I started keto with a 4-day water fast beginning Jan 02, 2017. It 's the best thing I ever did for myself. It felt like 'coming home'. For the seven decades I ate SAD prior to keto I had many fave carb-loaded foods. In fact, I home-brewed my own beer (actually braggot) for 30 years and drank half a liter of it every day. Don't miss any of it. 5 1/2 years into keto, at the age of 77, I have essentially the same body I had at the age 18. I will take it, thank you! I am fit and healthy, have a full-time job in retail and retain my enthusiasm for cycling. I see folks of my age every day in my job and I'm glad I'm not where they are healthwise. And yes, I'm sure I was gifted with healthy genes and I thank my ancestors every day. But that's only part of the equation. I have brothers and sisters who had the same ancestors and continue to eat SAD. They're not like me.
When someone questions me about the 'health' and 'sustainability' of keto I respond that our species and it's ancestors ate keto for 4+ million years and we're still here. There are a lot of myths and misinformation about keto. Most in the medical profession mistake the therapeutic diet developed to help epilepsy patients as 'keto' and simply don't know about 'nutritional keto' developed from the early 1980s due in part to the research of Drs Stephen Phinney and Jeff Volek. Metabolically, being in continuous ketosis changes pretty much everything for the better.
There's even the recognition now that feeding exogenous ketones to elderly patients, who are not eating a keto diet, helps them resist mental deterioration and also slows the progression of existent deterioration of the brain with aging.
Based on my own experience and what I've read over the past several years, I think eating a ketogenic diet is the best health insurance you can buy for yourself. That's my opinion anyway.
