Good to be back Fit Fam,
Let’s talk about integrity! Integrity is defined as: firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values; incorruptibility. In my humble opinion, too many companies in our country today are lacking integrity. Anytime I turn on the TV I am somewhere between perplexed and enraged at how much bullsh*t American businesses try and sell us on. From magical glue strong enough fasten the wings to a 747 jet, to the latest and greatest weight loss pill guaranteed to help you lose those unwanted pounds without changing your diet or exercise, it’s hard for me to believe it’s legal for these claims to be made! While many of these scammy products are totally useless, they are often harmless as well (as long as you didn’t really take your family out in the row boat that you cut a hole into then fixed by gluing a screen door to the bottom of it- sorry Flex Seal, we aint buyin it!) There are however some really scary products, or in this case diets, being pushed on the public. So, let’s talk about Keto.
The Ketogenic Diet, aka Keto, is “a high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate diet that in medicine is used primarily to treat difficult-to-control epilepsy in children.The diet forces the body to burn fats rather than carbohydrates.” In the Keto Diet was originally designed to help children with Epilepsy and it was effective in preventing seizures until medical science created an anticonvulsant pill that did the same thing without having to substitute fresh fruits and whole grains with massive amounts of cheese and animal fat. If the thought of greasy bacon, a class 1 carcinogen proven to cause cancer, wrapped in cheese doesn’t turn you off then perhaps having to urinate on test strips will. You heard that right. In order to truly do “Keto” the way Epileptic children did you have to pee on PH strips so that you can track your Ketones 🤯. Before we dive head first into the Keto crater, let’s first discuss the ghosts of Keto’s past.
The Keto Diet is simply the Paleo Diet on steroids. The Paleo Diet is a healthier, 21st century version of the Atkins Diet. Both the Atkins & Keto Diets are classified as “fad diets” because they are exactly that, a FAD that no one can maintain long term. The Atkins diet emerged in the late 60’s before fading and reemerged in late 80’s and again in the early 2000s. The reemergence of the Atkins Diet was short lived, fading once again because the participants could not sustain their weight loss and the side effects (i.e. bad breath, tiredness, weakness, dizziness, insomnia, nausea, gout) were not worth the price of admission. It is also worth mentioning that Dr. Atkins himself suffered multiple massive heart attacks before his mysterious and quite miserable death in 2003. The Atkins estate has since spent millions of dollars fighting to remove Dr. Atkins’ medical records from the web, waging legal war against anyone trying to correlate his horrific medical history with their fad diet. After all, the estate doesn’t want any of us to stop buying Atkins’ books, cookbooks, and supplements do they?
Now let’s get back to Keto. I first heard of Keto in 2017 and as soon as I learned about urinating on test strips and removing fruit from my diet I was uninterested for myself or for any of you. Over the past two years an increasing number of people have asked us to add a Keto meal plan. Every week someone wants us to give them Keto! So in late 2018 we drew up a Keto Menu, created our Keto recipe guides, sourced “Keto friendly” products and had our marketing department create a full-scale Keto launch campaign. In the midst of all that we decided to test the diet in-house and our COO, who also happens to be my wife, volunteered as the lab rat. Here is how the sage unfolded:
Days 1-2: Very hungry
Days 3-5: No more hunger, lots of headaches and really low energy levels.
Day 6: Severe Anxiety
Day 7: Panic attacks!
Once the panic attacks hit she urinated on her test strip and was at the high end of the Ketosis scale bordering on “diabetic ketoacidosis” which can lead to passing out, falling into a coma and DEATH. She then began to Google and the actual scientific evidence was scary. Some people reading this are likely Keto supporters and they will say “but Keto cures Diabetes!” This claim is untrue and the only reputable scientific evidence explains that Ketosis can mask the symptoms of Diabetes for a period of time but does NOT cure anything! We then discovered “peer reviewed” experiments ran in 2007 that concluded the Keto Diet increased the chances of mortality by 22% and then a follow up study which was published in the Journal of the American Heart Association concluded that the Keto Diet increased the chances of DEATH by 53%.
Apparently there is an indisputable correlation between people on the Keto Diet and death via heart attack and that is a risk we are not willing to take regardless of how much people are willing to pay us. For all my Keto advocates, I get it. Losing weight does feel great but can you accept that you are putting short term weight loss before your long term health? With that said, we will put our integrity before our pockets on this one. We’ll choose to wait out the Keto fad and continue to put our member’s health ahead of our profits. For anyone looking for a fast(er) fix, we won’t be offering you a full keto plan, but we suggest our Paleo meal plan which is just as effective for weight loss and won’t require you to start writing your will.
Health is Wealth
