Just do keto-diet, and sugar addiction will dissolve pretty quickly.
You don't have to do go full keto to get a health benefit!
I hope this doesn't come across as too pedantic, but I dunno if your maxim holds.
For instance, fasting isn't necessarily bad (I think it's quite useful) but clearly it's an unsustainable beyond a certain number of days.
Similarly, keto can both be very effective, change your eating preferences, and be done over a span of months even if it's not something done forever into the future.
I say this not because I have data, but just anecdotally... I lost quite a lot of weight through fasting and ketosis, and now that I've hit a stable weight and modified my diet (no sodas, sweets, bread, dairy and mostly plant based high-fat foods) I'm not in keto but a lot healthier than I was.
You can enter ketosis long enough to lose some weight and then add back in some carbs at some point... just don't return to whatever habits led you to gain weight in the first place.
That's the key though. Despite using keto or fasting, you still changed your diet. However, the changes you've made are more manageable for the long run.
But I don't know if I wold have made the dietary changes if I hadn't lost the 50 lbs. And I would not have lost that weight on my current diet, I don't think.
So my point that there are useful short-term diets still seems tenable to me.
All of my Indian friends report that their cholesterol LDL was very high while they were doing keto.
Do you have some links/articles which describe what it is and what positive/negative things can come out of it?
Anyway, I personally did it for about 2 months and even though I enjoyed it, I would not recommend it for most people. I tried it because I don't like dissing something without trying it first, so I put myself on Keto for 2 months to see what it was all about. I would recommend the same - try it for about 2 months and then decide it for yourself. Note that you will have to bear through the first 1-2 weeks of brain fogginess and low energy as your body adapts to it. But once that's over and you are in Ketosis, you will feel much better. Another thing to be careful about is that your body will go out of ketosis very easily if you eat carbs (ice cream for example). Don't use it as a way to lose body weight as most of the weight people lose is actually water weight due to the lack of carbs based glycogen.
I would recommend this Jeff Nippard's YouTube video on Keto too:
But another main reason as I pointed out was that Keto was severely limiting my social eating habits. I personally did not do it for losing body fat, I did it mostly to see how it is. I still loved eating out with friends - things like sushi rolls, ice cream etc. Keto wasn't allowing me those things.
I would actually love to do keto because I love eating meat (steak), butter, avocados etc but right now isn't the right time for me from a social point of view.
For example, if you are on a keto diet and your diet is well-defined, what are the risks? Fatigue is one thing, but organ damage or otherwise dangerous effects should be discussed frankly and clearly.
I have not really found resources that don't have inherent conflicts of interest.
People who study to become dieticians have a much more straightforward and high level approach, e.g.: "You have a iron deficiency and don't get in enough protein, and I would advise eating more red meat."
The best resource I think think of is Keto subreddit FAW which goes over the principles and some misconceptions and so on: https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/wiki/faq
Also, Keto is often done along with intermittent fasting, which is another popular thing, lately.
EDIT: the subreddit is also full of people talking about their success with Keto (meaning mosty obese and diabetc or prediabetic reversing their condition), but that might be survivorship bias - someone who failed or someone who had adverse effects might not post there.
My personal experience is that I lost quite a bit of weight on Keto, and experienced other effects like loss of cravings, more mental clarity, etc, in comparison to typical western diet - but that might be just me. My hypothesis is that some people handle carbs better than others, and Keto is good for the group which dosn't handle carbs very well.
EDIT2: There's also a lot of misconceptions about fat being the devil.
You know, given the trans-fats debacle - for decades, people were convinced that trans-fats were the good thing and you have to be monster to give your kids evil bad butter instead of healthy nice margarine - I am convinced that as a humanity, we don't know shit about nutrition, and basically just do what works for you. For some people, Keto is much better than the standard western diet.
Are you defining natural as ‘conventional 21st century Western diet’? ie what everyone is doing around you.
All I am saying is that in my opinion Keto does not fit the definition of natural. I eat mostly fruits while I feed my dogs raw meat and organs only.
The point being that both natrual and unnatural are terrible heuristics. Your diet may be fundamentally good or deeply flawed but naturalness isn't why - nutrient balance, satiation, metabolic factors and similiar are why.
I have never seen an animal refusing to eat because it could not calculate the calories or nutrient balance. It is sad to see that with all the great progress we have made, we are losing touch with nature.
Undo the 10 millenia of evil.