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Business Insider

Step aside, Atkins. There’s a new fad diet in town.
The high-fat, low-carb ketogenic diet – or “keto” for short – has become a popular way to lose weight. Just ask celebrities such as Halle Berry, Kourtney Kardashian and Vanessa Hudgens who all swear by it.
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But while keto does help some to shed the pounds, it’s a huge change for your body’s metabolism and that can come with some serious side effects you should be aware of.

If losing weight is your goal, keto can help you shed pounds fast. But as with most diets, there’s more to keto than meets the eye.
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Keto basically replaces carbs with fat, so a typical keto diet contains around 70 per cent fat, 25 per cent protein and 5 per cent carbohydrates. That’s a drastic change from the diet that the USDA recommends for Americans which should contain less than 30 per cent fat and more than 50 per cent carbs. The key is to add fats from high quality sources such as nuts and fish, not oils associated with processed foods.

This is all a significant change for your body’s metabolism too. Usually when you eat carbs, like a starchy potato, enzymes in your mouth, stomach and small intestine break them into glucose, a form of sugar, which your brain and body use for fuel.
When you skip carbs, the first couple of days you often experience strong sugar cravings as your body is switching gears from burning carbs to using the only energy source it has left: fat.
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Once you’re burning fat regularly, you’ll start to see the pounds melt away. Depending on your weight, you might lose up to 1.5kg (3.5 pounds) within the first week. Also, as you burn more fat, levels of insulin, the fat-storing hormone, will drop significantly. This triggers your kidneys to release large amounts of sodium into the blood.

This can lead to a common side effect known as the “keto flu”. Many keto dieters report symptoms like nausea, headaches, dizziness, muscle cramps and low energy levels. But most of these symptoms will occur only for the first couple of weeks after starting the diet.
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After the first month, the scales will look better. But some of that lost weight wasn’t fat – it was water. That’s because some of the carbs you’ve previously metabolised include glycogen, which helps you retain water to stay hydrated. As a result of losing that glycogen, you’ll likely pee more, which will lower your sodium levels even further. This can lead to dehydration, constipation or diarrhoea, and bad breath, so you should drink more to restore the balance.

Once you’re a couple of months in, you might also hit the “keto plateau”. It’s a term used in the keto community but plateauing is common with most diets – a stage when people find it harder to continue losing weight. One study, for example, found that overweight people lost an average of 15 pounds (7kg) in the first month and another 11 pounds (5kg) over the next two months, but after that they saw no change in body weight – despite sticking to the keto diet.
At this point, many people quit keto, one reason why researchers have found it hard to study the long-term effects of the diet.
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There is one group that typically sticks to the diet. It’s unclear why, but keto has been proven to reduce the symptoms of epilepsy. That’s the good news, but studies also show that epileptic children who stay on very restricted keto diets for several years can suffer from kidney stones, high cholesterol and bone fractures so there’s clearly more work needed to understand what’s happening there.
The typical keto diet won't be nearly as strict of course, but with all these changes in your body in mind, if you do want to try keto, it’s wise to get a check-up and talk to a doctor first to be sure it works for your particular situation.
This article originally appeared on Business Insider.
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