The ketogenic diet is a high-fat diet that restricts your daily intake of carbohydrates to 10 to 15 g a day and protein intake to 1 g per kilogram of body weight a day. The remaining calories come from fat. R.M. Wilders of the Mayo Clinic designed the diet as a treatment of epilepsy in pediatric patients in the 1920s. When conventional epilepsy medicine became more readily available, the diet went out of fashion. Select places, such as Johns Hopkins Hospital, still prescribe it to patients who have limited success with conventional medicine.
Consult Professionals
Because of its extreme restrictions of carbohydrates and protein, the ketogenic diet is difficult to follow on your own. Ten to 15 g of carbohydrates corresponds to one to two servings of vegetables a day, and 1 g of protein per kilo body mass corresponds to a tiny steak for a person of average weight. If you get your carbohydrates from one or two servings of vegetables and a small steak, you cannot eat any meats, poultry, fish, dairy, bread, pasta, rice, legumes, fruit or sweets in addition to that. To make it feasible to follow the diet, consult with a ketogenic diet center before starting the diet.
Get Enough Calories
The ketogenic diet is not aimed at being a weight-loss diet. It supplies all of the calories your body needs to maintain your body weight. Because the food choices are limited on the diet, it can be difficult to get enough calories. To avoid losing weight, you will need to count calories in addition to carbohydrates and protein. Use a food nutrition chart to ensure that you are getting the calories your body needs.
Eat Good Fats
Not all fat is created equal. Trans fat and saturated fat can have detrimental effects on your cardiovascular system. Large amounts of foods high in bad fats can increase your levels of bad cholesterol, or low-density lipoprotein, and lower your levels of good cholesterol, or high-density lipoprotein. High levels of bad cholesterol and low levels of good cholesterol can lead to plaque formation in the blood vessels, increasing the risk of blood clots. To avoid adverse consequences of the ketogenic diet, choose healthful sources of fat, such as vegetable oils, nuts and fatty fish.
Consider Alternatives to the Ketogenic Diet
Ketogenic diet centers, such as Johns Hopkins Epilepsy Center, offer alternatives to the ketogenic diet that are easier to observe on your own. The modified Atkins diet can have some of the same effects on epilepsy as the ketogenic diet. It is easier to follow, because it allows for higher quantities of carbohydrates and protein per day and doesn't require counting calories and weighing food. If you intend to observe an anti-seizure diet outside a clinical setting, the modified Atkins diet may be a better choice for you than the ketogenic diet.
Member Comments