What Keto, Vegan, Intermittent Fasting, and Slimming World All Have in Common.

Every day there seems to be a new trend in what is considered the optimal diet for weight-loss, muscle-gain, cognitive performance, you name it. The one true answer to your lifetime of struggling with weight gain, health, and control around food. My goal here is not to deter you from something that works for you, but to give you a balanced opinion on why it works. Trust me, been there, done that, and wore the t-shirt.

Calories In, Calories Out

Firstly, exclusionary diets negate a simple empirical truth, which has been proven time and time again under much scrutiny. If you eat more calories than you burn, you will gain weight. If you eat less than you burn, you will lose weight. Simply put, calories are a form of readily available energy to fuel the body to do its job. Body fat is a form of stored energy for a rainy day when food is scarce.

In order for any of the fad diets mentioned in the title to work (all of which can work), they need to prompt an energy deficit. Now, this isn’t as simple as what we burn when we exercise. In fact, most of our calories are burned at rest i.e. Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). Exercise activity (EA) is a minor output by comparison, along with the Thermic effect of food (TEF), and NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis). Unless of course, you are a professional athlete or train like one.

By eliciting a calorie deficit through restricting food groups (see next heading), you are less likely to make up a calorie surplus. This is why for example sugar is demonized. It is calorie-dense, with no satiating properties. Thus it is very easy to over-consume, making it very easy to over-consume total calories. Sugar is not inherently dangerous unless you are diabetic, or pre-diabetic.

Yet, fad diet proponents will use this as proof that sugar is inherently bad, or any other foods that they eliminate. Be it meat, carbs, dairy, or anything that doesn’t have a Slimming World label on it. It is within the best interests of proponents of such diets to gloss over this because otherwise, they would have to admit that their competitors’ diets also have the potential to work. If you lose that unique selling point, then it is much harder to claim that your diet works because of ketones for example.

Restrictive Eating

All of these diets have the potential to work, but the tradeoff is that they require you to avoid certain foods. Now while this may be relatively easy to do for a day, a week, or a month at a time, when motivation is high, but it is not a successful long-term approach. Eating habits don’t exist in a vacuum. Jobs, relationships, responsibilities, etc also eat into your willpower. Your willpower is not compartmentalized into these different areas. It is one tank, which is to be used wisely.

It is unsurprising then that over 95% of diets fail in the longterm, with people regaining the weight they initially lost, and then some. (see next heading).

You might successfully defy the odds and nail these diets in the longterm, but what effect does that have on your ability to attend social gatherings, travel to new places, or use your focus for creative endeavors? Constantly having to avoid certain foods is stressful work. I know because I have been there.

I did extended periods of Keto, Paleo, and exclusionary diets because I thought it would solve some unexplained health issues. I noticed some initial placebo benefits in the first few weeks, but once the novelty wore off, it did my health no favours due to the stress it caused me.

Now one might ask, how is counting calories any different? It is very different. Calorie counting is as Layne Norton puts it, like having a budget. Where fad diets say avoid buying cars; calorie counting says, spend money on cars, so long as you have the cash to hand. The diet-binge cycle is the high-interest loan you want to avoid, whereas a budget allows you to buy your car guilt-free.

This calorie budget is based on averages. So if you overeat one day, you can always account for that in the days that follow, over the course of your week. You can have your cake and eat it too, so long as you don’t continue eating it for days at a time.

Rebounds

It is human nature that when we view something as scarce, we want it all the more. This is true for the opposite sex, clothes, jewellery, etc. Imagine how much more magnified this is for food, which you simply can’t avoid and have to eat every day.
I have a certain loved one (won’t name names), who cycles through avoiding chocolate like the plague and eating a packet of chocolate bars in one sitting. The behaviour is painfully predictable, and it used to be the case for me as well.

I struggled most of my childhood with my weight, binge eating disorder and spent far too much time missing out on the fun in life by cycling through fad diets. Every time without fail, the rebound was worse than the original problem. My binges got worse, the stricter I got with myself. But I accepted that pattern as just being part of losing weight.

Then I discovered flexible dieting through budgeting my caloric intake, with no food being off-limits. I NEVER relapse into binge eating. It has been years, and I have zero compulsion to do so. It’s not even a thought that enters my brain anymore.

Magical Thinking

There’s a certain kind of magical thinking that goes with these diets that I find quite disturbing at times. As if avoiding certain foods will bring health, happiness, and wealth. Whether it’s the bright green plant life that goes hand in hand with vegan Instagram pages, or the association between being an entrepreneur and intermittent fasting. Sure it’s all part of the marketing, but it’s not a practical way to base your decisions about your health. Not to mention developing perfectionism, where you have to nail the diet before you can do X.

Look for evidence, but in doing so make sure it is not backwards-rationalised to fit the narrative. One of the best examples of this is in Netflix documentaries, where they take performance athletes who built their physical prowess over a lifetime of training and listening to sports nutritionists, but later switched to the diet of the week to maintain an already established level of performance.

In those circumstances, the association between the athlete and the diet is inadmissible evidence. However, it excels in convincing people that if you too go vegan, keto, etc. you will look like them. i.e. magical thinking.

Although….

One benefit to fad diets is that they do remove choice from the equation. Paralysis by analysis can be an issue if you are not overly concerned with food and want to simplify your life. In the same way that some of the most successful entrepreneurs wear the same clothes every day. They don’t want yet another decision to blur their decision-making faculties when it comes to running their businesses.

I too experienced this when I was on fad diets, particularly keto. It made my decisions around food much simpler. I noticed improved cognition as well. However, was that really the ketones, or was it the aforementioned placebo, combined with less decision-fatigue? Again, once the novelty wore off, I no longer raved about the cognitive benefits. So I do think it was the latter.

However, be honest with yourself about your limitations. If you are looking to lose weight, chances are you have some issues with food. Don’t underestimate that, by fooling yourself that you are immune to falling off the wagon. Extreme diets, require extreme discipline and a certain temperament. Personally, I’d rather exert that discipline elsewhere. After all, life is a series of trade-offs.

Do you want the perfect diet, or do you want a balanced diet? Do you want more or less choice? There is no right or wrong answer here. If it works, it works. But understanding why it works will lead you to more informed decisions so you can accept the tradeoffs. This information, combined with self-awareness will lead you to an approach that works for you.