Question from a husband trying to support his wife's diet choices

If you're not in ketosis then eating a high fat diet and with carbs is BAD. Your body will use the glucose and just store the fat. You can't do high carb and high fat, and by high carb high fat I'm talking about equal percentages of your diet where either one is over 50g. The point of keto is get your body to preferentially use ketones from body or dietary fat. If you eat carbohydrates your body has to deal with those immediately because high glucose is actually fatal, thus it releases insulin, stores the extra glucose as fat and calls it a day. Insulin is anti-ketogenic.

You may get some benefit from switching types of foods from like grains to vegetables and doing a Zone diet ratio but you will not be keto and you definitely will not get the benefit if you just eat more fat on top of what you're already eating if what you're already eating is high carb. And high carb is like 100g a day or more which is easy to get to with grains as any part of your diet. The standard dietary recommendation in America is around 300g carbs. If you eat more fat on top of that it's just going to give you calories your body won't use.

The other thing to consider is that eating carbohydrates to many people is appetite stimulating. Blood sugar peaks and crashes kind of destroy your appetite which a major benefit of keto. You won't actually lose the peaks and crashes if your body is still burning glucose preferentially. Cutting sugar is good for everyone, but everything you can get from fruit and grains is available in vegetables and animal sources except without extra sugar.

Keep in mind there's not a lot of hard science on what exactly is the healthiest diet for humans. There are many studies on mice, but as it turns out, you can get different strains of mice that have different responses to the ketogenic diet, so they're not necessarily a very good model. Nonetheless, one interesting study compared rates of tumor growth in mice that were fed either a ketogenic diet, a low-fat high-carb diet, or a diet that was roughly equal between fat and carbs, the so called "Western-diet." Tumors in the ketogenic mice were 10% smaller than in the Low-fat high-carb mice, but a whopping 50% smaller than in the "Western diet" mice.

So while it's hard to say, it could easily be worse to do near-keto than keto. One very plausible mechanism is that elevated insulin levels from carbohydrate consumption suppress fat oxidation, and one type of saturated fat particularly, palmitic acid, accumulates in the bloodstream, enters the muscle cells, and causes insulin resistance. Enter more insulin, and more problems. This is where you tend to get elevated triglycerides and LDL.

That being said, if you only cheat with beans and vegetables, half-assed keto might still be a big improvement over the standard diet, by greatly reducing your sugar consumption. If you cheat with pop-tarts on the other hand, you might be making the situation a whole lot worse. The jury is still out, but I would not recommend half-assing it.

You'll do fine on 80/20 if you aren't trying to lose weight. You're still cutting down on your carbs. Just be careful not to gorge yourself on fat if you're still eating carbs too.

The advantage many folks find with the ketogenic approach is that once you're in ketosis, the cravings tend to lighten up.

If you don't have carb cravings, or they're manageable, you can probably half ass it.

On the other hand, if you've got carb cravings, halfassing it may be a recipe for misery.

I'm not expert but here is my experience with keto: Check out Dom D'Agostino's website (https://www.ketonutrition.org/), also have a listen to Joe Rogan's podcast with Dom as the guest! It's episode 994. So for my experience with the diet: I weight train 6 days a week, and do HIIT 5 days a week. I was on a "modified" ketogenic diet (as Dom would put it) for about 2 months, I lost 20 pounds but gained strength in all my lifts. I kept my carbs to about 45g a day, protiens 120g, fats 205g. Probably ate a little more protein some days to aid recovery but using the blood ketone monitor I managed to stay in ketosis throughout the entire 2 month process. Now I did have a cheat meal every now and again to keep myself sane, but I kept it small and made sure I stayed in ketosis. Apparently exogenous ketones can help you get back into ketosis quite quickly if you fall out of it, never tried them though. I was scared to half ass the diet lol. I felt that I'd gain way too much bad weight if I ate carbs and a bunch of fat since the body would burn the carbs first and store the fat. I also had maybe a beer or two a week (mich ultra) and still managed to stay in ketosis. Again I'm no expert but this was just my experience with it. Good luck! :)

As someone who did strict keto and 99.9% of the cooking and whose wife wasn't following keto, we found a happy medium. She did whatever she wanted for breakfast and lunch and ate whatever keto meal I made for dinner. She didn't gain weight or lose weight and when she did her most recent yearly check-up, all her tests came back normal.

If you are worried about whisky and I was, because I love my Johnnie Walker Gold or some 18 year old Balvenie, I was happy to find out they had 0 carbs!!! I've even added Bulleit Frontier Bourbon to my bar, as it also has 0 carbs. As for beer, I drink Molson 67 (2g of carbs per 341ml). However, I have found since starting keto, that beer bloats me and I can't even finish a bottle.

You should just go full Keto :) If you are already 80% of the way there, it's pretty painless. You won't lose weight if you keep your calories up. Speaking of keeping calories up: Whiskey, vodka, rum, tequila, and more are perfectly Keto. Just mix with water, club soda, or my favorite- Zevia. Diet soda works too.

I eat keto therefore my husband eats keto.

He has his bacon, steak, cream sauces and whiskey too. ;-) Occasionally we'll have a good beer as well (we live in the Netherlands and go to Belgium/Germany for concerts and whatnot so we save this for GOOD beer so we can enjoy the taste).

Honestly, the worse part about half assing it will be constantly going in and out of the keto flu. That's miserable. If you don't want to go full keto, go for around 100 net carbs. It's still LCHF but you won't keep getting the keto flu.

The thing about Keto is that you're either in it, or you're not, you can't really have "cheat days" where you eat a few slices of pizza and pound a few IPAs, remember, in ketosis, you're switching your energy sources form glucose to ketones. Going back and fourth wouldn't be the best idea. With that being said, I drink whiskey whenever I feel like it!(maybe a drink or two a week) there's no carbs, so feel no shame there, yet, moderation is always a good skill to hone. As for beer, stick to light lagers, always look up the carbs in them too, for example, three coors could very well Kick ya outta ketosis, but if you search the side bar, there's a decent list of low carb beers you can still enjoy!

Props to you for taking the plunge with your wife! I wish you both all the best!

In and out of ketosis is a trigger for gout. If gout is an issue for you, that is a concern.

I think you're fine. The concern might be that if you're eating a lot of fat (which is the main fuel in the keto diet) but also still eating carbs, you're likely to just pack a lot of fat away.

I say, if you kinda sorta limit your carbs, and you find that eating what your wife eats is causing you to gain weight, then maybe just try losing the carbs entirely. If you don't gain weight, then no prob.

You are fine.

There are a spectrum of low-carb diets - keto, paleo, low-carb, atkins, etc. Any of them are going to be better than a typical high-carb diet.

My fiancé is also the supportive party and follows Keto ~80% of the time. We've been doing this for 5 months.

Since she's doing Keto for weight loss, she probably won't be loading up on the fats very much. It's going to be a bit easier for y'all since she's the one Keto-ing and her macros are going to be lower than yours across the board. The guidelines for a 2,000 calorie SAD diet are that fat should be between 44g-78g, or 20-35% of your calories. So unless you're eating everything she does and your carbs of choice, you should be able to avoid weight gain or medical issues. Just pay attention to your calories.

Edit: my fiancé has noticed some Keto Flu symptoms when going from eating >25g of carbs for a few days to a day or two of eating more carbs and back. So personally, I'd recommend you commit to low-carb (like, between 50-100g per day) to ensure you aren't slipping in and out of ketosis.

Yes eating a high fat diet while you keep eating high carbs is bad. You should do Keto just for the health benefits.

The answer varies by individual, but if you are otherwise healthy, eating your normal way minus some sugar and grains will just be strictly better than you were eating before.

However, many people (including me) do Keto for reasons other than weight loss. I do it for energy, mental clarity, and health. Weight management is a positive side effect. You should consider trying it out fully for a month or two and see how you feel.

First of all - love ya for being supportive of your wife!

I started keto a few (3) months ago. My hubby ( healthy weight) is also super supportive and ate my keto meals and snacks with me but was still eating carbs for breakfast & lunch. I noticed he started to gain weight because he didn't have the reduced appetite (and keto food is calorie dense) that you get when you are full keto. I subtlety mentioned that he may gain weight because of the aforementioned. He had also noticed his belly pooch was getting larger. He is now full keto and is shrinking with me.

If you cut carbs and don't add in a lot of fat, you'll probably be okay. Eat lean, watch the carbs. Try to get most from veggies, rather than a lot of grains, rice, potatoes or sugar, though you could have some. But then they will be in the house, tempting your wife.

So much misinformation on this thread. Eat all the fats you want, have some carbs too. As long as you are not going over your daily calorie count you are good. Lots and lots of gym goers do what you will try to do. Hell, I am doing "dirty keto" myself. Basically I'll try to get as much fat as possible (about 50% of my calories). Other 20% are carbs and the rest is protein.

I have gained about 10lbs of muscle with hardly any fat with this diet, and I workout 4 times a week (heavy lifting in the gym + occasional hikes and climbing mountains).