Will I Gain Weight Post-Keto Diet? (Chinese Subtitles)

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In continuation of our Keto Diet series, internist Dr. Mark Savant talks about maintaining weight after getting off the keto diet plus how the keto diet can be a way of life for some people.

Transcript:

Will my weight come back after I stop the ketogenic diet?

Dr. Savant:

It all depends on what you eat once you stop the ketogenic diet. If you go back to eating a regular American-style diet, the weight will come back. But if you move to a diet that has a few carbohydrates, like a small bowl of rice, but still lots of vegetables and liberal amounts of fat, you shouldn't have any problems, and your weight may go up a little bit but not very much. 

Is the ketogenic diet a way of life? 

Dr. Savant:

It's a way of life for some people, and especially people like the Inuits in the Arctic because they don't eat anything that's grown because nothing grows in the ice.

Esther Situ (Nutritionist, Diabetes Educator, AAMG Health Education Manager):

For those people, do they have a long life span, though?

Dr. Savant:

They do. They can live long lives. There are some tribes in Africa as well who live, you know, kind of, that style as well. And, yeah, because you're burning your own fat and it actually helps. There's a question later on about the immune system and what it does is that it actually can help the immune system because normal cells in the body can burn fat or sugar, but abnormal cells, the cells that go wrong, usually cannot burn fat; they can only burn sugar.

So when you go into either a fasting state or into a state where you're on a ketogenic diet, where you're burning fat, the immune system can recognize the cells that are not burning fat and will clear them out.

Summary:

  • If returning to an American-style diet after you stop the ketogenic diet, your weight will come back.

  • If you move to a diet with few carbohydrates such as a small bowl of rice but has lots of vegetables and liberal amounts of fat, you may gain a little bit of weight.

  • The keto diet is a way of life for some people and can clean the immune system of abnormal cells that can only burn sugar.