Our love-hate relationship with the Ketogenic Diet continues with this news: You don’t have to be a hardcore, spreadsheet-filling, macro-counting fool to do this extremely popular, low-carb diet.
“Lazy keto” is an option, and honestly, doesn’t sound too bad.
Healthline breaks it down in some detail here, but we’ll pull out some of the main points.
Lazy keto cuts carbs, but here is the “lazy” part: This plan makes no rules about consuming fat, protein, or for that matter, calories in general.
Think of it as having at least the same potential as traditional keto for providing a route to losing weight, diminishing hunger, keeping your blood sugar under control—you could even lower your risk for coronary issues.
Where standard-issue keto is hyper-concerned with fine-tuning your diet and ultimately inducing the fat-burning state of ketosis, “lazy” keto ignores all that. It’s basically saying “make these keto-friendly choices, see what happens.”
And those choices should always be low-carb. So yes, you should let meat, fish, eggs, nuts, seeds, oils, high-fat dairy, and low-carb vegetables dominate your daily food habits. Healthline provides a helpful list:
- Meat and poultry: beef, pork, chicken, turkey, and deli meat
- Fish and shellfish: salmon, trout, tuna, shrimp, lobster, and crab
- Eggs: fried, scrambled, hard-boiled, and most other types of eggs
- Nuts and seeds: peanuts, tree nuts, sunflower seeds, and nut and seed butters
- High-fat dairy products: butter, cream, and most cheeses
- Low-carb veggies: leafy greens, broccoli, tomatoes, onions, and many others
- Healthy oils: extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil, flaxseed oil, and others
- Unsweetened beverages: water, coffee, and tea
- Some fruits: berries, such as strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries, in small portion
And generally speaking, you need to also stay away from carb-heavy food. Starches, many grains, sugary anything. Healthline listed examples of what to avoid:
- Grains: bread, pasta, rice, cereal, and oats
- Starchy vegetables: potatoes, sweet potatoes, peas, and corn
- Fruit: bananas, apples, oranges, and most other fruits
- Legumes: all types of beans, lentils, soybeans, and chickpeas
- Some dairy products: milk and yogurt, especially flavored yogurts
- Sugary foods: cookies, cakes, ice cream, candy, and most other desserts
- Sugary drinks: fruit juices, sports drinks, and sodas
But does all this mean you can set it and forget it, remain thin and happy with a meat-and-greens dominated diet for the rest of your days?
Not exactly. Just as is true with the more tightly-disciplined version, lazy keto could lead to short-term weight loss, but it’s not ideal for the rest of your life.
If this is an issue that won’t go away, then whatever you do, consult a doctor about doing any of it. And drink water and cheat sometimes, because donuts kick ass.