Originally Posted by dnslater

My wife is a serious tri-athlete and had several surgeries the past year. She was looking to get back to competitive shape and has been on the Ketogenic diet for 3-4 months with great results. She has dropped about 15-20 lbs and her cholesterol is down. I am a less serious athlete and am doing a less serious form of her diet. Keto is essentially a high fat, super low carb diet. She tries to keep her net carbs below 25 grams and her protein below 90. I am trying to keep my carbs below 85 and protein below 125 - so a bit more moderate - which is more realistic with three kids..

Ketogenic diets are very interesting - with the overall concept being that an athlete functions better in fat burning mode than in carb burning mode - as your body can store tens of thousands of calories of fat energy easily - so no bonking during the 7th hour of her Ironmans. Your body is not dependent on a steady sugar stream. Another concept of it for us non-competitive types - is that the reduction of grains and sugar dramatically lowers inflammation in your body and evens out your blood sugar/insulin. If you buy into the evils of gluten - there are more potential benefits there. Supposedly inflammation/sugar is what drives up cholesterol in the blood and a high fat, super low carb diet will reduce cholesterol - as it simply passes through your system and does stick to artery walls without inflammation.

It is a bit hard to retrain your mind, after growing up with the food pyramid and thinking fat is bad. It sounds a little tin foil hat - but the USA has a "system" in place where we heavily subsidize the wrong things (corn and wheat) - and therefore big food (and their lobby) is heavily invested in pushing a diet with lots of grain/corn syrup - which cause diabetes, heart disease, etc...... - which allows big pharmaceutical companies to profit.

The American Dietetic Association - which is very powerful in setting the nations food research agenda - is funded by companies such as Coca Cola, Kraft, Kellogg, ConAgra, Mosanto, Nestle, Nabisco, etc...... companies very much vested in carbohydrates.