Can the Dirty Keto Diet Work for You if Regular Keto Didn’t?

Dirty keto is basically keto lite, for those of us who can’t bear to part with processed foods.

Unless you have been living underneath a rock this summer, you have heard of the keto Diet. Every year around bikini season new diet fads pop up, and this year the keto diet basically took over the Internet. The keto diet is basically just a low-carbohydrate diet, which forces your body into ketosis, turning it into a fat-burning machine. It should be mentioned that ketosis basically means ‘starvation’, and the reason it works is that your brain can only run on glucose or ketones (an alternative fuel for the body), and a ketogenic diet restricts the carbohydrates that help make glucose, and floods your bloodstream with ketones instead. Your body then starts burning more fat as a result.

The keto diet focuses mainly on the macronutrients your body needs (60-75% of calories from fat, 15-30% from protein, and 5-10% from carbs. It offers rules on which foods to eat (the main rule being that processed foods are a big no-no).

The main difference between keto and dirty keto is that with dirty keto, as long as you stay away from carbs there are no real rules as to whether you get your nutrients from healthy, organic sources, or junk food.

READ MORE: Is the Keto Diet Safe for Athletes?

There are obvious drawbacks to this, such as the fact that junk food doesn’t really offer your body the best nutrients, and could end up leaving you feeling devoid of energy. Also, if you are going to diet at all, shouldn’t you try and push for the best possible result?

90-95% of people who lose weight on a diet end up gaining it back, and 2/3 of those people actually gain more weight than they initially lost. This tells us that if we really want to lose weight and keep it off, fad diets like keto, dirty keto, Atkins, South Beach (and the list goes on) don’t really work as well as making permanent dietary changes and sticking to them. If you are just trying to slim down for a few months, the keto or dirty keto diet will probably work, but wouldn’t it be better to slowly start building healthier habits that will keep your body in shape year-round?

At the end of the day, if the keto diet didn’t work for you because you have a long-standing love affair with junk food, then maybe the dirty keto diet would. I still say that if you are serious about changing your body and upgrading your health, there are no real shortcuts.