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Yes. I'd add a couple of items I have found to be important...

5) Limit consumption of (mostly) omega-6 polyunsaturated vegetable oils. Use virgin olive oil (mostly monounsaturated) and saturated fats (butter, ghee, coconut oil, even lard) instead. The exception is: try to get as much omega-3 as possible.

6) Eat foods with high and diverse micronutrient content or use supplements. It's really easy to be slightly deficient in some essential micronutrients. Especially magnesium, which is really important and deficiency is really common.

Nuts and seafoods are good for both of these, but supplementation may be advisable. As for the fats, evidence continues to accumulate that contrary to "official" public health advise for the last 60 years or so, saturated fats are NOT harmful to cardiovascular health, certainly much less so than highly processed polyunsaturated fats (and almost all of them are processed in some way or other, because naturally they are hard to extract and spoil rapidly). Also saturated fats stand up much better to high heat, whereas polyunsaturated fats will always produce some trans-fats during pan or deep frying.

The difference is on keto it is hard to gain weight (I struggle a little for muscle gain with lifting weights) and on normal-carbs it is hard to lose weight.

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> On the other hand, there exists evidence that hardcore keto just for weight loss doesn’t outperform non-ketogenic low carb > I’m positive that keto should be more for those who find it improving their mental state and diabetes; general population, not so much.

Good luck in practice though! Good luck being a doctor or a personal trainer and telling that to your patients/clients (just eat a small ice-cream bro! just suffer through it).

Not everybody is a body builder (they do the gain/cut thing).

> Hitting the gym is optional

This should not be optional. Unless you train in your job or something.

>2) fix your sleep hygiene ASAP

This and your other points should be unrelated to the diet.

> About 3): my N=1 confirms

Depends how "good" you want to feel and if you want to experiment with even better.

Feel free to N=1 on yourself by fixing everything first, and only then, try a very-high-fat keto diet (~80% fat). You might be wrong on this one (many people are, meaning starting keto when they're already done everything else).

My doctor and nutritionist actually told me I need to get more calories from fat. I switched to keto but was getting way too many calories from protein. I was (and still sort of am) struggling to get healthy sources of fat that fit into the rest of my diet and don't waste carbs on food I don't really want to eat. getting most of your calories from fat is actually ridiculously hard for me. Its way easier to me to eat steak and cabbage and broccolli and tomatoes forever. Apparently thats not a good diet though. Wasting carbs to eat fat rich foods like avocado or dairy fat like butter/cream/cheese hurts my soul.

> getting most of your calories from fat is actually ridiculously hard for me.

You can ask your doctor or you can search online in a keto forum.

Things that have personally worked for me:

1. pour a lot of olive oil (say 10 tablespoons) on salads. After eating the salad I just drink the olive oil.

2. Get MCT oil during the day in tea spoons.

3. (best/cheapest for me and I currently do) Get beef fat trimmings and fry/air-fry/slow-cook them (see https://www.instagram.com/p/CrhH9CBo1mC/ for that and other high fat carnivore recipes)

eating oil is pretty gross. I'll have to look into the beef fat thing. I started having coffee with cream and eating some eggs and avocado everyday but it seems there aren't that many sources of fat that aren't pure oil/fat that don't otherwise come with avocado.

> eating oil is pretty gross

It is. But you hopefully get used to it?

Other examples:

1. eat only egg yolks (i'm actually alergic to egg whites)

2. Eat the foods with most carbs before gym. This way you can utilise some carbs for gym and you'll still keep high levels of ketones (see /r/ketogains protocol)

3. See the instagram account I linked.

4. See what they do for epilepsy (hint: they kinda drink oil because they need 90%)

The beef fat trimmings are still kinda oil, just in nicer form and nicer taste. Literally eat 0.5kg-1kg of beef fat trimmings a day (they get 1/4 size after cooking)

> Not everybody is a body builder (they do the gain/cut thing).

Neither am I. I do modest workouts so I don’t lose muscle on keto, but it’s mostly to manage type 2 diabetes and lose body fat (which, again, is to manage the diabetes and maybe get some of my insulin sensitivity back).

> > 2) fix your sleep hygiene ASAP

> This and your other points should be unrelated to the diet.

But turns out, they are. The human organism is a complex thing, and it turns out that if your circadian clock and eating habits are out of sync, you’re royally screwed. Sleep is not an afterthought, it kinda all starts with it.

Agree heavily. What I do:

- 30 minute walk (or some exercise) after every meal. My mantra; if you're giving yourself fuel you need to use it. Otherwise it just stays in the bloodstream causing problems.

- No processed carbs.

- Limit fried fats.

- No eating for 2-3 hours before bedtime.

The way I feel is night and day than before I started this healthy lifestyle.

It's probably a lot easier to quit carbs than fat. Most people just don't know that fat is a (healthy) option.

Though, as you said, happily that is changing.

(Edit to say, speaking as a certified ketobro, I don't think you should do keto all the time, forever. A break day or two every few weeks, and stretches of healthy mixed-diet eating, in my experience, gets you the same benefits)

> It's probably a lot easier to quit carbs than fat. Most people just don't know that fat is a (healthy) option.

Not just healthy, but essential. You need a certain amount of fats for your sex hormones to actually work, so unless you want to stop menstruating/not interested in having erections, keep eating healthy fats.

The "low fat" foods which just replace fat with sugar are the worst for me. I hate that they are advertising it as being "more healthy" when it's clearly not. I finally got my wife to switch away from Miracle Whip and just eat real mayo. There is sugar, especially HFCS, in so much stuff that shouldn't have it.

With HFCS instead of bona fide glucose sugar, you also risk getting NAFLD later in life. Liver’s capacity to process fructose appears to be lower than glucose.

Not just HFCS though. Regular cane sugar is 50% or so fructose. Real sugar coke isn't any healthier than HFCS coke. Where do you get glucose sugar?

regular can sugar is almost entirely SUCROSE which your body breaks down into glucose and fructose. its not dumping a bunch of fructose into your body.

furthermore, we have sensors in our body to inhibit sugar craving in the presence of glucose or sucrose. we have no such sensor for fructose. so even if you did have 50% pure fructose in cane sugar, you would drink less real sugar coke because you'd feel satisfied after drinking a much smaller amount than those HFCS abominations.

There’s a very major caveat of jumping off keto abruptly (having a cheat day): https://www.everydayhealth.com/ketogenic-diet/cheat-day-on-k...

Sudden jump off keto may cause inflammatory damage to the endothelium of your blood vessels, and while in that one study, effects had been “transient”, I wouldn’t risk cheat days without a very gradual reintroduction of carbs, and surely not repeated cheat days. (My personal fat diabetic ass says it had a lifetime of carbs, though, so that’s not happening for me until at least 20 kg later.)

I know it’s just one study, but I would rather be safe than sorry until we know more. Case in point: the study subjects were all young and healthy, and most people who really need to go very low carb are not.

Thanks for the link, I think there is something to it. I have personally experienced, on multiple occasions, getting rather sick if I eat anything very sugary while on keto.

So a 'cheat day' should probably be more like eating some wholegrain bread, lentils, some raw fruit of choice, or stuff like that. If you're on keto, that will almost feel like eating candy anyway :)