A ketogenic diet has been around for decades and was originally used to treat patients with epilepsy. The ketogenic diet (aka keto) is a high-fat, low-carb diet that typically breaks out your macronutrients into something that may look close to 75% Fat intake, 20% Protein intake, and 5% Carbohydrate intake.
Over the last several years, keto has made it into the mainstream spotlight as a weight loss diet. The media often highlights keto as a way to lose weight without giving up bacon, dairy and other high fat tasty treats. But there is a huge difference between clean vs dirty keto and the benefits of clean keto go beyond just weight loss.
Clean Keto - A well-formulated ketogenic diet
Clean keto consists of sourcing your daily intake of fats (and all macronutrients!) from quality, whole food sources. This includes grass fed meats, organic vegetables, unrefined olive oil and more. To help simplify, clean keto is following the Paleo diet (grain free, sugar free diet) while making your macronutrients fit into a high-fat, low-carb model. Clean sources of food promote the growth of healthy cells, brain function, increase energy, and reduce hunger cravings. Clean, whole food sources have less inflammatory properties meaning you will notice the bloating or inflammation in your body decreases on a clean keto diet.
Dirty Keto
Dirty keto follows the same breakdown of fat, protein, and carbs but the sources of these macronutrients is not taken into consideration. This means processed foods, grains, sugar, and inflammatory fats can all count towards those macros. This might mean reaching for cheesy chicken parm or bacon cream cheese California rolls. While this type of keto sounds delicious, the problem with sourcing your macronutrients in this manner is it often causes more harm to the body than good. Dairy products and processed foods cause inflammation and bloating in the body. Even if you are losing weight on this form of keto, your body will continue to be inflamed. Inflammation in the body can lead to other issues including arthritic pain, intestinal discomfort, and even contribute to leaky gut. If these issues weren't concerning enough, adding sugar into your diet will increase your hunger cravings and cause those awful mid-day crashes. This is the opposite effect of how a high-fat, low-carb diet should function: decreasing hunger cravings and energy crashes by fueling your body more efficiently on slow burning fat rather than quick burning carbs.
The Takeaway
If you are on a ketogenic diet or considering one, take a minute to assess what your weekly meals look like and determine what kind of keto you are committed to. Find yourself falling in line with a clean keto model? Keep it up! However, if your meals come from more processed foods with high contents of sugar and grain, look at how you could swap out some of these dirty options for cleaner sources. Keto is an incredible dietary tool to help improve and change your life. We want you to achieve maximum benefits of the ketogenic diet through sourcing all your macronutrients from clean sources! That's why we've created an entire clean keto board on Pinterest to help you get started and take charge of your health!
Clean Keto - A well-formulated ketogenic diet
Clean keto consists of sourcing your daily intake of fats (and all macronutrients!) from quality, whole food sources. This includes grass fed meats, organic vegetables, unrefined olive oil and more. To help simplify, clean keto is following the Paleo diet (grain free, sugar free diet) while making your macronutrients fit into a high-fat, low-carb model. Clean sources of food promote the growth of healthy cells, brain function, increase energy, and reduce hunger cravings. Clean, whole food sources have less inflammatory properties meaning you will notice the bloating or inflammation in your body decreases on a clean keto diet.
Dirty Keto
Dirty keto follows the same breakdown of fat, protein, and carbs but the sources of these macronutrients is not taken into consideration. This means processed foods, grains, sugar, and inflammatory fats can all count towards those macros. This might mean reaching for cheesy chicken parm or bacon cream cheese California rolls. While this type of keto sounds delicious, the problem with sourcing your macronutrients in this manner is it often causes more harm to the body than good. Dairy products and processed foods cause inflammation and bloating in the body. Even if you are losing weight on this form of keto, your body will continue to be inflamed. Inflammation in the body can lead to other issues including arthritic pain, intestinal discomfort, and even contribute to leaky gut. If these issues weren't concerning enough, adding sugar into your diet will increase your hunger cravings and cause those awful mid-day crashes. This is the opposite effect of how a high-fat, low-carb diet should function: decreasing hunger cravings and energy crashes by fueling your body more efficiently on slow burning fat rather than quick burning carbs.
The Takeaway
If you are on a ketogenic diet or considering one, take a minute to assess what your weekly meals look like and determine what kind of keto you are committed to. Find yourself falling in line with a clean keto model? Keep it up! However, if your meals come from more processed foods with high contents of sugar and grain, look at how you could swap out some of these dirty options for cleaner sources. Keto is an incredible dietary tool to help improve and change your life. We want you to achieve maximum benefits of the ketogenic diet through sourcing all your macronutrients from clean sources! That's why we've created an entire clean keto board on Pinterest to help you get started and take charge of your health!
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