Is a ketogenic diet good for weight loss?

Is a ketogenic diet good for weight loss?

It's still too soon to tell. In fact, the rapid weight loss which occurs at the start of a keto diet may not be fat loss at all.

“Early weight loss at the beginning of the Keto diet is likely related to fluctuations in fluid,” says Ashley Harpst, R.D., a sports dietitian and the owner of Go For the Gold Nutrition in San Diego. “Three to four ounces of water is retained for every 1 gram of carbohydrate stored as glycogen in the muscles to use for energy.” So, as your glycogen stores are depleted and you enter ketosis, there’s less water in your body as well.

There's also no long-term data on ketogenic diets versus other diets. In a 2015 Italian study, those on a ketosis diet lost 26 pounds in three months. About half of the participants stayed on the diet for a year

but lost little additional weight in the next nine months. People in a 2014 Spanish study who followed a very-low-calorie ketogenic diet lost an average of 44 pounds in a year—but a third of them dropped out, possibly because it was too hard to maintain.

Another study, published in 2020 in The BMJ, analyzed the results from 121 previously conducted clinical trials that looked at the effectiveness of various diets (low-fat, low-carb, low-calorie, etc.) for weight loss and lowering markers of cardiovascular disease risk, like blood pressure and LDL cholesterol. Based on data from nearly 22,000 adults, the researchers found that while all of these diets led to weight loss and improvements in cardiovascular health markers in the first six months, virtually all of those benefits had disappeared at the one year mark.

The bottom line: Keto (and any other diet) may lead to weight loss and improved health in the first

several months, but even if you’re able to stay on the diet for longer, those benefits will likely disappear after about a year.