TLDR: A Savage reinterpretation of all of the fluffy before and after keto stories. This is how rookie efforts toward Self-improvement and increasing your SMV can potentially lead to The Fad Diet Trap.

Body: The Fad Diet Trap is facilitated by things like personal anecdotes and myths of primitive cultures. I decided to make a parody of a personal anecdote using a real life example, in order to contrast humor and seriousness when it comes to what outcomes can result from falling for the trap.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TA1U5jgr8Dk

SELF-IMPROVEMENT IS A STATE OF MIND AND A STATE OF PRACTICAL ACTION. It is essentially unanimous that lifting is a mandatory part of this SMV Improvement. Beyond that, there's no shortage of different opinions as to where you should focus your efforts... Inner game, more approaches, body language, etc. AND DIET.

There's no denying that the ketogenic diet and variations on it have taken Center Stage when it comes to online weight-loss gurus and Alternative Health practitioners. Epilepsy and glioblastoma are outside of the scope of this post.

Subsequently, You may have seen one of the many transformation videos showing weight loss before and after a ketogenic diet. This video is going to look beyond the scope of the first 30 days, 60 days, or even the first year. This is parody, but this is also reality depending on your frame.

The point of this post ...is that in American society, where ~70% of adult males are overweight or obese... One of the main sticking points in SMV Improvement is the challenge to lose weight.

Thus, welcome to the internet... The modern-day version of the Wild West when it comes to diet advice. I have seen keto and intermittent fasting verbatim described as the "Fountain of Youth". That's sweet, (or should I say savory), but...

KEY TAKEAWAY:

When celebrity Fitness Personalities encourage young men to externalize YOUR concept of masculinity and project it onto some food preferences, as if masculinity could be dependent on whether you prefer beef or beans... For those who swallow, that begins a process of abandoning oneself as a mental point of origin.

Here is an example of Brandon Carter encouraging men to do just that: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1567617829949322&id=15765096041&refsrc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F&_rdr

It's all too enticing to fall into an Orbiter frame, a beta frame, whereby justifications for dietary preference can be expressed as "(Alpha) does this (whether it be keto, or vegan, or fasting, or paleo, etc) so it must be legit."

This process of Outsourcing one of the key components of your health and longevity (DIET) is compounded by fluffy anecdotal weight loss claims. I have even seen keto conflated with stoicism, as if adjusting your diet via extreme carbohydrate restriction to trigger a metabolic state that mimics starvation is somehow the ancestral, masculine way to achieve the elusive Aesthetics you desire.

Important Point

This sub is molding the minds of impressionable young men. PERIOD. Lifelong decisions and habits will be formed based on the advice and anecdotes shared. Think Fitness and Field Report Flair. People say "do your own due diligence"... Well, now young men are coming HERE to do diligence.

BECAUSE THIS IS WHERE MEN TALK ABOUT WHAT WORKS.

This is my effort to bring an undercurrent of humor with an overtone of seriousness to this topic. I see the humor and the tragedy. Do you?

Your after video... Could look like this

Further Reading

For any young men out there, it's important to weigh the evidence. There is no perfect study. In the video, the broad study is referenced:

To the best of our knowledge, this research has achieved greater weight loss at 6 and 12 months than any other trial that does not limit energy intake or mandate regular exercise.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nutd20173

If you are trying to lose weight... Does that mean you shouldn't exercise? No. Does that mean you shouldn't limit energy intake? No.

For the rabbit hole dwellers, what evidence suggests that ANY population in their natural environment consuming their traditional diet did so in a state of ketosis?

This is important, because part of The Fad diet trap is convincing you that a given strategy is natural and in accordance with how populations have lived in the past.

http://m.jbc.org/content/80/2/461.short

The observations were made in July and August, 1927, upon Baffin Island Eskimos....

The diet of the Eskimo has long been recognized as an apparent exception to this view. Being restricted almost wholly to animal tissues and containing therefore ,only a very small proportion of carbohydrate, such a diet might be expected to produce a ketosis.

It may be said at once that the Eskimo on his usual dietary shows no ketosis and has high tolerance to ingested glucose.

Conclusion

  • People are confused about what to do and there is a lot of misinformation.

  • Realize that you are being targeted by very savvy marketing and promotions when it comes to something as financially significant as what you pay money for to eat 3 times a day.

  • You should consider the risks associated with any potential lifestyle adoption.

  • After all, you don't want to end up like our friend in the video. Guard your face.