From delicious healthy recipes to the best nutritional advice, we guide you through what should – and shouldn’t – be on your plate this month
THE KETO CRAZE
Touted as a simplified way to follow the keto diet, lazy keto is supposedly the next best thing, but do the benefits stack up?
If you’re curious about health or someone who’s dabbled in dieting over the years, you’ll no doubt have come across the word ketogenesis, or keto for short. Backed by science paired with a cult A-list following – Halle Berry, Kourtney Kardashian and Vanessa Hudgens have all reported amazing results – it’s no surprise that ‘keto’ clocks up 4,400 average monthly searches, subsequently making it the sixth most popular diet online.
In simple terms, the keto diet is a low-carb, high-fat diet (around 70-80 percent of your calories come from the latter), meaning your body creates ketones from fat to use as energy instead of sugar from carbohydrates. Weight-loss, increased energy, satiety and lower blood-sugar levels are just some of the payoffs, but now, there’s some noise being generated around the lazy keto diet – a less restrictive, more doable version. But if the hard work is seemingly taken out of the equation, H&W asks, can you still get the same results or is it just passing another food fad? Read on for the verdict...
WHERE DID THE KETO DIET COME FROM?
Low-carb diets aren’t exactly new-age. Based on the framework of restricting, yep, you guessed it, carbohydrates like bread, pasta, rice and high-sugar vegetables, it most commonly leads to reducing your calorie intake and promoting weight-loss. What sets a ketogenic and low-carb diet apart? The main difference is the amount of carbs that you eat to see results – you’d typically eat around 50-150g on a low-carb diet and on a keto diet, you’d be restricted to under 50g. Surprisingly, keto has been around since the 1920s – first used as a method of controlling epilepsy in children – and has experienced a rapid ascent ever since, with weight-loss being a primary reason for following the diet. It works by using the fat that’s consumed as stored to produce ketones, which are then used as the main source of fuel rather than blood glucose.
“When you eat carbohydrates, your blood glucose rises and insulin is subsequently released to regulate blood glucose levels,” explains Molly Hall, a nutritionist and head of new product development at Pulsin, a brand that specialises in protein powders and snacks, and has a keto range (pulsin.co.uk). “This causes rises and dips in blood-sugar throughout the day, depending on when and
