While a Keto Diet requires that you limit carbs, I would like to acknowledge that not all carbohydrates are inherently bad. Familiarizing yourself with foods that are allowed, conditional and completely excluded from this diet is key to in deciding whether this type of diet is right for you. Poultry, eggs, meat, cream, cheese, fish, seafood, added oils, herbs, spices, and non caloric sweeteners are allowed. Grains, juice and soda are excluded completely. Conditional foods include: Legumes, nuts, seeds, alcohol, dips, sauces, milk, yogurt, chocolate and even coffee and tea. In general if a drink/food has added carbs in it should be avoided. For example a mocha coffee has 15 grams of added sugar, an americano has 0 grams of added sugar. Milk chocolate is loaded with sugar but dark chocolate has a lower carbohydrate content. Also, vegetables such as potatoes, corn, parsnips have a higher carbohydrate content than spinach, kale or peppers.
Keto: Water Weight
If you decide that Keto is right diet for you likely you will loose a lot of weight the first few days. That weight is mostly water and here is why. When we eat carbs they are broken down into glucose. We store glucose in the liver and muscles in the from glycogen. Every gram of glycogen is stored along with 3 grams of water in our muscle and bound with 2.4 grams of water in the liver. Initially when going Keto glycogen stores are depleted and the free water gets excreted. Also, as ketones pass through the kidneys to the bladder the water concentration increases leading to sodium concentration to increase. In turn excreting water and sodium along with the ketones. The total amount of weight loss varies but on average is about 5 lb. This loss is interpreted as lean weight loss. When on a diet amount of weight loss seems to be measure of success but is it really an accurate measure?
Keto Hype
A ketogenic diet is literally a ketone producing diet. This is a very low carbohydrate diet typically less than 50 grams of carbs per day and high in fat about 60% of daily calories. When there is very little carbohydrates available we use lipids as a main energy source which we break down into ketones.
There are many approaches to Ketogenic diets in terms of macronutrient ratio and even food types. There is classic, cyclical and targeted ketogenic diets. There is no best options in general if the diet is hypo caloric and sustainable that is what the best pick for you.