in Practice

Let’s look at some responses that offer things you can actually work on. Root causes. Things you can address head-on instead of defaulting to giving up because you’ve told yourself you’re a lost cause.

These are just a few examples. If the following scenarios aren’t relevant for you, understand that you can apply this strategy — reframing a question and giving yourself space to provide actionable answers that don’t involve hating yourself — to whatever specific things do affect your patterns with food.

Responses for emotional eating

Question: Assuming nothing is wrong with me, how does it make sense that I eat when I’m feeling uncomfortable emotions?

Possible answers:

• I never learned different coping mechanisms or ways to navigate my emotions. (But I can start exploring some, now.)

• No one ever taught me that it’s okay to feel an emotion without “doing something” about it. I never learned that if I’m angry, I can just be angry. If I’m worried, I can just be worried. (I’m open to learning that I don’t have to use food to ameliorate my emotions. My emotions are allowed to be there. I don’t need to make them go away.)

• Expressing emotions was frowned upon when I was a kid, and calming myself with food helped me keep them bottled up. (But I’m open to learning that it’s safe to let things out now. I don’t have to let my childhood programming rule my life as an adult.)

Notice that the answers make sense, and none of them imply that you are weak, flawed, or broken. And notice how the parentheticals go a step further. They provide you with something to do — something to work on so you can start letting go of old patterns and begin to forge new ones that will move you toward your goals rather than keeping you stuck in place.

Responses for stress eating

Question: Assuming nothing is wrong with me, why is it perfectly logical that I turn to food when I’m stressed out?

Possible answers:

• I’m spread too thin and I’m uncomfortable asking for help. Food calms me down and makes things feel more manageable. (But I’m open to learning it’s okay to ask for help, because eating when I’m not hungry never makes the do-to list smaller.)

• I feel overwhelmed and overextended all day but I keep it bottled up. When it all gets to be too much, I eat because it helps me relax, even if only temporarily. (But maybe I’ve been taking on more than I need to. Maybe I can lighten my load a little. I’m open to being less of a people pleaser, and to stop committing to things I don’t actually need to do. I’m open to learning to delegate a few tasks to others without feeling bad about it.)

Responses for late-night eating, compulsive overeating, or bingeing in secret

Question: Assuming nothing is wrong with me, how might it make perfect sense that I eat large quantities of food late at night, or that I eat a lot when no one is looking?

Possible answers:

• I feel desperate to lose weight, so I eat as little as I possibly can for most of the day. Maybe it’s just biology catching up with me later on. Maybe I’m actually, genuinely HUNGRY, and that’s why the urge to eat — and to eat a lot — feels so strong. My daytime eating pattern might be setting me up to binge at night. (But I’m open to having the courage to eat a bit more, earlier in the day, to see if that takes the edge off those nighttime urges.)

• I’m “good” all day long. I’m the poster child for keto…in front of other people. I don’t reach for sugar or mindlessly graze on high-carb snacks at work or in the car. But I still have food noise. I’m not experiencing the magical appetite control and complete disappearance of sugar cravings other people report on keto. By the time late-night comes, I’m exhausted. My brain is done fighting. I just want to Eat. Every. Damn. Thing. (But maybe there’s a reason the magical keto pixie dust isn’t sprinkling down upon me. Maybe my approach to keto needs to be fine-tuned. Maybe I can work with a professional who can help me tailor things to my specific situation.)

• My appetite and my cravings still feel out of control. I’d be embarrassed if someone saw what I was eating, or how much. So I eat when I’m by myself, away from prying eyes. And the only time I have any privacy is late at night, after the kids or my partner are asleep. (But I’m open to learning about sugar and food addiction. Maybe there’s help for me out there. Or maybe the way I’m doing keto isn’t giving me the most powerful effects, but help is available. I could work with someone one-on-one to make sure I’m doing it the right way.)

Responses for going off plan on weekends, during holidays, or while traveling

Question: Assuming nothing is wrong with me, how does it make sense that traveling and special events turn into high-carb blowouts?

Possible answers:

• I’m in a rut. I feel burned out on low-carb foods. If I see one more bunless burger or hard-boiled egg, I’m gonna puke. (But I’m open to looking at keto cookbooks, recipe websites, or videos. Maybe I’m limiting myself more than I need to. Maybe there are foods I’ve been avoiding because I didn’t know they were okay for keto. It’s possible I could have a lot more variety in my diet, which might make it more enjoyable for me to eat this way.)

• My schedule is clear-cut during the week, but weekends are a total crapshoot. On weekdays, I have a simple keto breakfast at home and I pack my lunch for work or I know exactly what to order if my coworkers get takeout or we go out for lunch. And I typically have dinner planned most weeknights. But my weekends look completely different. I have no set routine, and the flexibility and unpredictability throw me off. (But they don’t need to. The nice things about weekends is… they come like clockwork. Every 7 days, the weekend is here, so I know it’s coming. That means I can plan for it. I don’t have to know exactly where I’ll be or what I’ll be doing in order to stick to low-carb foods. Weekends don’t need to be trainwrecks.)

• I don’t actually like keto. I just feel like it’s the only thing that will work for me. Influencers have convinced me that I couldn’t possibly lose weight while eating bread, or potatoes, or fruit. But I’m really just not a fan of a lot of foods that are low in carbs, so of course I go off plan at all the time. (Maybe I’m wrong about keto being the only thing that will work. After all, lots of people lose weight doing other things. Maybe I could be one of them. [Interested in looking beyond keto? I give Corey Little my highest endorsement as a weight loss coach. He won’t steer you wrong. Check out his podcast, Real Life Weight Loss.)

Did any of that resonate? Did you see yourself in any of those? Tell me in the comments. I’d love to know if these have gotten you thinking.

Leave a comment

Whew! I know that was a lot, but I genuinely hope these examples are helpful — and that you see how you can apply the same strategy to other issues you may be having with food, or apply it to changing your patterns in other areas you’re working on.

And I also hope you now see why, for so many of us, it’s not enough to be handed a food list and a set of rules. Following a keto diet successfully for the long term means identifying and addressing the reasons that make it difficult to follow the rules.

Need support?

There are so many ways to get help with a low-carb or ketogenic diet. Don’t stay confused, frustrated, or stuck, when expert guidance is only a click away.

1. Book a consultation with me. (Yes! I’m available for individual consults.)

2. Join my Patreon community. We have a weekly live call for coaching and Q&A, plus you’ll get early access to new videos, and other perks.

3. Do the 7-Day Keto Kickstart with me and keto OG Dr. Eric Westman. (Enrollment ends September 7 and the weeklong kickstart runs from Sept 8-14. If you’re reading this after that, check out Keto Complete.)

And I’ll let you in on a little secret: keto isn’t the only way to lose weight.

It’s also not the only way to lower your blood sugar or blood pressure, or improve some other health issue you may be dealing with. If you’d like to try something with more flexibility, here are those links again for the No BS Weight Loss Program (for women only) and Corey Little’s coaching. (If you look at No BS, be warned that Corinne is known for her spicy language. If cussing/swearing isn’t your thing, skip No BS and look at Corey’s program instead.)

Stop following people who scare the crap out of you.

That’s it. The title could be the whole post.

But some of you might be wondering how to spot the people who scare the crap out of you. What do they typically say? What kind of tactics do they use? Let’s take a closer look so you can identify these colorful characters in your social media feeds and unfollow or unsubscribe from them if you are so inclined.

First, a bit of background.

If you follow a ketogenic, low-carb, or carnivore diet — or any other specific way of eating, for that matter — you’re very particular about what you put in your mouth because you know that what you eat has a dramatic impact on your health.

But what about what you’ve been putting into your mind?

Are you focusing exclusively on the food you eat with little to no thought about the inputs you’re giving your brain?

And I don’t mean inputs like DHA, caprylic acid, or other molecules that might be uniquely beneficial for the brain. I mean less tangible but perhaps equally powerful inputs — like the podcasts you listen to, the videos you watch, the social media feeds you follow, and yes, the Substack accounts you subscribe to.

The keto and carnivore communities are filled with experts who provide helpful, realistic advice grounded in clinical experience. But there are also a lot of popular influencers who traffic in hyperbole, fearmongering, and extremism. They have neither your best interests nor your emotional health at heart. (Not to mention your budget.)

Who do you follow on social media? What kind of content do you take in?

Do you come across a lot of posts and videos with titles like:

“The Hidden Dangers In _________.”

“The 5 Most Toxic Foods You Eat Every Day.”

“NEVER Buy This Brand of Butter Again.”

“Ditch These 6 Things from Your Pantry Immediately.”

If you enjoy this kind of content, carry on! Nothing to see here. If what you learn from watching, reading, or listening to what these people churn out makes you feel confident and empowered, then by all means, keep consuming. This stuff is a net positive for you.

But if you’re like some of my clients, the list of foods you feel “safe” eating grows shorter every day, while the list of things that worry you grows longer — at a nearly logarithmic pace. Your social life is shrinking. Family mealtimes are becoming increasingly uncomfortable. And your mental health is taking a hit.

They are preying on your fear — your fear that you’re doing it wrong. (What’s “it”? Everything. The food you eat. The water you drink. The air you breathe. What you put in your coffee. The way you wash your dishes. The way you wipe your … ) Your fear that there’s a secret you don’t know. (The secret the conveniently nebulous “THEY” don’t want you to know.)

They are preying on your desperation. Your desperation to lose weight. Your desperation for quick results. Your desperation to be free of paper cuts, earwax, snot, stubbed toes, farts, and every other inevitable foible that afflicts perfectly normal, healthy human bodies.

They are counting on you to believe every word they say, hook, line, and sinker. And they’ll still be counting on you when they change their tune a few months later and backtrack on things they previously claimed with ironclad certainty, with nary a single mea culpa or slice of humble pie to acknowledge that maybe they shouldn’t have been quite so confident before.

If the people you follow make you anxious and do nothing but stir up fear and worry in you — as if everything you’re doing is dangerous or wrong — it may be time to eliminate those people from your social media diet. Just because the algorithms serve something up to you doesn’t mean you’re obligated to consume it. The same way you would pass on the breadbasket when dining out on a keto diet, you can simply scroll on by and skip things that are harming your emotional health.

When you started your low-carb way of eating, you may have done a “pantry purge” and cleared out all the high-carb foods you didn’t want in your environment. Consider doing a social media purge: unfollow, unsubscribe, or simply ignore the things that are working against you, mentally and emotionally. The algorithms feed on attention. On likes, clicks, and shares. The best way to see more of what you want to see is to stop giving attention to what you don’t.

Did any of this resonate with you? Tell me in the comments. The more alarmism and extremism dominate social media, the more necessary something like Keto Without the Crazy becomes, in my opinion. Do you agree?

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More Sources of Sanity Amidst the Madness

1. My Patreon: Tired of ridiculous fearmongering and sensationalism in the keto space? Tired of finding new things to be worried about every time you open your social media apps? There ARE sane, down-to-earth people in the keto world — and we have a live call every week.
   
   If you want to eat delicious food and improve your health without turning every meal into a calculus assignment, and without constantly second-guessing yourself and being scared you’re doing everything wrong, there IS a community for you.
   
   Join my Patreon for your weekly dose of support, encouragement, advice, and help troubleshooting your low-carb or keto diet. Consider it an oasis of sanity in the desert of hyperbolic clickbait nonsense. See here for details.

2. Patreon not your thing? Not interested in live calls or other perks, but still want to support my work? Thank you! Please consider becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack, if you’re not already. Your support truly helps me devote more time to writing.

Subscribe now

3. My YouTube channel: Keto Without the Crazy. (What else?)

4. Start Keto Right — online course from keto OG Dr. Eric Westman (with some help from yours truly). Learn the simplest, most straightforward way to do keto, directly from someone who’s been treating patients for over 30 years, and who spearheaded some of the first clinical trials of ketogenic diets in the modern era. If you consider yourself to be a seasoned keto veteran and you’re looking to dive deeper, we have a more comprehensive course coming out next month, called Keto Complete.

5. Merch! Want to spread the word about sanity and simplicity with keto? Check out the merch store. It’s only August, but the holidays will be here before you know it. These make great gifts for yourself and other low-carbers in your life.

This has led to stereotypes, caricatures, and flat-out misinformation dominating the narrative. People having pissing contests arguments about keto on social media is unfortunate. Uninformed—or, more accurately, misinformed—medical professionals issuing dire warnings against this way of eating is unconscionable. They mean well, I know, but they are scaring patients away from trying something that could change their lives. Something that could resolve health issues and make people feel better than any medication or other intervention has ever come close to. (Among the verbal scare tactics they use are telling people that keto is too “restrictive” and it’s “unsustainable,” both of which I have addressed in previous posts. Click the links to read.)

Very-low-carb and ketogenic diets have come a long way since being considered “fads” that were only good for weight loss, or, more clinically, for drug-resistant epilepsy. There’s now striking evidence for using this dietary therapy for mental health, putting type 2 diabetes into remission, reversing non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and much more. However, numerous myths and misconceptions about “keto” lead some to think that this approach is contraindicated for them (or for their patients), when this is untrue, and they can implement this way of eating to address their concerns—often more effectively than multiple medications and other modalities.

Here, let’s look at 7 issues that are often thought to be contraindications for keto but for which keto can be safe and effective.

The specific issues I’ll cover are:

1. Chronic kidney disease

2. Gout

3. Type 1 diabetes

4. Cholecystectomy (gallbladder removal)

5. Vegetarian or vegan diet

6. Sensitivity to dairy foods

7. Select eating disorders

Details are for paid subscribers, so if you’re curious to know why keto can be used in these situations, please consider becoming a paid contributor. Becoming a paid subscriber to Keto Without the Crazy means casting a vote for simplicity and sanity. It means taking a stand against hyperbole and fearmongering. It means dismantling obstacles and making this way of eating realistic for, and accessible to, people whose lives it could genuinely change. Your participation in my corner of the ketoverse is genuinely appreciated, and your support helps me to keep writing and making videos.

Subscribe now

Read more

Following a keto diet sure brings out a lot of opinions, doesn’t it? People don’t usually have much to say about what you eat until you change what you eat, particularly if that change is unconventional. Do something outside the norm, and BOY, folks suddenly have lots to say. One opinion that gets stated as if it’s an incontrovertible truth is, “Keto is unsustainable.” But is it? Let’s unpack that here.

Who defines “unsustainable”?

The first issue to address is that unsustainable is a relative term. What one person finds unsustainable, someone else has been doing happily for decades. Running marathons multiple times a year? Some of us would find that unsustainable, while others have walls lined with finisher’s medals and they’re making quilts out of all their race T-shirts.

To me, being in the Marine Corps would feel unsustainable, yet thousands of people sign on the dotted line every year and plenty retire with full benefits after having “sustained” that lifestyle for decades. (I sustained four years in the Air Force, yes, but I don’t think I would have made it even that many weeks as a Marine!)

In part 1 of this series on dumb things people say about keto, I poked holes in the claim that keto is restrictive. Some of the things I mentioned there aren’t only restrictive; they’re also unsustainable—or could be deemed unsustainable by those who feel they couldn’t sustain them. Being married, for example. You’ve chosen to have only this one person as your sexual partner unless one of you dies? Sounds kind of unsustainable. (Disregard this if you’re in an open marriage. You do you!)

What about having kids? You’ve got to feed them every single day? Multiple times a day for years, until they can do it on their own? Clothe them, too? And even when they can do it on their own, you still need to pay for their food and clothing? Jeez. That’s a lot of work. (And money.) Sounds unsustainable.

Said no one, ever.

On the contrary, people are celebrated for these things.

We have holidays specifically for the purpose of honoring people who serve(d) in our armed forces. We buy gifts for people when they get married or have kids. We throw them parties, for goodness sake! (Or they invite us to the ones they throw for themselves.) We’re impressed when someone crosses the finish line of a marathon. We applaud them; we don’t question their mental capacity or look down on them for having done something we think is “unsustainable.”

Why is only keto ever deemed unsustainable?

It’s puzzling that keto is the target of criticism that other ways of eating seem protected from. I’ve never heard anyone say vegetarian diets are unsustainable. But why not? The smell of meat on the grill is tantalizing for many of us. Some might even argue the appeal of it is evolutionarily hard-wired into us. But folks who don’t eat meat are expected to ignore that biological drive at every cookout they ever attend? How come no one says that’s unsustainable?

What about people who keep kosher? They’re never going to have a BLT? Or a bacon cheeseburger? Ever? I’ve never heard anyone say that’s unsustainable. Or a low-FODMAP diet, or low-oxalate, or any number of other diets people follow for religious, cultural, or medical reasons. Why does keto alone seem to bear the brunt of the criticism?

Celiac disease? Sorry. Gluten-free diets are unsustainable, so you’ll just have to suffer the intestinal damage and all the symptoms that come with it. Peanut allergy? Too bad, so sad! Peanuts are everywhere, so don’t bother trying to avoid them. That’s unsustainable. Just use your epi pen 37 times a day.

Unsustainable is an opinion

Someone might believe something is unsustainable because they can’t imagine doing it. If they would find it nearly impossible to stop eating donuts, cookies, cake, potato chips, pasta, and crackers, they extrapolate that to everyone else. It would be too difficult for them, therefore, it’s too difficult for everyone. But what if it’s not difficult for other people?

I’m guessing that lots of people who keep kosher don’t long for bacon or shrimp. Prohibited foods probably aren’t on their radar at all. If certain foods simply aren’t part of your life, then you don’t have to fight cravings for them. If you don’t want certain foods, then you don’t find it difficult to avoid them, and you don’t expend any mental energy “sustaining” life without them.

There are vegetarians and vegans who don’t want to eat meat. This might be hard for some of us to imagine, but there are probably some folks out there whose appetites don’t get stimulated by the smell of a burger over an open flame. It’s not hard to sustain living without certain foods when you genuinely don’t want them.

The same is true for people who follow keto (or carnivore) diets. Saying keto is unsustainable implies that eating this way is difficult. And it is, for some people. (More on this in a bit.) For others, though, it’s a joy. It’s not difficult to stay away from sugar and starch if doing so means you also stay away from migraines, joint pain, heartburn, wildly erratic blood sugar, and an ever-growing list of medications. When you don’t miss the medical problems and prescriptions that went away for you with a low-carb approach, it makes it easier not to miss the foods that contributed to them. And when you don’t miss those foods, keto becomes very sustainable.

Did I just describe you? How do you feel about “sustaining” your keto diet? Let me know in the comments.

Leave a comment

What’s really unsustainable?

It’s a head-scratcher as to how doctors can claim keto is unsustainable while thinking nothing of adding a ninth prescription to a patient’s chart. Like I said in part 1, how come no one ever says it’s unsustainable to take not one, not two, but three medications just for high blood pressure? (Plus the statin, the antacid, the antidepressant, the pain reliever, the gout medication, and the three drugs for type 2 diabetes, of course. That is totally sustainable!)

I know lots of people who would rather “sustain” avoiding bread, pasta, potatoes, and cookies than sustain injecting themselves with insulin every time they have a meal. (Type 1 diabetics excepted, of course.) Plenty of folks would prefer to sustain eschewing pastries and candy bars than sustain being on four, six, or more prescription drugs—and still feeling awful.

When sustainability is muddy

Having said all that, let’s get real for a minute.

Some people adopt a low-carb, keto, or carnivore diet and have zero interest in high-carb foods straight from the get-go. For others, the longing for sweets and starches quiets down gradually over time. And for others, those longings never completely go away. They get quieter and less frequent, but they never fully disappear. So, what then? Does that mean keto is unsustainable?

No. We’re only human, after all.

It’s normal (in my opinion) to experience occasional urges and cravings for things you’re abstaining from or at least trying to limit. It would be odd if we didn’t ever experience these urges.

What if you keep kosher and you do get the occasional hankering for bacon-wrapped scallops? You tell yourself they’re not an option. End of story. (Or you enjoy turkey or beef bacon, sans shellfish. You find acceptable substitutes that make things sustainable for you.) What if you’re happily married but once in a great while the thought crosses your mind of gettin’ down with someone who isn’t your spouse? You don’t indulge the urge because you made a commitment not to. You entered into an agreement where there are certain boundaries, and you vowed (literally) to uphold them. (I’ll refrain from suggesting some acceptable substitutes for this one. Let’s keep this G-rated!)

When it comes to keto, there are a few different ways to go. First, thanks to the growing popularity of this way of eating over the last several years, there are few high-carb foods you can’t find low-carb substitutes for. When I was new to this (technically referred to as “back in the day”), you had to make them all yourself. Now, you can find bags of riced cauliflower in your supermarket freezer. Ditto for zucchini noodles. Creative cooks use slices of turkey in place of noodles in low-carb lasagna. Pork rinds and cheese crisps aren’t a perfect match for potato chips or pretzels, but they’re salty and crunchy enough to hit the spot. So, for people who do long for these sorts of these things, keto is sustainable because they don’t have to white-knuckle without them. Expectations need to be adjusted, yes. When you’ve chosen to avoid certain foods, don’t expect your diet to include a lot of things that look and taste exactly like them. But you can get close, and that might be enough to make your way of eating more sustainable—and more enjoyable. (But someone, please create a recipe for low-carb halvah that’s even remotely close to the real thing. You will be my new hero.)

A second option for people who eat keto is to establish a firm line and just not cross it. Ever. Give yourself permission to long for your pre-keto go-to high-carb favorites without having those feelings transform into actions. You can have a craving—for food, alcohol, cigarettes, an extra-marital affair—and not indulge it. Those feelings can be there and you can still “sustain” whatever it is you’re doing, be it following a keto diet, abstaining from alcohol, remaining faithful, quitting smoking, or anything else you’ve committed to. You don’t have to deny the existence of urges. You can let them be present without following through on them. (The same way you do at work, when you want to throat-punch the coworker in the next cubicle who clips his nails at his desk.)

And a third option I want to acknowledge is choosing to indulge occasionally. (Emphasis on occasionally. Do it too often and then you’re not actually on a low-carb diet anymore.) If you eat keto the vast majority of the time, but once in a while, you have a high-carb dessert (the real thing, not almond flour and erythritol), or you have a slice or two of traditional pizza (with a regular crust, not meat or cauliflower, thank you very much), does that mean keto is unsustainable for you? Not in my opinion. Because keto, to me, is a way of eating, not a cult. (Despite how some of the more rabid influencers make it seem… but that’s a topic for another day!) You can do things differently now and then and still be in the club.

There are some people who, for medical reasons, need to be strict all the time. If you’re not one of them, and you take advantage of the flexibility you have to include higher carb foods on occasion, that doesn’t mean you’re not still keto. If you want to get technical, no, you probably wouldn’t be in ketosis right after eating something higher in carbs, but you can still consider yourself to be following a keto diet. If you want to get even more technical, stop saying “keto” or “ketogenic” altogether and just say low-carb. Calling your diet low-carb has flexibility built right into it. Your carbohydrate intake on any given day can still be low compared to what most people eat (and compared to how you ate in the past) even when it includes a higher carb item or meal. And remember, not everyone needs strict keto in order to experience the metabolic effects of dietary carbohydrate restriction.

Keto isn’t necessarily forever

Not everyone needs to be strict keto—and not everyone who does need to be strict keto needs to eat that way permanently. Some children who follow a ketogenic diet for epilepsy for some period of time can actually stop the diet and remain seizure-free. (Not everyone can, but some do, including Charlie Abrahams, whose family started the Charlie Foundation—the world’s premier organization for keto for epilepsy and other seizure disorders.)

In my previous article, I mentioned a case report of a man who followed a strict ketogenic diet (<30 g carbs per day) for a few years in order to reverse his type 2 diabetes. He has since been able to increase his carb intake (~100 g/day) and maintain normal blood sugars with no diabetes medication. You might be in this category, yourself. I know lots of people who were strict keto for a while but who have since relaxed their diet a bit while maintaining their weight loss and improved health years later.

So even if a medical professional thinks keto is unsustainable for the long term, that shouldn’t preclude them from suggesting it as an option to try for some period of time for a patient who would likely benefit from it, with an eye toward possibly liberalizing things sometime in the future. (Plus, like I mentioned earlier, they might be surprised at how much a patient enjoys keto [or even just low-carb], particularly if it means getting off some of their medications and being free of joint pain, gout flares, migraines, brain fog …)

Summing up

If you’ve been following a low-carb or ketogenic diet for a while, simply ignore those who say it’s unsustainable. You’re sustaining it just fine. (And likely enjoying it, too.) And if you’re brand new to eating this way, or even just thinking about starting, you can ignore those people, too. You’re probably already doing multiple things every day that someone else would deem unsustainable. Let them think that. They’re allowed. And you’re allowed to disagree and do what’s best for you.

Have you had people tell you keto is unsustainable? How did you navigate that? Tell me in the comments. You might say something that will help someone else.

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Looking for a safe, nonjudgmental place to get support for your low-carb, keto, or carnivore diet? My Patreon community has a live call every week. You’ll also get early access to new videos, discounts on consultations, and more. Replays are provided if you can’t join us live, and you can submit your questions ahead of time if needed. If you’re confused, frustrated, or just need some encouragement, stop going it alone when help is right here. See here for details.

Fasting.

CGMs.

Infrared saunas…

Cold plunges!

If you’re new to keto, it’s easy to feel completely overwhelmed by all the things you think you need to do. After all, not only do you have to change your diet, but you can’t just eat low-carb foods, right? You have to meticulously weigh and measure your food to make sure it fits precisely calculated macros. You have to track it all in an app. You have to take 27 supplements you’d never even heard of before you started watching keto videos on YouTube. You have to do high-intensity exercise, measure your ketones, and get exactly the right amount of sunlight exposure at exactly the right time of day… oh, but wait. If you live at a certain latitude, you’re screwed, so scratch that last requirement. There’s no hope for you. (Or take some vitamin D and make it 28 supplements.)

Is your head spinning yet? If you’re new to keto and you think you need to overhaul your entire day in order to eat this way, you might give up before you even start. (And I wouldn’t blame you!) And if you’re not so new to keto, the avalanche of keto “stuff” on social media might be causing some anxiety, making you second-guess everything you’re doing and convincing you that most of what you’re doing is wrong.

We’ve gotta nip this crap in the bud, folks.

In the spirit of Keto Without the Crazy, let’s set the record straight. Here are three pieces of advice that will help you get started with keto without losing your mind, or help you reorient back to the basics if you’re not new, but you feel scattered and unfocused, or you’ve been listening to so many influencers that you no longer know which way is up.

1. Start Simply

True story: there is only one thing—one thing!— you need to do to be on a low-carb or ketogenic diet: keep your carbohydrate intake very low. That’s it!

That one thing­—keeping your carbohydrate intake very low—is what’s responsible for the fundamental metabolic change at the heart of a keto diet. Keeping your carb intake very low helps to keep your blood sugar and insulin within a healthy range. And keeping insulin within a low-ish, healthy range is the primary signal that prompts your body to shift from fueling itself primarily on glucose (from carbs) to fueling primarily on fat and generating some ketones.

This metabolic shift is the main thing behind so many of the great things carbohydrate restriction does, such as facilitating remission of type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome, lowering blood pressure, improving hormone balance and restoring fertility in PCOS, reversing non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and so much more.

The vast majority of research supporting the efficacy of low-carb and keto diets for helping people achieve the health improvements and weight loss they’re looking to achieve calls for one thing: keeping carbohydrate intake low. They don’t call for exercise at all, let alone any particular type of exercise. (In fact, many of them specifically ask the participants not to change their physical activity so it won’t become a confounding variable.) They don’t call for a specific amount of sleep. They don’t call for stress reduction techniques. They don’t call for cold plunges.

Once again, for the people in the back: the fundamental, most important thing to do on keto is keep your carb intake very low. That’s the first skill you need to master. For some people, it’s the only thing they need to do. Working on that while also working on 46 other things that you might not even need to do at all is a recipe for feeling overwhelmed and then quitting.

Think about learning a language. You wouldn’t study Spanish one day, then switch to German the next day, spend a few hours on Japanese the day after that, and then maybe over to Arabic. In trying to do too many things at once, you will dabble in several languages but you won’t get good at any of them. Your attention will be too divided, your focus too distracted.

Or how about learning to play an instrument? I play a few woodwind instruments, and I can tell you that when you’re brand new to learning the clarinet, you start by learning how to put the thing together. You learn how to hold it correctly and how to have a proper embouchure (the position of your mouth on the mouthpiece). You learn how to blow into it. You don’t learn ultra-high notes or growls or other advanced techniques. You don’t spend any time pondering what you might wear 30 years in the future at your debut with the New York Philharmonic. Why not? Because when you are just starting out, your focus belongs on the basics.

I don’t want your focus to be scattered on keto. If your carb intake is ultra-low one day, moderate the next, low again the next, and then the weekend comes and it’s a tidal wave of ice cream, nachos, chips, pasta, and cake, well … you have no business listening to I would caution you against listening to people whose livelihoods depend on convincing you that you need their expensive product or protocol to “optimize” a bunch of things that will do nothing to help you actually stay consistent with the one thing that will move the metabolic needle. (What’s that again? Oh, right. Keeping your carb intake low.)

*Note: There are situations for which getting more granular with diet and lifestyle may be necessary. For people using a ketogenic diet for a neurological or neurodegenerative condition, for mental health, or as an adjunct to conventional cancer treatment, maintaining a certain level of ketones might—emphasis on might—be necessary. And if it is, then weighing and measuring food, measuring ketones, and certain other pieces of this can absolutely be useful. But if your main goals are weight loss, lowering your blood sugar, or improving insulin resistance, most of that simply isn’t needed, and it can make starting keto or sticking with it for the long term a lot more cumbersome than it needs to be.

And some people may need to fine-tune their diet beyond just limiting the carbs. There are a lot of low-carbohydrate foods that can cause unpleasant reactions in those who are sensitive to certain compounds, like histamines or oxalates. But unless you know you fall into this category, my advice is still to start by just cutting the carbs. If you’ve already been doing keto the right way for a while but the results you’re aiming for aren’t coming, or at least starting to come, consider working with a professional who can help you troubleshoot based on your specific situation.

If you’re with me and you understand that cutting carbs is your first step but you’re wondering how to actually do that — What should I eat? Which foods are high in carbs and which are low? — I recommend the Start Keto Right course from keto OG Dr. Eric Westman… which I may have helped with a little. Another option is to follow the Phase 1 food list in our book, End Your Carb Confusion.

2. Eat What You Like

The nice thing about keto is that within the framework of keeping your carbohydrate intake low, it’s completely customizable. Hate zucchini? Don’t eat zucchini. Keep kosher? No problem. Bacon features prominently on keto social media, but pork isn’t required. You don’t even have to eat red meat if you prefer not to. There are no reasons with regard to health or nutrition that red meat should be avoided (as I wrote about here), but demonization of red meat is so deeply engrained in some people that no amount evidence will exonerate it in their eyes. That’s unfortunate, but eschewing red meat isn’t a dealbreaker. You can absolutely be successful on a keto diet with no red meat whatsoever. You can get all the fat and protein you need from other sources, like poultry, eggs, pork, and seafood. Or even just seafood alone. It’s possible to do a pescatarian approach to keto. It’s difficult to do strict keto as a vegetarian or vegan, but you can absolutely follow a low-carb diet as a vegetarian. Not everyone needs to be strict keto in order to accomplish their health goals. (Here’s a recently published account of an Indian man who reversed his type 2 diabetes by following a lacto-ovo low-carb approach. Need ideas for vegetarian recipes? Check out the recipes from my friends at dLife.in.) Sensitive to nightshade vegetables? Easy-peasy: stay away from tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and whatever else causes an adverse reaction for you. Like I said: entirely customizable.

There is no single food that has a monopoly on nutrients. Any particular vitamin or mineral can be supplied by any number of sources. Sure, certain foods may be richer in specific nutrients, but those foods aren’t the only way to get those nutrients.

Take sardines, for example. (These little fish are having quite the moment lately!) They’re a good source of protein, omega-3 fats, calcium (if eaten with the bones), selenium, and other nutrients. Great! But what if you hate sardines? What if the mere thought of eating sardines makes you gag? It doesn’t matter how nutritious something is if you’re not going to eat it.

Please don’t force yourself to eat things you don’t like. Doing that is the quickest way to quit this way of eating. (Or any other approach, for that matter.) If you’re regularly including foods you don’t even like, because some stranger on the internet said you “should,” then guess what? You’re going to be miserable, and that will make this unrealistic and unsustainable. Good luck sticking to a plan that fills you with dread every time you have a meal.

Plus…

Haven’t most of us already had enough of choking down stuff we didn’t like, because we thought it was the only way we would be successful? Rice cakes with fat-free cottage cheese? Applesauce instead of oil in recipes? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Leave outdated diet advice in the 1980s, where it belongs.

Is this resonating? Are you doing keto in a way that works for you? Tell me in the comments!

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3. Eat What You Can Afford

Keto isn’t just customizable to suit your taste preferences; it’s customizable to any budget, too. With regard to the metabolic effects most people are trying to achieve through a low-carb or keto diet, the sourcing and provenance of your food matters a lot less than just keeping your carbohydrate intake low. (Reread the first section if, in the last 24 seconds you’ve forgotten what the fundamental thing in all this is.)

You can be successful getting all your food at the local supermarket. You can be successful getting all your food at Walmart (or the equivalent, if you’re outside the US). If you have the means to support small farms in your area, by all means, please do that. I’ve worked on farms in four states and I encourage anyone who can to keep their food dollars in their local economy and shake the hands of the people who grow or raise their food. But that food comes at a premium, and not everyone can afford it. Those high prices don’t need to be a barrier to people of limited means who could benefit tremendously from dietary carbohydrate restriction.

Your food doesn’t need to be organic. It doesn’t need to be grass-finished. It doesn’t need to be cage-free, small batch, or artisanal (although all of that is nice if you can afford it). What it needs to be is very low in carbs. Food produced a certain way—grass-finished beef as opposed to grain-finished, for example—does have a slightly different nutrient profile. Emphasis on slightly. The difference in the nutrients you’ll get from the former versus the latter is miniscule compared to the chasm of difference between the metabolic effects of grain-finished beef versus a bowl of fettucine. Ditto for using a bit of regular ol’ supermarket mayo with soybean oil in your egg salad versus chowing down on toast slathered with grape jelly.

The keto and carnivore spaces are filled with powerful influencers hawking expensive supplements and gadgets, trying to convince you that you need those products. Can some of them be helpful? Maybe. If you’re using something you like and you think it makes a noticeable difference for you, then keep using it. But let’s not forget that keto isn’t new. People who simply don’t know any better will claim that keto is a “fad diet,” but nothing could be further from the truth. (If it’s a fad, it’s a fad that’s been around for over a century. Alas, not so much for mood rings and pet rocks.) People were using keto successfully for weight loss, reversing type 2 diabetes, and improving a long list of other issues long before any of these products existed.

Like I said earlier, though, if you have type 1 diabetes or you use insulin for type 2, a CGM can be a game-changer. And a ketone meter can be helpful if you’re troubleshooting your diet or using keto for mental health, a neurodegenerative condition, or another issue for which a higher ketone level might be helpful. And of course, if you’re just the curious sort and you like to “geek out” on data, then you can measure to your heart’s content. All I’m saying is that not everyone needs to measure, and if you don’t understand how to interpret the numbers you see, measuring can cause a lot of unnecessary anxiety and lead you to think you’re “doing it wrong” even if everything is going well. I often say that what matters is how you feel, not your ketone level. Or as my friends at Metabolic Mastery (formerly Keto Gains) say, “Chase results, not ketones.” You don’t need a ketone meter to know if you’re losing weight, or if you feel more energetic, if your mood is brighter, if your joint pain or acid reflux have improved, if GI problems are improving, if your menstrual cycles are starting to normalize if you have PCOS, or if many other good things that happen on a keto diet are happening.

But let’s get back to the budget issue. Food prices are going up. Even at discount stores, prices are rising. Don’t make keto a bigger strain on your budget than it needs to be. Focus on the food. If you have lots of extra income to experiment with esoteric supplements and contraptions, you’re an adult and you can spend your money however you like (I’m not the boss of you!) Just keep in mind that when it comes to supporting metabolic health, the most effective adjuncts are free: getting good sleep, staying active, nurturing healthy relationships, getting some sunlight and fresh air. (I know I said above that these things aren’t required, but let’s get real. They can probably help.)

Bottom line here: buy food that works well for you and that fits your budget. I often say that keto is supposed to make your life better, and that includes not just your physical health, but also your mental and emotional health. If doing things a certain way is causing stress and worry because of financial strain, give yourself permission to dial back a bit. You shouldn’t be going into debt buying food, supplements, or gadgets in order to do keto in some kind of “perfect” way, when there really is no one best way to do keto anyway; there’s only the way that’s best for you. (And if that looks very different from what works best for someone else, that’s okay!)

Summing up

Don’t major in the minors, especially when you’re just getting started with keto or you’re giving yourself a “reset.” Get comfortable and build some consistency and momentum with the prime mover: keeping carbs low. See how far that one step gets you. It might be the only one you need. If you want to introduce other strategies, do it after you’ve gotten some traction with the food. Don’t waste time designing a great baseball uniform when you can’t even hit the ball. First things first.

And if you’ve been at keto for a while but you feel like you’re spinning your wheels and getting only lackluster results, consider whether you’re trying to do too much at once. Are you constantly on the lookout for the newest “hack” or the latest miracle secret “THEY” don’t want you to know? If your attention is completely divided and your actions and efforts are scattered, then I encourage you to take an information vacation. Step back from the podcasts, videos, and social media threads for a little while. Focus on the food and only the food. Once you’ve got that down solidly, add something else you think would be useful for your specific situation. But I’m telling you: getting the food right will do more than anything else. Dr. Atkins knew it over fifty years ago, and there honestly hasn’t been a whole lot that’s improved upon his simple approach in the decades since.

There’s so much fearmongering in the keto space. If you needed this reminder about how simple it can be—when you let it be—please become a paid subscriber and cast a vote for simplicity and sanity. Your support is much appreciated, and it helps me to keep writing and making videos.

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When it comes to staying consistent on a ketogenic or low-carb diet (or any other way of eating, or even with regard to changing a pattern or behavior of any kind), this leaves you stuck wading through the muck of all the things about yourself where you fall short. (Or, more accurately, where you tell yourself you fall short.) And it’s not usually a quick trudge through the mud. It’s more like quicksand. It pulls you down and closes in on you until you’re surrounded and you give up.

That is not what you want for yourself! Those thoughts only hold you back. They will never propel you forward toward losing weight, reversing your type 2 diabetes, improving your hormones if you have PCOS, getting rid of your migraines, or anything else we know low-carb and keto diets are good for. So, if you want your brain to fill the void with helpful, constructive answers, you have to ask it questions that give it the opportunity to do that. If you don’t know how, or you don’t know what a constructive question even sounds like, keep reading.

The Pattern

You’re trying keto again. It’s not your first time around this block. In past attempts, you did great for a few days, but it was only a matter of time before you found yourself in the pantry at midnight, stuffing your kid’s goldfish crackers into your mouth and eyeing the box of cereal that was coming next.

If you live alone, you probably did the pantry purge. Sayonara, spaghetti! Bon voyage, bread! Every last bit of sugar and starch was tossed into the dumpster, where you were safe from it. (Not in your kitchen trash can, because … well … it wouldn’t be the first time you reached back in there to take a few more bites. It wasn’t touching anything else! What? That’s just me? Okay, never mind then. 👀)

You restocked your kitchen like a soul on a mission. Anyone looking through your fridge, freezer, pantry, and cupboards would know immediately that this is someone on a very-low-carb diet. Nary a cracker or cookie to be found.

You were DETERMINED! You woke up early so you’d have time to scramble some eggs and cook some bacon to have a hearty low-carb breakfast at home. You got in the car (or on the bus or train) to go to work and you were feeling good about things. You could feel it: this time it’s gonna be different! And it was … for three days. On day four, you got to the office and Trina from accounting brought those damn donuts in again.

Naturally, you start to wonder: What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I stick to this? Why is this so hard?

And even though it’s completely understandable to ask these questions—most of us do—this is exactly what’s been getting in your way.

The Problem: You Ask Crappy Questions

When you ask crappy questions, you get crappy answers.

Funny how that works, huh?

Let’s go through some examples so you can see exactly what I mean, and then we’ll shift focus to the solution. (Pro tip: this strategy isn’t limited to difficulty staying consistent on a low-carb, keto, or carnivore diet. It can be applied to issues you might be facing in your personal life, your career, and beyond.)

You: Why can’t I stick to this?

Your brain: I thought you’d never ask! Pull up a chair; we’re gonna be here a while!

You can’t stick to this because:

• You have no willpower.

• You have no discipline.

• You don’t want it badly enough.

• You’re too lazy.

• You’re too busy already. You don’t have time to bring a friggin’ abacus to the table to figure out your macros and make sure you’re hitting your protein targets at every meal.

• You never stick to anything.

• You didn’t stick to Weight Watchers. You didn’t stick to Jenny Craig. You didn’t stick to Optavia. You didn’t stick to Noom, or counting calories, or P90X. Why would keto be any different?

See what I mean? Ask an unhelpful question and you get unhelpful answers—lots of them.

How about another example?

You: Why is this so hard?

Your brain: I’m glad you asked! I’ll tell you why it’s hard.

• It’s hard because you’re the only person in your family who eats this way.

• It’s hard because no one supports you.

• It’s hard because you love sweets.

• It’s hard because all your favorite foods are off-limits.

• It’s hard because you can’t afford to spend $11 on a tiny jar of avocado oil mayonnaise.

• It’s hard because you’re surrounded by high-carb foods at work—it’s always someone’s birthday, baby shower, or retirement party.

• It’s hard because your coworkers always want to go out for lunch.

• It’s hard because Monday through Friday is easy, but your weekends are totally unpredictable. You have no idea where, when, or what you’ll be eating.

Oh… and it’s hard also for the same reasons you can’t stick to it:

• You have no willpower.

• You have no discipline.

• You’re too lazy.

Awesome. How are you supposed to feel good about doing something when you’re focused on all the reasons why you think you can’t do it?

And just one more example… I’ve saved the best worst for last.

You: What’s wrong with me?

Your brain: Ooooh… This is gonna be juicy! Buckle up, buttercup.

What’s wrong with you? Here ya go!

• You’re a fat, lazy slob.

• You just don’t work that hard.

• You’re not that motivated.

• You’ve failed at everything you’ve ever tried.

What the heck are you supposed to do with that?

Again: ask a crappy, unhelpful question, get a crappy, unhelpful answer. This is not conducive to you making progress. If anything, it makes things worse, because what happens when those are the messages you hear all day long? What happens when you need to numb out and silence those voices? You eat! And you are probably not reaching for a roasted chicken thigh and grilled asparagus.

(Sound familiar? Leave a comment! You’re definitely not alone.)

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So, what’s the solution here, then? How do you shift this terrible, negative, self-defeatist inner monologue to something more constructive? To something that will help you get unstuck and start moving forward, however small those first, tenuous steps may be?

It’s pretty simple. If the problem is that you’re asking crappy questions, then you need to…

Ask Better Questions (a.k.a. The Solution)

Let’s take the examples above and see this in action.

Instead of Why is this so hard? Ask, “How can I make this easier?”

Instead of “Why can’t I stick to this?” ask, “How CAN I stick to this?” Or, “What would need to change in order for me to stick to this?”

Do you see what just happened? It’s huge. Maybe you even felt it, because it really is a kind of seismic shift. In my experience, asking the more constructive question helps to relieve some of the tension the negative framing created. You might feel physically lighter, a little less boxed in. Like maybe the quicksand isn’t pulling you down forever.

When you ask more constructive questions, your brain can give you more constructive answers, because that’s what you’ve primed it for.

Let’s get more specific and see how this works.

When you ask why it’s hard, your brain tells you why. Asking how you can make it easier gives your brain the opportunity to provide answers like:

• I could spend just a little bit of time batch cooking so I’m set with great food for several days. (Here are some actionable strategies for this.)

• I could seek out support, either in person, or find an online group to encourage me and help me stay accountable. (Here’s one option.)

• I could find low-carb versions of some of my favorite foods. They might not be quite the same, but they’ll hit the spot well enough that they’ll keep me on track.

• I could ask my family to support me a bit more. They don’t have to eat the same way I do in order to encourage me and be proud of me. (At the very least, I could ask them to stop discouraging me, if that’s an issue in my home.)

• I could look at the menus of the restaurants my coworkers typically go to (or order delivery from) and make a list of go-to low-carb options.

• If I have the means to do so, I could subscribe to a meal delivery service that will literally put keto-suitable food right on my doorstep.

• Maybe I could get advice personalized to my situation, goals, and preferences, from a keto professional. (I do this, by the way. See here for info on booking a consultation.) Maybe the way I’ve been trying to do keto is overly restrictive or not the right way for me, and that’s why it’s been hard to stick to.

When you ask why you can’t stick to it, your brain indulges you and gives you a nice, long list of all the reasons it comes up with. Asking what you could do or what would need to change so that you can stick to it points your brain in a completely different direction. The latter questions allow your brain to fill the void with helpful, constructive answers, like:

• I could let go of my orthorexia and perfectionist thinking and get comfortable with buying convenience foods, like rotisserie chicken, deli meat, and other prepared foods. These might not be my ideal choices, but they’re darn sure good enough.

• I could accept that not every meal needs to be an orgasm a party in my mouth.1 It’s totally okay if my lunch is a can of sardines and some sliced red pepper and cucumber rounds. Ground beef in a bowl with my preferred seasoning, with or without some steamed vegetables, is a perfectly good dinner. Not everything needs to be a 5-star gourmet meal. I’m not trying to impress strangers on Instagram with the lunch I wolf down in the car or while checking emails at my desk.

• I could ask my spouse, partner, or children (if of an appropriate age) to start helping with cooking so it’s not all 100% on me every day.

• I could plan better for weekends. Weekends don’t have to throw me off, if I’m proactive about my food. I don’t need to have the same schedule as during the week in order to eat low-carb food on the weekends. (See here for tips on navigating weekends.)

• If I have “no time” to meal prep, maybe I need to hire a babysitter once a week, or learn to say NO to commitments and obligations that really aren’t priorities for me. I could set some boundaries and let go of the people pleasing tendencies that are holding me back.

The Emotional Aspect

Apart from giving you concrete, actionable ways to start moving forward toward your goals, something else this technique of asking better questions can do is help you shift from feeling like a victim to seeing where you have agency. This may be uncomfortable to admit, but there might be a part of you that blames other people for why you have a hard time doing something—as if what any other human does is responsible for what you put in your mouth. If you think other people are the problem, then there’s nothing you can do about it. You can absolve yourself of any responsibility and stay comfortable and self-assured in your powerlessness. Woe is you. If only they would change, then you could do better.

Wake up, friend. Your circumstances can make it more difficult, yes. I’m not dismissing that. But ultimately, as a grown adult, only you control what you do and don’t eat. Asking better questions helps you identify the places where you can be more proactive and be your own advocate—more proactive, and a better advocate, perhaps, than you’ve realized.

There are some genuine obstacles that make this more difficult. But don’t get bogged down in those obstacles. Focus your attention—and your efforts—on the things you can control and let go of the things you can’t. And recognize that not everything actually is an obstacle, or at least, not an insurmountable one. This whole post has been about finding ways around your perceived obstacles. Are there things that make it harder for you to stick to keto? Okay, what can you DO about them?

Asking better questions also takes shame, self-blame, and self-judgment out of things. You move from saying (and thinking) negative things about yourself to focusing on genuinely changing your patterns for the better. When you think you can’t stick to keto because you’re a failure, you’re weak-willed, you’re undisciplined, and all the rest of the self-loathing litany, well, then it’s hopeless, right? The problem isn’t other people; it’s you. If this is just the way you are—it’s your hard-wiring and it’s simply not possible to change it—then you have no responsibility or control in the matter because, well… *shrug* … that’s just the way you are, so there’s no point in even trying to do things differently. This “learned helplessness” and negative self-image spiral in on themselves and drag you down even further. (Check out this episode of one of my favorite podcasts on why this perspective is keeping you stuck.)

This line of thinking works great… if you’re happy staying stuck. If you’re content to stay where you are and you don’t want anything to change, then congratulations: you’re already there!

But if you do want to change, if you do want something different for yourself than you have now, then you need a different strategy. Asking better questions is liberating. It gets you unstuck. It’s empowering. It can give you more confidence and help you feel more competent, because you have enumerated several things you can do to change. You have identified multiple places where you do have some control, and where you can do things differently—something that’s nearly impossible to do when you’ve invited your brain to look only for the reasons you’re stuck.

Before I close out here, I’ll share an excerpt from a new book called LIGHT: The New Psychology of Weight Loss, by Lizzie Merritt. (Highly recommended if you’re struggling with weight loss on any plan, keto or not.2 There’s no food list, no “diet plan.” It is 100% about mindset, and it will be very instructive for a lot of folks. She also has a podcast you might enjoy, called The Confident Body Podcast.)

Here, the author is talking about being stuck in your usual patterns of self-sabotage, doing things you know are taking you further away from your goals, yet you can’t seem to stop doing them:

Turn the moment into a question. Instead of “Why do I always do this?” try:

• What would happen if I…

• I wonder what I’d learn if I tried…

• What’s one small tweak I could test here?

Even though I’ve just quoted from a book geared toward weight loss, I hope it’s evident that what’s in this post overall is applicable beyond weight loss. We tend to focus on that so much in the keto world, but you might have goals completely unrelated to your weight. Difficulty staying consistent could be keeping you from achieving normal blood sugar or blood pressure, getting rid of your heartburn, clearing up your skin, reversing fatty liver, or any other reason people choose to follow a low-carb diet. So, keep in mind that what I’ve presented here is about rewriting the old stories you’ve been telling yourself. It’s about changing your trajectory, whatever your goals may be — and it can be applied to things that have nothing to do with health. Struggling with a difficult work project? How can you make it easier? Worried about something at home? Are there ways you can make it less scary?

You’re never clueless or powerless. Asking better questions can help you identify the knowledge and power you do have, and how to apply them in ways that move you in the direction you want to go.

P.S. I must give credit where it’s due. I did not invent the concept of asking better questions. The two people who have influenced me the most with regard to this concept and mindset techniques in general are Corinne Crabtree, founder of the No BS Weightloss (sic) Program (and host of the fabulous Losing 100 Pounds with Corinne podcast), and Elizabeth Benton, author of Chasing Cupcakes, a book I have benefited from personally and have recommended to countless clients. Elizabeth also has a podcast – Consistent (formerly called Primal Potential) – but I prefer the older episodes over some of the more recent ones.

P.P.S. In these days of reduced attention spans and playing the algorithm game, I am thrilled that there are folks who still enjoy longform writing. But if you also happen to like watching a video now and then, here’s one I did a while back all about asking better questions.

Maintenance can be a strange place to be. You’ve worked hard—possibly for years—to lose weight, have normal blood pressure, get your HbA1c into the non-diabetic range, restore fertility if you have PCOS, or accomplish any number of other goals. There’s a part of you that’s celebrating, and rightly so. You took charge. You took action, and you’ve reclaimed your health. But there may also be a part of you that’s thinking, “What now?” If you’ve accomplished what you set out to accomplish—if you’ve “arrived”—it can feel like a letdown to think there’s nowhere else to go, nothing else to work toward.

For those of you who find yourselves in this odd limbo, I see two main ways to go, and they’re not mutually exclusive. You can do both at the same time.

1. Set new goals! Make it so there is something else to work toward.

2. Make maintenance the goal. You worked hard to get where you are, so make staying there the new goal.

Before we get into the details, I want to point out that my advice for navigating maintenance is not specific to keto. It’s equally applicable to having lost weight or improved health through any way of eating. Also, since you’re reading this on Substack, I’ll assume you’re a fan of longform writing (and thank you for that!), but in case you enjoy videos, too, here’s a video I did on this a while back: Winning at Maintenance on Keto.

Make Maintenance the Goal

If you battled your weight for a good portion of your life, and then a keto diet (or carnivore, low-carb, low-fat, Paleo, or any other way of eating) helped you finally—finally—get those stubborn pounds or kilos to pack their bags and go, then your goal now is not to become a regain statistic. Your goal is to keep the weight off permanently. Nobody wants to lose weight for only a few weeks or months. You might have started with a deadline in mind, like a wedding, a vacation, or maybe a class reunion, so your initial desire to lose weight may have had an immediacy to it, but I’m guessing you weren’t thinking it would be great to get the weight off before that event and then have it come right back on afterward. As they say, “Ain’t no one got time for that!”

No. You wanted to keep the weight off, so now, that is the goal. That is the thing to celebrate. That is the thing to be proud of. The author of a recent editorial in the BMJ noted that “…weight regain is almost inevitable for most people who initially lose weight.” Even weight loss medications (called weight management medications [WMMs] in the quote coming up) aren’t a magic bullet for permanent weight loss. A paper about weight regain after stopping meds said, “Real world observations estimate that around 50% of people with obesity discontinue WMMs within 12 months.” The paper also noted that cessation of weight loss meds “is followed by rapid weight regain and reversal of beneficial effects on cardiometabolic markers.” (Cardiometabolic markers such as HbA1c, fasting glucose, total cholesterol, triglycerides, and blood pressure.)

So, considering the somewhat bleak outlook for long-term weight loss success, maintenance IS the win. Every day that you wake up still within your desired range is a victory. Every day that your clothes still fit is a win. When you reach your goal weight (or, preferably, your goal weight range), you no longer have a little jolt of joy, encouragement, or validation from seeing the number on the scale go down from week to week or month to month. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still be excited and proud of yourself. You can feel a sense of achievement every time you step on the scale, long after you reach your goal: “Yep, still maintaining—go me!” “Yep, still not a regain statistic. Guess I’ll just keep being awesome!”

(This being said, if you do regain some weight, please watch this video. Consider it your “break-glass-in-case-of-emergency” pep talk if you need some words of wisdom about having regained some weight, on keto or not. And here’s a part 2 for that video. Regaining weight is not a moral failing. It’s not a commentary on your character or your worth as a human. So while the ultimate aim might be to keep weight off for the long term, it’s not a crisis if you don’t! Also, let’s not have the force of gravity on our bodies—that is, our weight—be the only way we assess how things are going for us, either during the process of weight loss or during maintenance. Keto is effective for so many other things—31 things, at the very least—it does a disservice to anoint weight loss as the end-all-be-all, most important goal someone could have.)

As Always, It’s Not Solely About Weight

The same perspective applies to improving a health issue. Take type 2 diabetes, for example. Let’s say you started with an HbA1c of 10.6, well into the diabetic range. And let’s say after a year on keto (or some other approach), your last few A1cs have been below 5.6—not only out of the diabetic range, but not even in the prediabetic range anymore. And maybe your fasting glucose at the beginning was 186 mg/dl (10.3 mmol/l) but your glucometer or CGM has shown it to be under 100 mg/dl (5.6 mmol/l) for several months. And your fasting insulin? Let’s say it was 32 mIU/mL before you changed what you eat, and the two most recent tests showed it to be below 10 mIU/mL. Oh, and don’t forget about the four medications your doctor deprescribed, and the fact that your brain fog disappeared two weeks into keto and hasn’t come back. I think it’s safe to say you have made a MASSIVE improvement in your health.

But just like with weight loss, if your blood sugar has been normal for months, you might not experience that little dopamine hit anymore when you check it. But that doesn’t mean it has to feel boring. It doesn’t have to feel ho-hum. You can be proud of yourself every time you see your blood sugar or A1c in the normal range: “Yes! Still not diabetic anymore!” “Yep, still rockin’ my normal blood sugars, like a ninja!”

The same principle holds with just about any other issue you can name that typically gets better on keto: if you previously had debilitating fatigue or joint pain, you can celebrate your continued wins every time you make it up a few flights of stairs without getting winded, every time you go for a bike ride or hike, or every time your hands are not knotted and swollen and gnarled up from arthritis so that you can work on a puzzle pain-free, do woodworking, work on model trains, or enjoy quilting or playing a musical instrument or some other endeavor that requires fine motor skills. If you once had heartburn so severe that you drove yourself to the hospital because you were worried it was actually a heart attack (a real thing that happened to a friend of mine), but now you can’t remember the last time you needed an antacid, and you haven’t needed to sleep sitting up in months, that’s a win, too. If it’s been three months since you needed the headache medicine you were previously taking three times a week, and you don’t remember the last time you were laid low with a migraine … more wins.

There are so many things worth celebrating and being proud of, even when they’re just your new normal. Remembering what it was like before those were commonplace for you can help you maintain the gratitude and appreciation: being grateful to yourself, for having the courage to change, and the commitment and dedication to be consistent with that change, and maybe being grateful that you found a method that works for you and grateful for the people who put those methods out there for you to find. Remembering the negative aspects of life in the past—whether it was something as invasive and interruptive as needing to inject yourself with insulin multiple times a day for T2 diabetes, or just some brain fog that made it less enjoyable to read a book—can help you hold on to the positive feelings you experienced early on as those things started to get better. Again, just because they’ve become commonplace doesn’t mean they’re any less impressive or that they should automatically lose importance. If your health is dramatically better than it was years ago, and you’re taking deliberate action to keep it staying better, then you, my friend, are an absolute rock star. Take a bow, accept your Grammy, applaud the hell out of yourself, and keep going!

Set New Goals

It makes sense to do this, right? If you’ve achieved what you set out to achieve, then you want to maintain those achievements, yes, but it’s also helpful to set your sights on new achievements.

I recommend looking outside the realm of weight and health for your next set of goals. An easy place to start is fitness. (No, fitness is not the same thing as health). You could aim to run a mile, or a 5K or 10K, or a half or full marathon. You could find a moderate-difficulty or “challenging” hiking trail and aim to complete it. (With “moderate” and “challenging” being specific to you, of course.) The possibilities here are endless, because they’re entirely customizable to you. Your skill level, the activities you enjoy. (Hate running? I don’t blame ya! You could set your sights on something to do with swimming, cycling, skating, lifting, tennis—whatever strikes your fancy.)

Even though fitness and health aren’t the same thing, I can see how you might prefer to look beyond anything related to your physical body when aiming to set new goals. How about learning a new language? It would be hard to tell when you’ve achieved or “arrived” at that, though. (When, exactly, do you go from “learning to speak German” to “I speak German”?) So consider making it time-bound: spend 30 minutes a day, four times a week, studying French, Spanish, or Chinese. The same for learning to play a musical instrument. I play the clarinet and saxophone, but I can’t tell you the precise moment I went from “learning to play” to “I’m a clarinet player”, so that could have some time parameters around it, too. (Commit to practicing for 25 minutes, three days a week, for example.) Take up any new skill or hobby: crocheting, gardening, polymer clay jewelry, Revolutionary War history, amateur astronomy. (Writing!)

The point is this: if you consider yourself to be goal-oriented and you need to always be working toward something, what could you work toward when your own body is no longer the “project”? What interests do you have? What pursuits have been patiently waiting in the back of your mind while you placed all or most of your focus on losing weight or following a certain diet? What endeavors could you devote time to if you stepped away from the constant inundation of podcasts, videos, and articles about keto? (Or carnivore, or vegan, or weight loss?)

I hope that’s helpful, folks. I spend a lot of time with clients and the groups I coach helping people fine-tune things in order to get “unstuck” in weight loss or troubleshoot if other “expected” things aren’t happening, like lower blood sugar or blood pressure, or improvement in some other issue keto is typically effective for. But it’s important to acknowledge all the people who have already gotten to where they want to go. They don’t need help in the areas I most often help with, but that doesn’t mean they don’t benefit from ongoing encouragement or guidance for what to do after they get there.

We probably don’t talk enough about this in general in the keto, low-carb and carnivore communities. Whatever goals you have for your health or your weight, they aren’t the end point. They’re the stepping stones on to what’s next.

I could do a follow-up to this post, if anyone is interested. Something that addresses the nuts and bolts of long-term maintenance. (Including some witty comebacks to questions like, “When are you going to eat like a normal person again”? And some concrete advice for what to do if you do start gaining some weight back, or health issues you thought you were rid of start to pop up again. Because there are reasons why so many have a hard time keeping the weight off permanently or keeping the health issues in remission for the long term, and it doesn’t have to be that way. Would this be useful for you? Let me know in the comments!)

As always, thank you for reading! I know your time is precious and limited, and I appreciate you spending a few minutes of it with me.

So here goes.

As I opened with, a growing number of highly influential keto and carnivore diet proponents are adding starches and plants, respectively, back into their diets. I applaud them for recognizing that their way of eating was no longer delivering the benefits they had experienced earlier on, and that perhaps it would be worth experimenting with reintroducing foods they had avoided for years. It takes courage to do this, particularly when your “brand,” your livelihood—and maybe even a large part of your very identity—seem inseparable from your chosen diet.

The problem is, these people didn’t just “avoid” these foods. They shunned them. They banished them to the furthest reaches of hell. They branded them, at best, as simply unnecessary for human survival, and at worst, as poisonous. Damn near deadly.

They made you think you were an idiot for spending money on them. A while back it was pretty standard for some of the carnivores to say—pejoratively—that lettuce is crunchy water. And don’t even think about eating raw spinach—crunchy water with oxalates! (*Gasp!*) The only thing worse than that is a handful of almonds: oxalates and phytic acid! You might as well go suck on your car’s tailpipe and inhale a nice, deep blast of carbon monoxide.¹

They convinced many of their followers that everyone should avoid these foods. They made people afraid of food. They made people think they were inviting certain death and destruction if the slightest broccoli floret accidentally made its way onto their plate.

I repeat: they made people afraid of food.

There’s Enough Responsibility to Go Around

Now, we could argue that people watching videos, listening to podcasts, or reading blogs, should not assume that personalized advice is being given. Unless the host or author explicitly says something to the effect of, “I am telling YOU what to do,” then anyone watching or listening should not take it as a prescription intended for them, personally. Unfortunately, too often, people interpret it as exactly this. Sadly, critical thinking is on the list of endangered species skills these days. (It’s in good company, right near the top, with common sense.) So it’s not necessarily the content creator’s fault.

That being said, people whose platforms have large followings have (in my opinion, anyway) a fiduciary responsibility with regard to their followers. We could say this about any field—car repair, astronomy, quilting. Ideally, influencers provide sensible advice and tell the truth. But this responsibility may be even greater when it comes to health. When it comes to desperate people seeking answers. Vulnerable people looking for saviors. People who want easy, black-and-white answers when there might not be any.

There’s a fiduciary responsibility to not be so hyperbolic. If you have a large following, you might not like that people hang on your every word. You might not want people to do exactly the same things you do, but your followers DO listen to you. They respect you. You are a trusted authority in their eyes. This might apply to any popular influencer, but it’s even more relevant for those who are medical professionals. (Or, who, like me, are nutrition or dietetics professionals.) Having a following comes with responsibility because you know people are watching and listening. That’s the whole point of having a platform. If you didn’t want to influence people, you wouldn’t have a YouTube channel, or a podcast, or a book, or a blog. You wouldn’t be spending time creating content specifically intended to influence people! (Okay, here I’ll admit that many of the popular folks we know in the keto and carnivore communities might not intend to influence people. Their goal might be simply to educate—to provide information that the viewer, listener, or reader can do with as they please. But even though the intent might not to be influence, make no mistake, and like it or not: influence is occurring. And anyone with a platform knows it is. Plausible deniability left the room a long time ago.)

This brings me back to the client call I mentioned at the beginning of this post. This person was overwhelmed with confusion and self-doubt. She had so much fear about so many foods; her anxiety was palpable, even through Zoom. (And she’s not alone. I see this all the time.) She even expressed anger. She was angry with some of her most trusted authorities. She resented them for eating foods they had spent years convincing her were downright deadly. She felt like they had misled her—like they had betrayed her trust.

I acknowledge that this was probably taking things a little too far. (Back to that whole critical thinking thing again.) Too many people have outsourced their health and abdicated their own personal agency to the point that they’ll trust a stranger on the internet more than they trust their own body. (Even if that stranger holds an MD or a PhD, they have zero experience in what it feels like to live in your body. As I often remind people: the world’s leading expert in your body is… you.) In my client’s defense, though, she was desperate and vulnerable, and I can’t blame her for wanting doctors on YouTube to be the answers to her prayers.

Before I go any further, let me pause here to say something in case it’s not clear. Thousands of people have improved their lives immensely because of things they learned from YouTube, or a blog or podcast. Some people get better medical advice information from free videos than they’re getting from their own doctors. I am by no means disparaging or downplaying the potential for social media to truly change lives. (In a group I coach, the norm, not the exception, is that members discovered for themselves—not from their doctors—how to get their A1cs into the non-diabetic range, or how to lose 50+ pounds without white-knuckling through hunger all day.) It’s actually because social media has so much … well … influence, that people who put themselves out there as authorities should be especially careful about what they say. You can tell people that saturated fat doesn’t cause cardiovascular disease, and that the association between red meat and increased cancer risk is ridiculously weak, without making it sound like fatty beef is the only thing that’s safe for humans to eat.

I’m not angry at anyone for making a change to their diet. Like I said earlier, kudos! If someone experienced a remarkable transformation in their health by following a certain diet, and they eventually reach a point where that same diet seems to be falling short—or maybe they just want more variety and that’s all the justification they need for broadening things a bit—I celebrate them for (finally) being flexible. I applaud them for not trying to “keto harder,” “carnivore harder,” or fast for 4200 hours.

What irks me is that these people spent years demonizing foods they now consume. Relegating them to the likes of anthrax, cyanide, or a live grenade. They’ve convinced legions of followers that there’s something acutely poisonous about foods billions of healthy, lean, active, cognitively sharp people all over the world eat on a regular basis.

Again, I acknowledge that food sensitivities exist. Of course they do. Some people do need to avoid nightshades, or dairy, or gluten, or any number of other foods or food components. But I can polish off half a jar of peanut butter, whereas someone else needs to keep an epi pen handy in case they accidentally smell some peanuts. Just because some people are sensitive to certain foods doesn’t mean everyone is.2 This is literally all an influencer would have to say in order to not be a grade-A zealot.

I would have no problem with the backtracking if they had simply been a little more measured over the years. If they had explained that they were eating a certain way and it was working well for them at that point in time, but that not everyone else needed to eat that way, and that they weren’t certain it would even continue to work equally well for them six months or six years in the future. They could have delivered a little more context. A little more nuance. (Ah, good ol’ context and nuance. Two more concepts on the endangered list.) They could have said, for example, what I said in my video defending vegetables: that two things can be true at the same time – a carnivore diet can radically change someone’s life … and not everyone needs carnivore. A carnivore diet can give people relief from debilitating symptoms and help put into remission multiple conditions they were plagued with for decades, and for which conventional medicine had only lackluster treatments—or no treatments at all. And still, not everyone needs to eat that way. (The same is true for keto. I’ve built my career on low-carb and keto diets, and I have zero hesitation in saying that not everyone needs keto. I’ve had several clients for whom I recommended increasing carbohydrate intake, based on their specific situation and goals. And I’ve also recommended carnivore when I thought it was best! There they go again—context and nuance rearing their pesky heads.)

These popular influencers could have provided just as much education without making thousands of people terrified of asparagus and raspberries. They could have provided just as much good, helpful, life-changing advice without making it sound like anything besides steak from a grass-finished cow is poison, and like you need a friggin’ hazmat suit to go to the grocery store.

Seriously. That’s all they would have had to do. Just not be so damn extreme and hyperbolic about it. But they weren’t. They went off the deep end, and they took a few thousand people with them.

And for all this ranting, I should probably be grateful. The worse this gets, the more people will be seeking sanity. Looking for a voice of reason and temperance. (Which is funny, because I’m a wine lover.) In fact, I coined my “Keto Without the Crazy” motto a few years ago, and I could not, in my wildest imagination, have predicted how prescient that was. The landscape was so much less insane back then, but the crazy was already brewing. (See this post for the full story on the origins of Keto Without the Crazy.)

Doing More Harm Than Good

I often say that keto (or carnivore) is supposed to improve your life, not take away from it. These diets should improve your health—and that includes your mental health. But owing to the current social media landscape, where algorithms reward sensationalism, and context doesn’t get clicks, I see some of the most prominent voices making people anxious, obsessed, and scared. What is the point of having a 4.9 A1c, or visible abs, or a 0.5 triglyceride-to-HDL ratio if you live in constant, low-level panic, convinced that food is out to get you?

Obsessively focusing on diet, particularly at the extremes, has a point of diminishing returns—and a lot of people are already there. Unfortunately, they rarely realize it until things get so bad—the fear of making a misstep, the constant doubt and second-guessing—that they have no choice but to dial things back a bit because the anxiety is crippling them.

It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way

When I’m working with a client who radiates the palpable anxiety and food fears I mentioned earlier (and I work with a lot of them), I ask them if they know someone who eats fruit, or vegetables, or beans, or grains, or meat from CAFO animals, who is in great health. Who has good energy, is cognitively sharp, maintains a weight they’re happy with, doesn’t plan their day around their medication regimen, etc. And the answer is always yes. Always. I have yet to hear someone say no, there is no one—absolutely no one at all—in their life who eats fruit, or starches, or grain-finished meat, or any plants at all, and is in good health.

Grains are poison? Okay, but that would probably come as a shock to the 90-year old woman in Japan who’s eaten rice almost every day of her life, or the 85-year old man in Italy who eats pasta multiple times a week. Stop being so ridiculous, wouldja?

Are there people who have sensitivity reactions to gluten? Yes. Are there people who are overloaded on oxalates? Yes. Does that mean no one anywhere, ever, can consume a slice of baguette or a spinach salad with beets and goat cheese without keeling over and dying? No.

Unfortunately, the people on the “lunatic fringe,” as Robb Wolf used to call it, make us all look insane. If I specialize in low-carb and keto diets, I’m instantly categorized as “one of them.” One of the crazies. One of the nutjobs who thinks they can make themselves immortal by avoiding fill-in-x-food they’ve labeled as toxic this month. (And which they will confess to having reintroduced next year!)

An Oasis of Sanity

If you’re wondering if there’s a place for you—a place free of diet dogma, hyperbole and extremism… A place free of food policing and shaming… A place where it’s safe to ask questions and get help with keto and carnivore and also safe to talk about eating vegetables, fruit, and even starchy foods, like potatoes, beans, and – *gasp!* – even grains, then I invite you to join my Patreon. There’s a live call once a week for Q&A, help troubleshooting, encouragement, cheerleading, and a (virtual) kick in the butt when you need it.

If you’ve been looking for a soft place to land—an oasis of sanity amidst the crackpots, then the Patreon group will be a great fit. There’s no long-term commitment – you can join for a month and see if it feels right. I have reconfigured what I offer, and the new weekly calls are starting on Tuesday, January 6 at 7pm ET. The calls will be recorded and replays will be available for patrons only. See here for details. I’d love to have you there.

(N.B. This post was not an advertisement for my Patreon. I’m simply letting folks know that yes, there is a forum for people to talk about food, health, weight loss, and related topics in a sane, non-judgmental space.)

This one particularly irks me, because first of all, “restrictive” is a relative term. What one person finds restrictive could feel liberating to someone else. Second, restriction isn’t always a bad thing. And third, we restrict ourselves in myriad ways every day, and no one seems bothered by this. In fact, we opt for restriction. We choose it willingly. How so? Let’s take a look at each of these three perspectives on restriction.

Before we get into that, though, let’s examine the word “restriction” a little more closely. It implies denying yourself in some way, or being prevented from doing something you want to do. A negative implication—or, more accurately, a punitive implication—is built into it. There’s a limitation, and this limitation is undesirable. But what if you don’t want to do that thing? For example, if you don’t want to eat animal foods, and you don’t miss them, then following a vegan diet doesn’t feel punitive, because you’re not denying yourself anything. If you don’t want to eat bacon cheeseburgers, or a turkey sandwich, or a piece of broiled salmon, then avoiding animal foods isn’t limiting you. Likewise, if you follow a keto diet and you don’t want to eat cookies or muffins, or bread, or pasta and rice, then avoiding these isn’t a punishment. You’re simply being selective about what you eat and you don’t feel restricted because you’re not holding yourself back from anything. (It might be hard for someone to wrap their mind around someone else genuinely not wanting brownies and croissants and fettucine, so they’ll be convinced you do feel restricted, but that’s on them.)

Okay, detour over. Let’s move on to…

Ways we choose restriction happily

1. Marriage is restrictive.

How come when someone gets engaged, no one ever says, “Wait a minute… You’re only going to have sex with this one person, until one of you DIES?! Isn’t that restrictive?!” Unless you have an open marriage (which is totally cool if that’s how you roll), the answer here is yes. You have chosen to restrict yourself in this way. And you’re actually happy about it! You want to restrict yourself in this way. So why do people say keto is “restrictive,” as if restriction is always a bad thing, or always feels punitive?

2. Having kids is restrictive.

When you announce that you’re having a child, no one furrows their brow and expresses concern about how restricted your life is about to become. In fact, if you throw a baby shower, they lavish gifts upon you! They celebrate the restriction you are entering into. No one warns you that you might want to rethink starting a family because there’ll be a lot of restrictions on your life. For example, you won’t be able to get in your car unannounced and take off for parts unknown. Somebody’s gotta change diapers and feed and water the little tyke, after all. You’re gonna be “restricted” from zoning out in front of the TV as much as you’d like, because you’ll be busy doing about 72 loads of laundry unless you want the little angel sleeping in soiled sheets every night or spending all his or her time in onesies covered with spit-up and caked-on pureed peaches. You’ll be restricted from getting uninterrupted sleep for at least a few months, maybe a few years, depending on how things go. Not to mention the expense. Raising a child isn’t exactly cheap, and if you plan to pay for as much of your little darling’s college education as you can, well…you’re likely gonna have to restrict yourself from traveling as much as you’d like, treating yourself to that new car you’ve been eyeing, or enjoying some other perk that would require shunting money away from the college fund. And yet, millions of people engage in this kind of restriction every day without a second thought.

Once your kids are a bit older and capable of feeding and watering themselves and changing their own underwear, they might get mixed up in some dangerous shenanigans, and in your desire to protect them and set them straight, you might feel a desire to slam them into a wall, head-first. There may be times when you’d like to slap them so hard, even you won’t recognize them afterward. And yet, you won’t. You’ll restrict yourself from this kind of reaction. You might yell. You might throw things. But you won’t unleash your inner Mike Tyson on your child. Why? Because we consciously choose restriction in an endless number of circumstances without feeling like this puts harsh limits on our lives. (I hope you restrict yourself this way, anyway.)

3. Having a dog or cat is restrictive.

Owing to their need for walks, dogs are a bit more restrictive than cats, but both types of “fur babies” require care and feeding. Even if you go away for a couple days and leave your cat with an automatic feeder, it will need to be refilled and the litter box will need to be emptied eventually. Even if you hire a dog walker, you likely walk little Lassie a few times a day, yourself, so you have to keep somewhat of an eye on the clock, lest twelve hours pass since the poor thing has last been outside.

And yet…

And yet, millions of pet owners restrict themselves in these ways—happily—for decades. They choose these restrictions because they see them as a fair tradeoff for the benefits that come with the restriction: the companionship, the unconditional love (well, with a dog, maybe less so a cat), the mental health boost, the physical health benefits (depending on the details of one’s dog walking).

There’s an endless supply of other examples. Being in the military is restrictive, yet a few million people do it every day – and we’re glad they do! Rather than chastising these folks for restricting themselves or questioning them for doing it, we appreciate them for it. Following a workplace dress code is restrictive – and thank goodness for that! How many of you are grateful your coworkers aren’t allowed to wear a Speedo in the office?! (Exception for lifeguards.)

How does this relate to keto? Easily.

If, in exchange for restricting your carbohydrate intake, you’re able to stop taking insulin and oral drugs for type 2 diabetes, or your migraines disappear, your heartburn goes away, your hormones improve significantly if you have PCOS, your blood sugar control is better than you ever hoped for if you have type 1 diabetes, or you put bipolar disorder, major depression, schizophrenia, or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) into remission, if your binge eating disorder massively improves, or if you put Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis into remission, does keto feel restrictive, or does it feel liberating? Do you feel limited, or do you feel like you’ve gotten your life back?

Yes, you have to avoid bread, pasta, rice, cereal, cookies, bagels, and other high-carb foods. But that seems like an acceptable tradeoff for being freed from decades of debilitating mental health problems, or from years of bloody diarrhea, or from the heartbreak of infertility due to PCOS. And it’s not like this tradeoff requires you to live on bran crackers and alfalfa sprouts. You can have juicy NY strip steaks, roasted brussels sprouts with balsamic vinegar, roasted chicken with the crispy skin, a charcuterie board with prosciutto, cheese, olives and cornichons, a cobb salad with blue cheese, bacon, hard-boiled egg, and avocado, roasted shrimp dipped in melted butter. A keto diet isn’t exactly a hardship. So, yes, you have to restrict your carbohydrate intake, but you’re not gonna go hungry. In fact, a keto diet allows for plenty of foods that other ways of eating would have you restrict. Try having a ribeye on a low-fat diet. Or that loaded cobb salad when you’re counting calories.

News flash: every diet is restrictive.

And yet, whereas some doctors actively warn their patients against keto, they will happily steer you toward a low-fat, vegan, or low-calorie diet. But all of these require some kind of restriction. A low-fat diet, by definition, means you have to restrict fat. A low-calorie diet requires calorie restriction. A vegan diet requires you to restrict anything that comes from an animal. All of these are restrictive, so why is it only keto that causes people to get their panties in a bunch use the R-word?

And you know what else is restrictive?

• Limited mobility due to fatigue, joint pain or obesity.

• Migraines that keep you bedridden multiple days every month.

• Heartburn so strong you have to sleep sitting up—if you can sleep at all.

• Skin problems so severe that you’re embarrassed to attend social events.

• Not being able to travel because your IBS or IBD is so severe and unpredictable that you’re afraid to go anywhere you might not have immediate access to a restroom.

• Arthritis that prevents you from playing your guitar, doing woodworking, or engaging in other hobbies that require fine motor skills.

If not restricting your carb intake results in gout flares, headaches, energy crashes, bloating, or something else you’d rather avoid, then rather than feeling restrictive, keto probably feels freeing.

I’ve had clients come to me taking 4, 6, 8 medications. And the keto doctors I know have patients on more than that. How come no one ever says that’s restrictive? Taking not one, not two, but three medications just for blood pressure? Um, HELLO?! Having to travel with an insulin kit and inject yourself before every meal for type 2 diabetes? Having a pill organizer with your plethora of tablets and capsules doled out for the week, and having to watch the clock so you take things at the right time, with food, without food… That’s totally fine, but not eating bread is a problem? How come no one ever says taking ten medications is restrictive or unsustainable? Some doctors would have no problem prescribing you an eleventh medication, but don’t you dare do that crazy keto diet. We are truly living in Bizarro world, my friends.

We restrict ourselves all the time in ways we don’t even realize.

Buying things is restrictive.

Food, clothing, cars, toilet paper, socket wrenches… If you want to take something home from a store, you have to pay for it. “What? I can’t just put this in my bag and walk out of here? I have to exchange money for it? I feel so restricted!” — said no one, ever.) A silly example, maybe, but it’s true, no? Unless you’re a thief, you restrict yourself this way every time you purchase something.

HOV lanes are restrictive.

If you commute to work in a high-traffic area, there’s a chance there’s a high-occupancy vehicle lane (HOV) somewhere along your route, where only cars carrying two, three, or more passengers are permitted. You might feel a little annoyed that you can’t ride in that lane if you’re by yourself, but it’s probably never occurred to you that it’s a restriction. You don’t resent having to stay in one of the regular lanes. It’s just the rule, and you follow it with barely a second thought.

Restriction isn’t always a bad thing

Many of us choose to restrict our carbohydrate intake because of the freedom this gives us in other areas of our life. And diet isn’t the only place we restrict ourselves in exchange for a positive outcome, nor is restriction always a bad thing. Where is restriction actually a good thing?

Obeying traffic signals and not driving under the influence: good restrictions!

Thanks to traffic lights, stop signs, yield signs, and other roadside directives, any time we get behind the wheel of a car, we are restricted from driving as fast as we’d like to anywhere we go. If we see a red light or a stop sign at the end of the street, we are restricted from blowing through the intersection without stopping. If we consume a bit too much alcohol, we are restricted from getting behind the wheel.

We all, as a society, have collectively agreed to these restrictions, for our own safety. None of us would say we should be able to blast through every intersection at top speed and ignore all other traffic signs and signals because we’re just in a hurry. (“You mean I can’t blow right through this busy intersection?” “I can’t ignore the flashing lights and stop sign on this school bus? I feel so restricted!”) None of us would say that we should be allowed to mow down somebody’s kid in a crosswalk on their way home from school or drive regardless of how impaired we are after tossing back a few drinks. We have collectively agreed to restrict ourselves in this way to minimize the chances of us all getting killed.

Keeping your emotions in check at work: a useful restriction

Most of us have probably had a moment – or five or six – where we would have liked to punch our boss or a coworker square in the face. Or if not get physically violent, then maybe unleash a string of expletives that would have the Merriam-Webster people reaching for their notepads to write down all the creative new things you’ve come up with. But we don’t do this. (Unless you want to get fired, in which case workplace violence would probably accomplish that.) We restrict ourselves from acting or speaking in certain ways in certain places, and we probably consider this a good thing, because we don’t want our coworkers or boss punching us in the face, either.

Not letting your toddler stay up all night, or cross the street without holding your hand: beneficial restrictions

Do these really need any explaining? You put restrictions on your child for their own good. They might not like it, but you know these are beneficial.

Once again, for the folks in the back: restriction is not always a bad thing.

So, is keto restrictive? Yes. But LIFE is restrictive. We restrict ourselves every day, in countless ways, some of which we choose happily, and some of which we agree to for the collective good. Because the payoffs—the positive outcomes we experience, individually and as a society—are greater than the discomfort of the restriction.

So, the next time someone comments on the “restrictive” nature of a way of eating you enjoy and have chosen to adhere to, you can just nod, smile, and go on living your improved life.

P.S. Maybe you do miss donuts and cake, cookies and granola bars, or pasta and potatoes. Maybe you do feel restricted. Fair enough. Not everyone loves keto. But if eating this way is helping you normalize your blood sugar or blood pressure, keeping the low mood demons away, keeping your GI system happy, keeping eczema, heartburn, or joint pain away, helping to control your binge eating, or helping you experience any other positive effects, maybe you can acknowledge that keto feels restrictive, but the restriction is worth it in order to maintain those positive things. Two things can be true at the same time: keto can feel restrictive and the restriction is an acceptable tradeoff for the good it brings to your life.

P.P.S. Future installments in this series on dumb things people say about keto will include “Keto is unsustainable,” “Keto is a fad,” “Keto is dangerous,” and whatever else I come up with down the line.

…Said no one, ever.

So why, then, when it comes to breakfast, do people on low-carb diets become completely untethered from logic?

When you’ve spent over a decade teaching people about low-carb and ketogenic diets, the question often comes up about what to eat for breakfast if you don’t like eggs. (Or if you’ve had enough bacon and eggs, omelets, and sunny-side up to last you three lifetimes and the mere thought of starting one more morning with eggs on your plate has you fantasizing about going face-first into chocolate peanut butter cereal.)

So, what do I recommend for people looking for something to have for breakfast besides eggs?

Anything.

Anything else at all.

Literally any other low carb food.

You can have rotisserie chicken for breakfast.

Leftover meatballs.

Canned salmon.

Cobb salad.

Sausage and peppers.

Cold steak, sliced and dipped in horseradish sauce or blue cheese dressing. (HELLO!)

Cold burger patties. (My friend Kelly Hogan calls these “meat cookies.” And you know what’s wrong with having these as a low-carb or keto breakfast? Absolutely nothing!) Chown down on them plain, or dip them in mayo, sugar-free ketchup or BBQ sauce, or whatever other low- or no-sugar condiment you like.

That it’s hard for folks to wrap their minds around this is simply a lack of imagination.

This isn’t weird at all.

In your life before keto, how many times did you have cold leftover pizza or Chinese food for breakfast? Heck, when I was in college, it was a regular occurrence! If you can say the same thing, then you’ve already had “dinner for breakfast” more times than you can even remember. And just as many times, you’ve had breakfast for dinner, or for a midnight snack. Haven’t you ever gone into an IHOP, Perkins, Denny’s, Waffle House, or someplace similar and gotten waffles or an omelet in the wee hours? Yes, of course you have. So, eating “breakfast food” at other times of the day isn’t odd at all, and it’s equally not odd to eat foods we typically associate with lunch or dinner much earlier in the day.

Reality check: there’s no such thing as “breakfast food.” Breakfast is just a meal – an opportunity to nourish and fuel yourself. Most of us are accustomed to eating certain kinds of food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but that doesn’t mean those foods are all we can have for those meals, or that we must have those foods. Many cultures around the world make no distinction between breakfast, lunch, and dinner foods; there are only foods. In South Korea, a traditional breakfast might be a small bit of rice, a fried egg, some kimchi, and maybe some other pickled or grilled vegetables.

I don’t know how the notion of “breakfast food” came to be canonized in the American dietary lexicon, but contrary to what is ingrained (no pun intended) in so many of us, breakfast does not require eggs, nor bacon or sausages. (Nor cereal, bagels, orange juice, or toast, if you’re not on a low-carb diet.) Chicken Caesar salad makes a perfectly delicious breakfast.

For people who genuinely can’t fathom having something unconventional in the morning, I recommend sticking with the tried and true and just skipping the eggs: sausage and Canadian bacon. Chorizo hash with onions and peppers, sans potatoes. Meat and vegetable scramble topped with cheese – basically an omelet, minus the eggs. (Why did I say “meat and vegetable” rather than “meat and veggie,” which rolls off the tongue more smoothly? Just a pet peeve. I cringe when I hear grown adults infantilize words and use “cutesy” little abbreviations. The two that come to mind immediately are veggies and baggies [small, snack-sized, zip-top plastic bags]. Do I lose sleep over this? No. But I do shudder a little bit on the inside.)

Other ways to stay within the comfort zone for breakfast while keeping the carbs low are things like Greek yogurt and/or cottage cheese, possibly with some protein powder added, a handful of berries, chopped nuts, sugar-free flavored syrup, or other toppings, depending on one’s individual carb threshold. And I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that some folks loooove smoothies for breakfast. I don’t know when or why people became so enamored with liquid food, but here we are. Don’t get me wrong. I can absolutely get down on a protein shake, but I usually prefer food that I actually have to chew. (Pro tip for when you do have a protein shake – particularly this time of year, but this flavor magic works 365: add some canned pumpkin and a generous amount of cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice to a vanilla protein shake. Make sure to buy 100% pure pumpkin, not pumpkin pie mix, which has added sugar. Put it in a blender and let ‘er rip. [Don’t attempt to do this with a shaker bottle. The texture will be much better if you blend it.] You’re welcome, friends. There are some ready-to-drink pumpkin spice protein shakes available this time of year but trust me, your homemade version will be tastier. There’s also cinnamon roll flavored whey protein powder, which would also be fabulous with some pure pumpkin and a bit of extra cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice.)

In general, though, I recommend that people eat anything they want for breakfast – or any other meal – as long as it’s low in carbs. Something you can do to make this much easier is…

Cook in Bulk

If you’re digging the idea of having burger patties or steak or roasted vegetables for breakfast, but you’d rather not be peeling and chopping or frying or grilling while you’re still bleary-eyed and the caffeine hasn’t kicked in yet, then you’ll need to cook things in advance. Batch cook, batch cook, BATCH. COOK.

Seriously. Eating “real food” for breakfast is just as quick and convenient as reaching for a box of cereal or dropping a slice of bread in the toaster – provided that said food is already prepared.

This video offers several actionable tips for cooking in bulk on a low-carb or keto diet, but here’s the gist, particularly where breakfast is concerned:

Go big or go home.

Roasting or frying some sausages? Don’t make enough for just one meal. Cook two or three whole packages so you’ll have plenty for the week. Need to rush out the door in a hurry one morning? Grab a bunch of cold sausages, throw them in a baggie BAG or a plastic container and hit the road.

Grilling a steak for dinner? Grill four or five steaks. Have them for breakfast over the next few days. Roasting or grilling chicken breasts? Don’t waste your time with one or two. Cook several, so they’re ready to go every morning.

It usually doesn’t take any longer to cook a large amount of food than it does a small amount, particularly if you do it in the oven and you don’t have to stand there and babysit it. (Tips in the video.)

Okay. That all makes sense. But what if batch cooking isn’t your thing? What if eating food cold isn’t your thing? What if … you don’t like leftovers?

Two words: Grow up! Your inability to eat cold food or to tolerate eating something that was cooked a day or two – or, *gasp!* – three days, before – is the reason your precious brain can’t come up with any quick and convenient possibilities for breakfast besides granola bars and blueberry muffins.

KIDDING! I still love ya!

You don’t have to cook anything in advance if you don’t mind getting up a few minutes early to get things done in the morning. But there are some no-cook, no-egg options that might work for you if you don’t want to cook ahead of time and you’re willing to branch out beyond traditional breakfast fare. How about cold cuts? Nothing wrong with turkey or roast beef and cheese rollups for breakfast. Canned tuna, salmon, mackerel, or sardines are also ultra-convenient and perfect for a low-carb or keto diet.

Prefer to stick with traditional breakfast food but don’t want to cook ahead? Keep it simple: drive-thru. Most fast-food places will give you bacon, ham, sausage links or patties (with or without cheese) a la carte. (Don’t get a sandwich when the biscuit or croissant is just going to end up in the trash.)

So, what can you have for breakfast on a low-carb or ketogenic diet if you don’t like eggs?

Anything.

Any damn thing you want.

Just keep it low in carbs.

One Final Thought…

For those of you who do like eggs, please know that two eggs isn’t “a lot” of eggs.

Ladies, in particular, please hear me.

Ladies, ladies, ladies…

Two eggs give you about 14 grams of protein. That’s not much. Try having three or four eggs in the morning and see if you feel any different later on. No, that’s not too many eggs. (Funny how if someone has a bowl of cereal and a slice or two of toast, no one questions whether that’s “a lot of grain”. But I digress.) Three or four eggs are around 21-30 grams of protein, which is what’s called a good start. They’ll also give you vitamin A, B12 and other B-vitamins, choline, selenium, and other things you need for healthy hair, skin, and nails, steady energy, and hormone and neurotransmitter production. Starting your day with a generous whack of protein and fat will greatly reduce the likelihood of you feeling ravenous two hours later and heading toward the office vending machine. And those cookies in the breakroom, or your kids’ goldfish crackers? They’ll be much less tempting when your breakfast keeps you satisfied and firing on all cylinders for several hours.

Not a breakfast person at all? Prefer to have some coffee or tea and get on with your day?

How’s that working for you?

If you’re happy with your weight and you feel well – physically and mentally, emotionally, and cognitively – then carry on! Your brewed breakfast is serving you well.

But if you’re struggling…

If things aren’t going quite so well…

Consider whether you should experiment with eating earlier in the day. We’ve glorified fasting in the keto world a bit too much, in my opinion. It’s practically become a badge of honor to brag about how many hours you can go without food, or about how little you eat, and how infrequently. And that’s great … if you love how you look and feel. But if you’ve been stuck for a while, think about whether it makes sense to keep doing the thing that isn’t working, or whether it would be worth trying something else. I’ll end here with this mind-blowing statement that is 100% original and definitely not something I’ve ever heard anywhere else: If you want something to change, then you need to … change something.

That’s a wrap! What have I missed? Leave a comment if you have some low-carb/keto breakfast ideas I didn’t mention here. Do you have a favorite go-to non-egg low-carb breakfast? Don’t hold out on us!

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What are these, and what do they have to do with staying on plan on a low-carb or ketogenic diet?

I covered the basics in a recent video, but since you’re here on Substack, I’ll assume you prefer to read. So, on with the show post!

I often say that no one needs another food list. No one needs another set of rules to follow or directives on what to eat and what to avoid.¹ For those who have difficulty staying consistent with a carbohydrate-restricted diet (be that keto, carnivore, low- or even just low-ish carb), lack of information is rarely the problem. Most of us know what to do; the sticking point is actually doing it. And no podcast, video, book, or blog post is going to help you bridge that gap unless it addresses the single most important factor interfering with you staying on plan and gaining momentum: your brain.

If you’ve kept your carbohydrate intake low enough for long enough that you’ve gotten yourself off the blood sugar rollercoaster, your hunger is well-controlled, and sugar cravings are minimal or nonexistent — meaning, your physiology is no longer working against you — your psychology could be the reason you keep backsliding and find yourself stuck in a holding pattern, moving no further toward your goals.

There are approximately 8,472 reasons why it can be hard to stay low carb in a world where inexpensive, high-carb foods are ubiquitous. (I mean, there are candy aisles in shoe stores and electronics stores, for goodness sake.) Since I can only address so many in one post, I’ll stick to just two for now and dive into others in future posts. Here, let’s talk about FOMO (fear of missing out) and YOLO (you only live once) — and how to start talking back to the unhelpful things your brain tells you that are holding you back.

FOMO – fear of missing out

In the context of food, FOMO is the feeling that you’re missing out on something delicious, or that you’re going to feel left out if everyone around you is partaking of something amazing and you decide to abstain. (There’s more to it than this, but more on that later.) Maybe it’s a decadent chocolate cheesecake, or cinnamon rolls warm from the oven. Savory more your thing? Maybe it’s piping hot fries with just the right amount of salt, or a gourmet smoked gouda mac & cheese topped with a sprinkling of breadcrumbs the exact right shade of golden brown. Whatever it is you fancy, you feel like you would be missing out if you didn’t have a taste (or three) of it.

How to counter FOMO

There are different ways to talk back when your brain is lobbing FOMO thoughts into your court. There’s no one right or best way; there’s only what resonates with you. Different tactics will work better in different situations. Equip yourself with a variety of comebacks so you’re more likely to always have something that will be effective.

1. Ask yourself if you’re really “missing out” if the item in question is something you ate hundreds, maybe even thousands of times, during your pre-low-carb life. A chocolate glazed donut? A blueberry muffin? Pizza from a national chain? A bagel with cream cheese? General Tso’s chicken and fried rice from the local takeout place? Good news: you’re not missing out, because you already know what those things taste like. You’ve tasted them plenty already. Sure, maybe you haven’t had that specific cookie, or that specific sourdough bread, but it’s not as if you’re totally unfamiliar with the concepts. Say to your brain, “Thanks for looking out for me, brain. ‘Preciate ya! But I’m not missing out. I’ve had this thing a zillion times.”
   
   2. Ask yourself what else you fear missing out on. What do you fear missing out on more than missing out on food?

• You fear missing out on exploring a new city on vacation with your family because your joint pain and fatigue are so bad that you can barely make it down the block.

• You fear missing out on enjoying a novel because your brain fog is so severe that you have to read most paragraphs three times to comprehend what was written.

• You fear missing out on a fun weekend because a migraine has you bedridden for two days.

• You fear missing out on enjoying a road trip because your IBS or other GI issue is so debilitating that you spend most of the time scanning the highways for every possible clean restroom. (And when the moment strikes, you’d be perfectly happy to find a not clean one, too!)

• You fear missing out on feeling your best, plain and simple.

But the best way to counter FOMO is with JOMO – the joy of missing out. When your brain tells you you’ll be “missing out” if you choose to abstain from a high-carb food, remind it that you’d rather experience the joy of missing out on the negative consequences you would experience if you went ahead and indulged. The examples below may or may not be relevant for you, depending on why you adopted a low-carb diet. If they don’t resonate, simply modify them to fit your situation.

Rather than fear of missing out, you might look forward to:

• The joy of missing out on heartburn or joint pain.

• The joy of missing out on a migraine or a gout attack.

• The joy of missing out on being bloated the next day.

• The joy of missing out on an eczema or psoriasis flare.

• The joy of missing out on a closet full of clothing that’s too small.

• The joy of missing out on cravings possibly returning in full force for a few days.

Is JOMO resonating with you? Leave a comment if it’s striking a cord!

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YOLO – you only live once.

Another way your brain tries to get you to go off plan is with YOLO: You only live once, so go ahead, have the birthday cake! You only live once, so enjoy that passionfruit margarita! You only live once, so order the lumberjack stack of pancakes – and drown it in extra syrup!

YOLO wouldn’t be a problem if these “exceptions” came up only once in a while, but the reality is, they happen all the time. So often, in fact, that they’re not exceptions; they’re the norm. Depending on your occupation, family situation, hobbies, etc., you might face FOMO and YOLO practically every day. Church potlucks. Someone’s retirement party or baby shower at the office. Donuts in the breakroom. Nachos and beer at the ballgame. Happy hour with friends. If you use FOMO and YOLO to justify going off plan every time, then before you know it, you’re not really on a low-carb diet at all. And you can’t complain about not getting the results you want when you’re not doing the things needed to get them.

How to counter YOLO

Here are some go-to comebacks to counter YOLO thoughts:

• Yes, I only live once, and I don’t want to spend my one life tethered to a pill organizer with medications doled out for each day of the week.

• I only live once, so I don’t want to spend my limited time saddled with joint pain, heartburn, and skin problems.

• I only live once, and I’d rather not spend this one life having to inject myself with insulin every time I sit down to a meal. (Type 1 diabetics excepted, of course.)

• I only live once. Will this one life I have really be any less enjoyable if I skip that piece of cake?

• I only live once. Will my one life truly be that much more memorable if I eat or drink this _________?2

• I only live once, so I don’t want to spend it feeling like sh*t every day.

Another way to counter YOLO goes back to one of the FOMO strategies above: remind yourself that you’ve already had (insert food in question) many times.

• “Yes, I only live once, so good thing I’ve already had thousands of cookies / donuts / nachos / potato chips / fried dumplings / garlic bread / what-have-you.” Tell your brain, “It’s all good, brain. No need to worry that my life is gonna suck if I don’t eat these hashbrowns and pancakes. I’ve already had enough of those for a lifetime.”
  

Make exceptions sensibly: How to indulge in FOMO & YOLO without sabotaging yourself

Okay. Having spent most of this post talking about ways to counter YOLO and FOMO, I want to acknowledge that there will be times when you’ll want to indulge. No problem! But you need a strategy for enjoying these occasional exceptions – emphasis on occasional – without them spiraling into days, weeks, or months off plan. Because here’s a reality check: no one ever became obese or developed a cardiometabolic health problem because of enjoying certain foods once in a while. The problem, for most of us, was that we were inundating our bodies with sugar and starch all day, every day. So you need to make sure these exceptions to your usual low-carb way of eating remain just that: exceptions.

I’m pointing this out because it’s not easy to do. (See above, regarding food in the workplace, hanging out with friends, etc. Opportunities to eat higher carb foods aren’t rare; they’re a daily occurrence.) So how can you enjoy the occasional high-carb excursion without undoing your progress or stopping momentum in its tracks?

One of my favorite approaches is something I got from one of my mentors, Corey Little (host of the Real Life Weight Loss Podcast). My thanks to Corey for introducing me to the strategy below:

NWI: Not worth it!

When you’re in a FOMO/YOLO situation and you’re tempted by something that doesn’t exactly fall in the low-carb category, ask yourself if what you’re considering consuming is special. Is the item rare or unique? Is it something you can’t easily get at your local supermarket anytime you wanted? There’s no right or wrong way to approach your food choices, but are mass-produced supermarket dinner rolls or fast food biscuits “worth it”? If they are, for you, then great – have at ‘em! But maybe you’d prefer to limit your higher carb foods to things that you deem to be more special. For example, at holiday gatherings, you might decide to enjoy an ethnic or cultural dish a loved one makes only for those occasions. Or maybe grandma is 86 years old and you don’t know how many more Thanksgivings or Passovers or Christmases she has left during which you’ll be able to experience stuffing, matzo brie, or eggnog the way only she can make it. Those might very well be worth it to you.

And how about traveling? Maybe supermarket bread is NWI (not worth it), but when you take your dream trip to France, savoring a butter croissant easily passes the worth it test. Pasta at home for a weeknight dinner? Meh. Noodles and rice while you experience street food culture on a tour of Southeast Asia? Worth it.

The main thing is, do it with intention. Don’t grab meaningless NWI food on a whim. Plan for it and eat with intention. Give yourself your full permission to enjoy it, and then DO THAT: enjoy it. No guilt. No shame. No self-recrimination. It’s just food, and it has no bearing on your moral character.

Again, there’s no right or wrong here. You get to set your own NWI rules, and they don’t need to make sense to anyone else. (Pro tip: you also never need to explain, defend, or justify your food choices to anyone else, but that is a whoooole other post…!)

You can also decide in the moment if something is worth it or not. If something looks or smells fabulous but your first couple bites are disappointing, then it’s not worth it! You don’t have to finish eating it just because you started. On the other hand, if something is phenomenal, is it worth it to eat the whole thing, or might you enjoy it equally by consuming only half? If it’s something small, would it be worth it to have two or three (or more), or is one enough to complete the experience and help you feel like you’re not missing out?

If taking only a bite or two gives you some anxiety about “wasting food,” keep this in mind: you are never wasting food. The money has already been spent. The food has already been prepared. The effort has already been expended. None of that changes whether the food ends up in your stomach or in the trash. You’re free to rip up your membership card to the Clean Plate Club™. If you’re concerned about what other people will think, or you’re worried about offending the host (this could come up when eating at someone’s home or even in a potluck situation), use that as a reason to select only the foods you think you’ll enjoy the most. Don’t reach for things that have a higher likelihood of going mostly untouched.

A caveat

Giving yourself permission to enjoy higher carb foods occasionally doesn’t mean kidding yourself. If you suspect — or already know, from past experience — that you can not have one higher carb food or meal and get right back to things, then don’t do it! If you can indulge a bit and get right back on plan at your very next meal (or the minute you get home from vacation, etc.), then it might be safe for you to do this. But if you’re wired such that one bite leads to 42 bites, leads to 3 days off plan, leads to 3 weeks and then 3 months off plan, then this is not the strategy for you. A friend of mine had lost a large amount of weight, and then she reached for what she now calls “the 80-pound cheese curl.” (I’ll trust you to figure out why she calls it that.) So, if you don’t want to risk a 40-pound cupcake or a 30-pound scoop of mashed potatoes, steer clear.

The social aspect of FOMO

Someone left a comment on the video I did about this topic the other day. She brought up an excellent point that I didn’t address in the video, but I’ll talk about it here. (That’s the beauty of long-form writing here on Substack – I can say as much as I want or need to say. My video editor has me making shorter videos these days because apparently no one wants to watch anything longer than 15 minutes. *Sigh.* But if you are someone who appreciates long-ish written work, thank you! You are my people!)

Here’s her comment:

This confuses the nature of FOMO. FOMO is often less about the food you are declining and more about being present as the only person at the gathering that is not engaging with the (insert carb item here). It is more a SOCIAL missing rather than missing out on a potato chip or slice of cake. Fact is, in most cultures, social equals carbs and keto equals...bring celery sticks. Trust me, I have been at birthdays, sport viewing gatherings, and staff meetings where FOMO was waaay more about others haranguing me about “not participating” than about “can’t stop thinking about pizza”

Correct! There’s a huge social aspect to FOMO. Food is more than fuel. (Anyone who says it’s just fuel is honestly probably a huge stick in the mud and not fun at all to hang out with, considering they will be toting their plastic container of meticulously measured skinless chicken and steamed broccoli everywhere they go.) Food most definitely has a communal aspect to it. (The phrase “breaking bread” didn’t come out of nowhere.) There’s a celebratory aspect to it, and yes, it is a way to express love. I love cooking for people I care about. It’s a joy to provide nourishment to the humans you value in your life.

If you’ve been following a low-carb diet for a while, you might be long past feeling “deprived” if you skip certain foods, and your cravings, if not completely gone, are likely much quieter. So the food part of things might be easy for you. The hard part might be feeling like the odd one out, particularly if — like the person who left this comment — other people are giving you a hard time about it. Honestly, that could be its own post sometime: dealing with other people’s opinions. (I already covered it in a video if you’d like a preview. Note that there was a problem with the sound on that recording, so you might need to have the volume up high to hear well, which may mean that the ads end up blasting.)

Dealing with the social aspects of FOMO requires some degree of self-confidence and self-assuredness where your food is concerned. It also requires diplomacy. You can decline food politely and graciously. You can decline food without beating everyone over the head and evangelizing about your keto or carnivore diet. You can even emphasize that you’re happy to just be there in everyone’s company, and any one specific food isn’t going to make the experience better for you, and you’re glad other people are partaking and enjoying. I’ll leave this there for now. Like I said, probably best to devote an entire separate post to navigating these social issues on a low-carb diet.

Summing up

Wow…this was a long one! (That’s what she said.) But I haven’t posted since January (yikes!), so consider this me making up for lost time. For those of you familiar with my work, you know I’m a writer, first and foremost. I started making videos because I wanted to reach more people, but writing really is my first love, and I’m grateful that folks on Substack seem to appreciate long-form posts, because brevity is not my strong suit. (I’ll do my best to have future posts not be quite this long, though!)

Hopefully this foray into FOMO, JOMO, and YOLO has given you some ammunition you can use to defend yourself when your brain tries to convince you that your life will be diminished somehow if you skip starch and sugar. Now you have concrete strategies for reframing FOMO & YOLO to help you stay on plan, rather than using them as convenient reasons for going off plan all the time.

Please leave a comment and let me know if you got something helpful out of this!

And stay tuned… I plan to write regularly here. If there’s nothing new here in two weeks, give me a nudge! Hold me accountable, friends.

Not everyone who follows a low-carb or ketogenic diet does so for the purpose of weight loss. But this goal is near the top of the list for many people, and in the decade-plus I’ve been helping people with keto, stubborn or stalled weight loss is the most common reason people contact me for help. (So much so that I wrote a book specifically about breaking fat loss stalls because that was easier than typing out the same advice in an email three hundred times.) So while my writing here at Keto Without the Crazy will cover a variety of topics related to keto, specifically, as well as those that fall under the broader umbrellas of health, nutrition, metabolism, physiology, and mindset, from time to time the posts will focus more on weight loss.

I often say that no one needs another food list. It’s the rare client who comes to me and truly has no idea what to eat and what to avoid. In fact, most people who come to me for help have already been following a keto diet for a while but they’re not getting their desired results. Often, some degree of fine-tuning their food is needed, especially if they’ve been brainwashed by listening to a few too many unscrupulous influencers and have been trying to cobble together a Frankenstein protocol made up of bits and pieces of forty-seven disparate programs and protocols. But more often than not, people’s diets don’t need a complete overhaul. (If you don’t have any clue what to eat on a keto diet and you do actually need a food list, Phase 1 in my book, End Your Carb Confusion, is a good place to start, or you can check out the famous “Page 4 Diet” from my co-author, esteemed keto authority Dr. Eric Westman.)

Bottom line: when someone’s having a hard time losing weight on keto, sometimes the food is the main issue, but more often it’s something else – something deeper, like emotional eating, nighttime eating (in the absence of physical hunger), and issues of psychological conditioning, like having grown up with food insecurity or being a member of the “clean plate club.” Those topics will get posts of their own in the future, so here, let’s explore the intersection of food and mindset and look at six qualities or skills that can help you navigate your way to the approach that will get you the results you want. (Pro tip: that approach might end up not being keto! Stay tuned for a future post where I’ll give you some signs that keto’s not right for you. And another pro tip: I’m talking mostly about weight loss here, but all of this applies equally well to just about any other end goal you might have with a keto diet. For example, reversing type 2 diabetes or non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, improving PCOS, clearing up your skin, improving your mental health… So if you’re not in this for weight loss, I hope something here will still resonate with you. And by the way, everything below applies equally to weight gain! If you’re looking to gain healthy, needed weight because you’re frail or underweight, or you’re aiming to gain muscle mass, the same principles apply.

1. Clarity

You’ve got to get clear about your goals. What are you trying to accomplish, and how will you know when you get there?

When it comes to weight loss, maybe you’ve chosen a “goal weight.” (See this video for why the concept of a goal weight is problematic.) But is that really what you want? Do you really want to see a particular number on the scale, or do you want to wear a certain size clothing, or have a certain body fat percentage, or look a certain way, or simply feel comfortable in your own skin? I hate to break it to you, but that last part? A number on an inanimate mechanical device on your bathroom floor will never deliver that feeling for you. Please stop imbuing it with that kind of power over your self-concept.

That being said, if you know in a general sense that you’d like to lose weight, what kind of ballpark are you aiming for? Less than ten pounds? Twenty pounds? Fifty? A hundred pounds or more? This matters, because it can be helpful to break a big goal down into smaller steps so you can celebrate milestones along the way. I play the clarinet, and when I was a wee beginner, I wasn’t thinking about what I might wear someday to my debut concert at Carnegie Hall. I was focused on learning how to hold the thing correctly! A sprinter who someday might win an Olympic gold medal didn’t start that way right out of the womb. They started by learning to pull themselves upright by holding onto furniture as toddler. The point here is, when you have a goal that will take a long time to achieve, keep that goal in mind as your desired end point, but have smaller goals that you can acknowledge along the way.

Someone who loses a hundred pounds doesn’t lose it overnight in one fell swoop. They lose one pound a hundred times. You might not believe that you’re capable of losing a hundred pounds, but even the most self-doubting and self-defeatist among us can conjure the faith that we can lose one pound, right? And then all you need to do is do that ninety-nine more times. Looking to lose fifty? Great. You only need to lose five, and then do that nine more times.

Plus, setting smaller interim goals can help you gain more clarity. You might initially think you’d like to lose fifty pounds. But reassessing at, say, every ten-pound mark, can help you determine whether you might be perfectly content with your body after losing twenty, or thirty, or forty. Maybe you don’t need to keep going for those last ten. Or maybe you get to that fifty-pound goal and you realize you’d like to lose another ten or twenty.

So, get clear about what it is you truly want. You don’t have to have a specific goal weight or size. (Here’s why I recommend that you don’t!) It’s enough to know that you want to move in the general direction of downward/smaller, and you can reassess periodically based on where you are at that time.

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2. Curiosity

Once you know what you’re looking to accomplish, if what you’re currently doing is moving you in that direction, great! Keep doing that. Don’t spend time watching videos and listening to podcasts in an endless quest to “optimize” things when you’re already content with how things are going.

But if you’re not moving in a good direction – if you feel stuck, or worse, you’re moving further away from your goal – then it’s time to get curious about what would happen if you changed something. “I wonder what would happen if I tried _________.”

After all, if you want something to change, you’ll need to … change something. Funny how that works, right?

As just some examples, if you’re currently counting net carbs, what would happen if you switched to counting total carbs? If you currently eat lots of “keto” packaged foods – keto ice cream, keto bread, keto granola, keto cereal (marketed as keto, anyway), ask yourself what would happen if you avoided those for a month and stuck solely to proteins, non-starchy vegetables, low/no-sugar dairy products, nuts, and things like that. (“Real food” is a loaded phrase, as are “whole foods” and “unprocessed foods”, so I’m reluctant to use any of those terms.)

If you’ve been melting lots of delicious fat into your morning coffee – butter, coconut oil, MCT oil – because “someone” (or a lot of someones) on the internet said you should, but excess weight isn’t coming off like you’d hoped, what would happen if you stopped the fatty coffees and went back to a judicious splash of cream instead? (Or just started taking it black, if you have the intestinal fortitude I lack for that?)

If your keto diet currently includes a lot of vegetables, get curious about what might happen if you did a trial of the carnivore diet, or vice-versa: if you’ve been doing carnivore for a while and you’re not happy with the results, get curious about what would happen if you reintroduced some plant foods. (Work up the courage to do this even though some very popular influencers have got you convinced that vegetables are trying to kill you. A few billion people all over the world who are living long, healthy lives in lean, robust bodies while including vegetables in their diet can at least plant the seed in your mind that this might be false, no?)

If you’re currently not following a keto diet, maybe the change you’re curious about is what would happen if you tried this keto thing you’ve been hearing so much about. Or if you’ve been doing strict keto for a while, what might happen if you … *gasp!* … added some more carbs back into your diet?

If what you’ve been doing for a while isn’t working, get curious and ask yourself what might happen if you changed something. Be open-minded. Be willing to entertain the possibility – and the utility – of trying something different.

3. Courage

Once you’ve gotten curious and come up with something to change, the third C of weight loss is courage. You’ve got to have the courage to actually make that change.

Really, Amy? Courage? To change something about my food?

Yes. Absolutely.

Courage is a big deal, and it can be scary to contemplate making a change, let alone actually doing it. Why? Well, maybe you’ve been listening to a lot of “experts” and doing exactly what they tell you to do. Some of them are MDs or they have PhDs or other letters after their names, or they have a few hundred thousand social media followers … or more. How could they be wrong? Who are you to doubt them? If you’ve had these people on a pedestal and you’ve been lapping up every word, absorbing every minute of footage, it takes courage to acknowledge that the people you’ve considered heroes or gurus or examples to emulate, might be misleading you. (Or, more accurately, their advice works great for some people … but you’re not one of them.)

Another reason it takes courage to change something is because you might have invested a lot of time, effort, money, and hope and emotional energy into what you’re doing. It’s an act of courage to admit it’s not working and implement something else instead, particularly if the change you have in mind is to something very different than you’re accustomed to or it’s something that goes against what your favorite gurus have been telling you. (Cases in point, adding plant foods back into your diet, or adding back in some starch.)

Then again, it doesn’t take courage so much as honesty and self-awareness. If what you’ve been doing isn’t working, why would you want to keep doing it? If you were happy with the results you were getting, you wouldn’t have gotten curious about what else you could try. You wouldn’t be looking for a different way. So maybe what’s required more than courage is simply rational thinking and an unbiased perspective: “If I wasn’t wedded to this particular method, what else could I try?” “What I’ve been doing isn’t working, so it makes sense to try something different.”

4 & 5. Commitment & Consistency

After mustering the courage to make a change, the fourth and fifth Cs of weight loss are commitment and consistency. It’s great that you’ve worked up the courage to change something. The step after that – actually changing it – is the commitment, diving in and DOING IT, and then doing it consistently enough for a long enough time to be able to make an accurate assessment of whether it’s working.

You can’t do something for a week and render your verdict. Some dietary changes do kick in that quickly and you can notice an improvement in something within only a few days, but despite what most of us wish for, weight loss typically takes a little longer.

Consistency means both in time and intensity (for lack of a better word). If you change something and stick with that change for, say, ninety days, great. That should be long enough to notice something, right? Even those among us whose bodies are extra-stubborn about letting go of excess weight would be expected to give up a few pounds in that time. But what if those ninety days weren’t ninety days of faithfully sticking with the change? What if you were on point Monday morning through Friday afternoon but every weekend was a derailment? If you were off plan two out of every seven days – more than twenty-five percent of the time – can you really say whether the change worked?

If you were frustrated and disappointed enough by a lack of progress that you got curious about changing something and then you worked up the courage to make that change, don’t shortchange yourself by not committing to implementing the change consistently enough over a long enough period of time to give it a fair shake. This is a tall order where weight loss is concerned, I know. We want to lose weight yesterday, particularly if we’ve already struggled with this for decades. It’s natural to want the excess pounds to fall off immediately, but … well, that’s pretty rare. It’s precisely because you’ve struggled for a long time that you owe it to yourself to give the new approach your all and to be all-in with commitment and consistency.

6. Confidence

The sixth C of weight loss – confidence – is perhaps the most important, particularly if you’ve struggled with weight for a long time. It’s natural to want to give up. It’s natural to feel worn down by years of disappointment and discouragement from so many unsuccessful attempts. And you know what, you’re allowed to give up! Seriously, you are! No one is forcing you to lose weight. (Not even your doctor. She or he can pester you a bit, but they can never force you to take action.) If you’re tired of feeling like your body is the enemy … if you don’t have it in you to keep going … if you want to walk away from the weight loss fight, you can. You don’t need anyone’s permission to just … stop. Opting out of weight loss altogether is a choice you get to make for yourself.

But if you’re not ready to throw in the towel … if you want to keep going … if you want to give yourself a few more chances, then you need the confidence to keep going.

So if the first change you make doesn’t go so well, have confidence that maybe the next one will, or the next one after that. Have confidence that you will find the best way for yourself, eventually. It might not happen as quickly as you’d like it to, but it will happen. And each unsuccessful attempt gets you that much closer, because you can cross things off the list. (So, in that sense, they’re actually not unsuccessful; they’re successful at helping you narrow things down.)

And I want to reiterate here that the approach you find that works best for you might not be keto! The courage you muster might need to be to abandon keto and try something else! My goal is not to compel everyone to follow a keto diet. My goal is to help people find what works well for them. I mentioned in the previous post that I’ve had clients for whom I recommended eating more carbs. Keto is not the only way to lose weight or improve your health. I’ll say it again for the folks in the back: Keto is not the only way to lose weight or improve your health. It happens to be very effective for a long list of issues, but it’s not the only thing that’s effective. (With the exception of some rare, inborn genetic errors for which a ketogenic diet actually is the only or undoubtedly best intervention.)

7. Bonus: Compassion

Hat tip to a fan who watched my video on this topic and suggested that there was a seventh C: compassion. (In the words of this fan, “Not beating yourself up when you mess up with one of the first six.”)

Yes! Good catch, and shame on me for leaving it out.

When you implement a change, you’ll need compassion for yourself if things don’t go well. Compassion will help you have patience with yourself and with the process. You’ll need compassion for yourself when you don’t do things perfectly. (Pro tip: no one does. Not even your social media heroes. Especially not the ones who want you to think they’re never effing up royally screwing up behind the scenes.) You’ll need compassion to give yourself a clean slate and try again.

Need help finding compassion for yourself? These two videos might be the shot in the arm you need:

· Help for When You Don’t Believe in Yourself

· Forgive Your Way to Fat Loss

How else can compassion play a role? It helps you go easy on yourself through this process. When I suggest possible changes for my clients to try when they’re struggling with weight loss, I tell them to think of them as experiments. That takes the pressure off, because there’s no way to fail, and it doesn’t have to be forever. It’s just gathering data. Do something different and see what happens. If it works, great. If not, good to know; time to try something else. And even if something does work, if it makes you miserable, that’s also good to know. It doesn’t matter how effective something is if you hate doing it. (Good luck sticking with something you dread.) But that’s still a valuable lead. Maybe you can alter it slightly and implement a variation of it – one that works a bit more slowly or less powerfully, but that you can see yourself enjoying and sticking with.

Framing these as experiments feels more relaxed compared to thinking you HAVE TO do something. Experiments are simply suggestions for things you could try, if you decide to. And if you try one and it doesn’t start moving you closer to your desired results, then it’s just not what you need. The experiment didn’t fail, and more important, you didn’t fail. You’re one step closer to success. (Wasn’t it Thomas Edison who said something about never having failed; he just learned a lot of ways how to not make a lightbulb?)

Help is Available

Looking for a keto-oriented nutritionist who isn’t a zealot about it? One who’ll help you fine-tune your keto approach but who will also steer you toward something else if she thinks it’s not the right strategy for you? I’m available for private consultations! See here for details. And if you’re specifically stymied by slow or stalled fat loss on a low-carb or keto diet, my book, The Stall Slayer, will walk you through seven common roadblocks to fat loss and what to do about them. If you’re not much of a reader (but you probably are, being here on Substack and all), I have a full-length online course by the same name dedicated to this topic. Enrollment is currently closed but please contact me if you’re interested. I can find a spot for you.

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(Since you’re reading this on Substack, I’ll assume you enjoy reading, but if you also like watching videos, see here for a video where I explain my background and the origins of this motto and guiding principle.)

I’ve been following a low-carbohydrate or ketogenic diet for about twenty years. I say “low-carb or keto” because after adopting dietary carbohydrate restriction in late 2003, I’ve always eaten far less carbohydrate than most people, but I haven’t always been ultra-strict keto during this time.

What does this look like? For me, it means that I enjoy the occasional slice of bread (the real thing, not “keto bread”), the occasional piece bar of high-quality chocolate, and, yeah, occasionally find myself face-first in a family-size bag of dark pretzels. (Lay off; I’m a family of one!) But the emphasis is on occasional. In the 20+ years I’ve been limiting carbs, I’ve avoided a long list of high-carb foods that are standard fare for most people who don’t eat this way. For the most part, I’ve said goodbye to cereal, pancakes, waffles, granola bars, even bagels. (I have to specifically emphasize that last one because I’m a Jew born and raised in New York. I ate a bagel approximately the size of my head for breakfast every morning in high school and sometimes another one after school as a snack before band practice. Honestly, it’s a miracle I have any pancreatic function left whatsoever.) My point is, I avoid the vast majority of high-carbohydrate foods that are daily staples in most people’s diets but I do choose to enjoy the occasional high-sugar/starch item. I’m not a keto saint or the poster child for avoiding sugar like it’s a lit stick of dynamite with a short fuse, nor would I want anyone to hold me up as such. Bottom line: I’m always low-carb, but not always in ketosis.¹

Back in My Day…

Back when I first started learning about low-carb and ketogenic diets (which was a few years before I actually became consistent in eating this way after several rounds of starting and stopping – like many folks!), social media as we know it today didn’t exist. Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, X, Reddit – none of those existed. There were some old-school message boards, but that was about it. If you wanted to learn about low-carb diets, your best bet was the public library or a bookstore where you could get your hands on a copy of Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution (“the Atkins book”), Protein Power, or one of the other early books about eating this way.

It was much simpler to get started because all you really needed to do was … not eat sugar or starch. (Notice I said it was simpler to get started. I didn’t say it was easier. Those are not synonyms. Avoiding sugar and starch is a simple and straightforward dictate, but it’s sure not easy in our current dietary landscape.) No one was talking about macros, fasting, measuring your ketones, weighing and measuring your food, having an “eating window”, or using an app to track your food. Heck, smartphones didn’t even exist when I was new to all this, so the only “apps” were calculators and spreadsheets.

I’m not dismissing the utility of those “extras” (fasting, tracking food, etc.). In fact, I’ve had clients for whom I’ve recommended each of those at one time or another, based on their specific needs and goals. (What? Context matters? Color me shocked! More on this in a bit.)

Here in 2025, two decades after I got started eating this way, myself, and with nearly 13 years of professional experience in the nutrition field, it’s hard to believe how much the landscape has changed. I don’t envy people who are new to keto now. A way of eating that can be simple and straightforward has been made out to be confusing, complicated, overwhelming, expensive, and elitist. I have no idea how I would navigate things if I were trying to get started right now. Truthfully, I probably wouldn’t try to get started. I would take one look at the avalanche of conflicting advice, listen to one too many podcasts making me terrified of the slightest dietary misstep, and watch a few too many videos convincing me to shell out big bucks for gadgets, gizmos, and apps, and I would likely turn and run in the direction of the nearest donut shop.

In short, I like to teach people about low-carb/keto the way I would want someone to teach me if I were brand new to it.²

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Based on what I see among my clients, individually, and on social media on a larger scale, people are hungry for this. (No pun intended.) They are hungry for someone to teach them about keto minus the fearmongering, hyperbole, and blatant sensationalism that has become so pervasive in the field. (And which I, personally, find terribly distasteful, but considering the clicks, likes, and overall “buzz” those posts get, I appear to be in the minority.)

Despite the attention that kind of content gets, I’ve worked with enough people to know that folks are looking for a voice of reason and temperance. For someone who talks sense and simplicity while also educating about situations in which a ketogenic diet does need to be followed more strictly and in which weighing and measuring food, tracking particular metrics, and using various tools (ketone meters, glucometers, continuous glucose monitors [CGMs], for example) is warranted and can be beneficial. Please don’t misunderstand me. I am acknowledging here that sometimes the details do need to be micromanaged. (This is why I’m available for one-on-one consultations rather than solely putting out articles and videos. The information I provide online, no matter how nuanced, can never substitute for talking through the details of someone’s situation with them and helping them formulate a plan unique to them – never mind following up and troubleshooting over time.)

Social Media Extremism

I did a video a while back called Keto Influencers Make You $#@%ing Terrified of Food. I have a small but loyal following on YouTube, and this video garnered more attention than usual, which tells me that the message resonated with people. If you’re new to keto and didn’t know any better, you might think that the occasional spinach salad is a one-way ticket to oxalate toxicity or that using your favorite supermarket ranch dressing is a guaranteed way to skew your body’s omega-6-to-omega-3 fatty acid ratio so out of balance that you suffer severe health problems as a result. But you’re probably not eating salads anyway, because maybe you stumbled upon the growing chorus of influencers who would have you believe that all plants are poisonous and that a strict “carnivore” diet is the way to go – the only way – for optimal human health.

For the record, I’m not opposed to carnivore. I’ve had clients for whom I’ve recommended a carnivore diet, in fact, at least temporarily, based on their specific situation. (I’ve also had clients for whom I recommended increasing carb intake based again – you guessed it – on their context.) I’m not opposed to people eliminating plant foods from their diet. I’m not opposed to someone steering clear of “seed oils” (e.g., corn oil, canola, soybean, sesame, sunflower, cottonseed, etc.) if they prefer to do that. What I am opposed to is the dangerous hyperbole and lack of context and nuance when some of these dietary issues are discussed.

As I mentioned in the video about keto influencers making people afraid of food, there are people all over the world for whom various forms of these dietary “scapegoats” are daily staples, yet they’re thriving. For example, do carbs alone cause obesity or type 2 diabetes? It would be hard to make that case when there are a few billion people in East and Southeast Asia who’ve been eating rice and noodles for centuries while remaining slender and healthy. (There are growing epidemics of poor metabolic health there now, yes, but that is a recent development, whereas the presence of starchy grains in these cultures dates back pretty far. So is it the carbs, independent of anything else, or is it some other factor that’s been introduced more recently?)

This is one of the biggest issues I see in the keto social media landscape right now. Social media is fantastic for spreading messages. What it’s not fantastic for is emphasizing context and nuance. Hyperbole is sexy. Alarmism gets clicks. (Lots of them.) Drilling down into the details, not so much. (But here I must give kudos to Nick Norwitz, PhD, who is near the top of the list of “influencers” [though he’s far more than that] who does an impressive job of using sensationalism to get eyeballs on his videos and articles here on Substack and then walloping you with the science … in a good way.)

Professionals Being “Influenced”

On the other hand, there are medical and nutrition professionals who, not being up on the science of therapeutic carbohydrate restriction, are actively scaring patients and clients away from trying a way of eating that could genuinely change their lives. Some of this is just unfortunate ignorance. For many medical and nutrition/dietetics professionals, the only exposure to a ketogenic diet in school was its limited application for epilepsy, and they still mistakenly conflate safe, benign nutritional ketosis with diabetic ketoacidosis. (As I wrote about elsewhere, these are vastly different metabolic states and again, the unfortunate confusion even among professionals is one reason [among a few others] why ketogenic diets are not more widely recommended.)

The list of conditions for which therapeutic carbohydrate restriction (i.e., keto) is either a slam-dunk with proven efficacy or at least looks very promising is vast. The short list includes obesity, type 2 diabetes, type 1 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, certain types of epilepsy, polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), GERD, various psychiatric conditions, McArdle disease (glycogen storage disease type V), and so many more. Emerging areas of research that hold promise for keto as an intervention (but where the science is far less solid) include cancer (particularly brain cancers) and neurological and neurodegenerative conditions (including Alzheimer’s disease and traumatic brain injury).

That’s a pretty impressive list. So why are some professionals hesitant to recommend keto for their patients or clients? Maybe it’s precisely because of the nonsensical extremes being vomited out promulgated by some popular influencers. If you didn’t know better, it would be easy to think the keto diet is nothing but bunless burger patties dripping with bacon grease and bubbly cheese, washed down with a glass of melted butter. And don’t you dare add a lettuce leaf to it, because everyone knows you’re an idiot if you’re still wasting money on “crunchy water”! (Okay, the hyperbole might not be that extreme, but it’s close.)

Now, it’s still incumbent on medical and nutrition professionals to stay up to date with the research, and the fact that things have become so ridiculous does not absolve them of this responsibility. I’m just acknowledging here that I can understand why some would regard looking further into keto as a waste of their time, since they already “know” how dangerous and misguided it is. (Not to mention, some of their colleagues and perhaps even some formal medical/health organizations may have dictated from on high that keto is a non-starter and they’ll become persona non grata if they dip their toes in the keto Kool-Aid water.) Nevertheless, as the feathers in keto’s cap continue to accumulate, keeping the blinders on and refusing to look more closely is what, back in my military days, we would have called dereliction of duty.

It’s worth pointing out here that this is why select organizations are now using the phrase “therapeutic carbohydrate restriction” rather than “keto” or “ketogenic diet.” “Keto” just has so much unfortunate baggage attached to it. Call it keto and it’s a dangerous fad diet that you shouldn’t even think about trying. But call it therapeutic carbohydrate restriction, and suddenly you’ve got a legitimate medical/dietary intervention. It’s just too bad “TCR” doesn’t roll off the tongue as easily as “keto,” because at this point, it’s like keto is Pigpen from the Peanuts cartoons – overridden by a cloud of dirt it can’t seem to shake.

Okay, it seems like this is about as long as an article here should ever be, so let me wrap it up.

What am I here for? What’s my role in the keto community?

I hope to continue being one of the rare breed of professionals who explain the science in plain English and give people actionable advice, minus the alarmism, fearmongering, and unrealistic expectations.

So, if you appreciate the message of Keto Without the Crazy™, I’m glad you’re here. (Especially because that means you’re still reading!) Hearing from people who’ve read or watched my work and being able to share in the palpable relief and calm they report feeling upon finding me, is why I do what I do. I am committed to helping people see how simple keto can be … if they let it.

Are you with me? Leave a comment and let me know.

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Notes:

1. Why don’t I adhere to a strict ketogenic diet all the time? Well, I hope this post has explained that I consider myself to be among the rare and dying breed of keto-aligned nutrition professionals who are not hyperbolic zealots. Beyond that, the simple fact is, I enjoy an occasional higher carb food, and I follow a low-carb diet primarily for weight management and potentially preventing type 2 diabetes, of which I have a family history. (It also very nicely controls my appetite and prevents intrusive thoughts of food most of the time.) Indulging in small (or not-so-small) amounts of higher carb foods once in a while doesn’t put me at risk for a seizure, migraine, gout flare, psychiatric episode, GERD attack, or some other severe issue that other people eat keto to manage. I don’t have a medical need to follow a therapeutic ketogenic diet. For me, the worst that happens the day after some higher-carb off-roading is a little bit of temporary bloat courtesy of increased water retention. (Also, I’ve been at this long enough that there’s no risk of a small amount of higher carb foods spiraling into six weeks or six months of a bender and me regaining the thirty-plus pounds I’ve been happily without for the past twenty years. Some people’s ability to steer themselves right back to very-low-carb/keto is more precarious and for them I do not recommend this more relaxed approach. You don’t tell an alcoholic to kick back and enjoy a couple and then get back to sobriety the next day.)

2. If I do say so myself, I think this is what I accomplished together with esteemed keto-aligned physician Dr. Eric Westman, a former president of the Obesity Medicine Association, and my co-author on our book, End Your Carb Confusion.

All those things are pretty great, so what’s the problem with calling them non-scale victories?

It’s actually because they’re so great that they deserve to just be called victories, without a qualifier. Qualifying them as “non-scale” lessens their impact and takes away from how important they are, even though this impression isn’t inherent to the phrase itself. The connotation is that weight loss is always, automatically, the number one supreme goal – the best and most important thing any of us can achieve. Using that as the bar, anything we accomplish that isn’t weight loss is less-than. It’s a “non-scale” victory, because progress on the scale is the gold standard. The scale is used as the benchmark against which everything else is measured.

But this is an unfortunate way to look at things. It minimizes just how powerful the long list of improvements to physical health, mental health, and emotional wellbeing and quality of life can be when so many of these are unrelated to weight loss. Why is losing weight more important or more impressive than reversing your type 2 diabetes? Why is a smaller clothing size more worthy of recognition than reducing or completely eliminating a medication … or three or four?

We could just as easily call weight loss a non-diabetes reversal victory. We could call weight loss a non-hypertension improvement victory. Why not make weight loss a non-something-else victory?

I know. It’s just semantics. But I’m a writer. Words matter!

By using weight loss as the reference point, by calling everything that’s not related to a number on an inanimate mechanical device on the bathroom floor a “non-scale victory”, we are glorifying weight loss and downplaying those other positive changes.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t celebrate weight loss. If that’s the main – or only – reason you’re following a keto or low-carb diet, then of course you want to recognize that and be proud of it. And if losing some weight moves you into a different (lower) BMI category that maybe gets your doctor off your back or possibly even reduces your insurance premium or something like that, then even better. (The BMI is a highly flawed metric – a topic I might cover some other time perhaps, because it’s even worse than you already know – but flawed though it is, it’s still used [unfortunately] in various ways in society, so I want to acknowledge here that being in a “better” [sarcastic airquotes] category can be beneficial. I also want to acknowledge that for those of you who were overweight or obese for most of your life, and who’ve spent years – decades, maybe – plus a whole lot of blood, sweat, and tears, in the pursuit of a smaller body, losing weight can be life-changing. So, yes, you’re d*mn right it’s worth celebrating.)

But looking at this from a different angle, think about people who adopt a keto diet for something unrelated to weight. Someone with migraines. Or bipolar disorder. Or schizophrenia. Or multiple sclerosis. Someone who’s never had a weight issue and adopts a keto diet for some other purpose will never have a “scale victory.” Everything they experience will be non-scale. But I don’t think they would say that putting their schizophrenia into remission was a non-scale victory. That is just plain a victory. (And a huge one, at that.)

To reiterate: I’m not saying we shouldn’t celebrate weight loss, particularly if someone’s mobility or quality of life has improved as a result. (Losing a few “vanity pounds” is also nothing to sneeze at if that’s a goal someone had been working toward, and they achieved it and want to feel proud.) But for the sake of our emotional health, body image, and self-esteem, I wish we wouldn’t celebrate it and glorify it more than any of the other enjoyable — and life-improving — things keto is doing for us. Let’s stop using weight loss as the standard against which we compare everything else.

The abbreviation NSV is so common and pervasive that I don’t expect it to disappear overnight. Or ever, really. Nor does it need to. I just wanted to plant this seed to get us thinking about things differently.

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