Lazy Keto is a popular adaptation of the Ketogenic diet. It’s often used for weight loss, and, as the name implies, it’s designed to be easy to understand.
The standard ketogenic diet requires calculating your caloric consumption and macros carefully. Doing so ensures that you achieve ketosis, a metabolic state in which your body burns fat as an energy source.
However, lazy Keto is far less complicated, as you only have to pay attention to your carb consumption.
In this post, we will walk you through the pros and cons of lazy Keto and how you can do it right.
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What is Lazy Keto?
Lazy Keto is a less limiting version of the usual high-fat, very-low-carb ketogenic diet.
The ketogenic diet began in the 1920s as a medical approach to treating epilepsy. Recently, modifications of this diet, including lazy Keto, have become mainstream.
Traditional keto diets demand you to track your macronutrient consumption closely. You also need to follow a strict eating pattern that involves low carb, high fat, and moderate protein.
The aim is to induce ketosis, a metabolic state in which your body burns fat as its primary fuel source.
Like most adaptations of the ketogenic diet, lazy Keto restricts your carb consumption. Typically, carbs are limited to about 5–10% of your total daily calories — or about 20–50 grams per day for most people.
However, you don’t have to bother about tracking calories, protein, or fat on lazy Keto.
Health Benefits of Lazy Keto
The Ketogenic diet, in general, is believed to offer health benefits. However, there aren’t many studies about lazy Keto.
For example, various studies suggest that keto diets may support weight loss, potentially even more so than low-fat diets.
However, this effect is not unusual for keto diets. Investigations show that any diet that decreases calorie intake and is followed long term will likely begin to lose weight over time.
Even though lazy Keto doesn’t have any caloric limitations, studies suggest that this can help overcome food cravings. This may make it easier to lessen your calorie consumption without feeling hungry.
Additionally, it is believed that the keto diet can help develop blood sugar control for people with Type 2 diabetes. It also reduces the risk of heart disease.
However, conclusions are mixed, and the lazy keto diet has not been explicitly studied.
Keep in mind that the beneficial effects of keto diets are often attributed to being in ketosis. And this is achieved by measuring the level of ketones in the body.
The caveat is that people who do lazy ketone don’t know if they’re in ketosis. That’s because tracking caloric consumptions, macros, and measuring ketones are not required.
The Drawbacks
Like the regular keto diet, lazy Keto may steer dieters to experience the keto flu when transitioning to a keto diet. This involves symptoms of nausea, headache, fatigue, constipation, and dizziness.
Lazy Keto also has some other pitfalls worth noting.
You may not enter ketosis
Lazy Keto is encouraging to many because it’s less restrictive and easier to grasp than the traditional ketogenic diet.
The purpose of lazy Keto is to produce a metabolic state called ketosis, in which your body mainly burns fat for fuel. Researchers connect many of the potential health advantages of ketogenic diets to this metabolic state.
However, while on this simplified version of the keto diet, you may not reach a ketosis state, which has numerous signs and symptoms.
To enter ketosis, you have to critically restrict your carb and fat consumption and monitor your protein intake. That’s because your body can turn protein into glucose — a carbohydrate — in a process termed gluconeogenesis.
Consuming too much protein on lazy Keto could prevent ketosis altogether.
Calories and diet quality still matter
Focusing on your carb intake, as you would on lazy Keto, overlooks the importance of adequate calorie intake and diet quality.
A well-balanced diet that incorporates a wide variety of foods can supply your body with all the nutrients it needs for overall health.
Unfortunately, like the regular keto diet, lazy Keto restricts several nutrient-rich food groups. This includes starchy vegetables, grains, fruits, and legumes. This may make it hard to gain essential vitamins, minerals, and fiber.
Also, it can be challenging to satisfy all your nutrient requirements when you reduce your calorie consumption. Therefore, it’s imperative to focus on consuming nutrient-rich food instead of decreasing your carb intake.
Lack of research behind long-term results
No studies have been led on lazy Keto specifically. Long-term investigations on similar diets are also insufficient.
There are matters that lazy Keto — and high-fat diets in general — may wreck heart health over time, despite the weight loss they may produce.
One analysis of 19 studies linked low-carb, high-fat diets with balanced weight-loss diets. It discovered they had related weight loss benefits and effectively decreased risk factors for heart disease after 1–2 years.
Another study found that low-carb, high-fat diets ended in more significant weight loss than low-fat diets in the long-term.
However, the researchers also discovered that high-fat diets could lead to higher cholesterol levels. This can increase your risk of heart disease.
That said, the nature of the fat you eat on a high-fat diet may create a big difference. If you’re on a Keto diet, it would be best to lean on fatty fish, nuts, and olive oil for fat sources. Doing so decreases the risk of heart disease.
Also, the long-term results of following ketogenic diets are unknown due to a shortage of long-term studies. It’s unclear if keto diets are harmless or helpful to follow over the years or decades.
Food to Eat on Lazy Keto
What can you eat on lazy Keto? In a nutshell, the lazy keto diet is a very low-carb diet. It also involves foods like meat, fish, eggs, healthy oils, and non-starchy vegetables that should give the bulk of your calories.
Here’s a more comprehensive list of low-carb keto foods to include:
- Performance fats like MCT oil, coconut oil, olive oil, grass-fed butter, ghee, avocado, and fats are found naturally in meat, eggs, and fish.
- Quality protein sources, such as poultry and pastured eggs, wild-caught fish, grass-fed meat, and full-fat cheeses.
- Non-starchy, low-carb vegetables, such as leafy greens, cruciferous veggies like broccoli or cauliflower, mushrooms, asparagus, artichokes, bell peppers, herbs, etc.
- Fresh or dried herbs and spices.
- Unsweetened keto drinks, including low-sugar green juices, water, seltzer, coffee, tea, or herbal tea.
- Monk fruit or stevia extract instead of sugar to induce cravings for sweetness.
What’s Not to Eat on Lazy Keto?
- Grains and products made with wheat/grain flours
- Most fruit (berries can be eaten in smaller quantities)
- Legumes or beans
- Added sugar of all kind
- All desserts
- Sweetened dairy products
- Soda, juices, and other sweetened drinks
- Most starchy vegetables like beets, potatoes, and butternut squash.
Keep in mind that lazy Keto doesn’t distinguish between healthy, unprocessed fats and those that are inflammatory. To obtain the most benefits from the diet, refrain from highly-refined vegetable oils, pork rinds, sausage, bacon, and processed cheeses.
Lazo Keto Meal Plan
Now that you identify which foods to incorporate in lazy keto meals, let’s take a look at an example lazy keto diet meal plan:
- Breakfast: Eggs cooked in oil or butter with sautéed veggies and sliced avocado. Another alternative is skipping breakfast altogether and doing intermittent fasting on Keto.
- Lunch: Grass-fed burger with aged cheddar cheese, served over salad with dressing and pickled veggies.
- Dinner: Wild-caught salmon, steak, or chicken cooked in butter or oil, served with sautéed veggies cooked in more butter/oil.
- Keto snacks (optional): Deviled eggs with avocado, keto smoothies, a handful of nuts, or “keto fat bombs.”
Although there’s no need to track your food consumption, here are some broad tips to keep in mind to make sure you’re sticking to the correct keto macros:
- Incorporate at least 1-2 servings of healthy fats with every meal.
- Aim to consume small amounts of healthy protein sources throughout the day.
- Eat numerous servings of veggies per day, ideally incorporating them with all meals.
- Read ingredient labels thoroughly. This way, you avoid added sugar and carbs, plus difficult-to-pronounce chemical ingredients.
- Consider using a keto supplement, such as exogenous ketones in the form of Keto FIRE, to help support you in getting into ketosis. Exogenous ketones, MCTs (medium-chain triglyceride fats), and adaptogens can all work together to boost your energy and athletic performance. It also supports healthy metabolism and promotes healthy weight management while on a keto diet.
Other Considerations
While it’s not indeed a “risk,” trying the lazy keto diet may make it more challenging to get into ketosis. Thus, it can be a challenge to acquire all the benefits of the traditional ketogenic diet.
For example, if you aren’t consuming enough fat or consuming too much protein, your body may strive to make ketones. And we know that these are responsible for the many benefits of high-fat diets.
If you’re following lazy Keto and notice that you’re not achieving a healthy weight or you feel sluggish, then you have two options:
- Try a stricter, standard keto diet instead. This can help you get into ketosis, burn fat for energy, and experience many other benefits linked with ketone production.
- End following a low-carb diet altogether, and instead concentrate on enhancing the quality of diet overall (i.e., eat more whole foods, cut out processed foods, watch serving sizes, etc.).
Should You Try It?
Lazy Keto may be an alternative for those looking for a quick, short-term weight loss solution.
However, keto diets’ long-term results — particularly lazy Keto — are currently unclear due to a shortage of research.
Given that the diet limits many healthy foods, it may be challenging to get all the nutrients you need. This could lead to deficiencies and poor health over time.
Though studies advise keto diets may aid blood sugar control, those with type 2 diabetes should address lazy Keto with caution.
Reducing your carb consumption can lead to severely low blood sugar levels if your medications aren’t adjusted.
Overall, make sure to discuss a healthcare provider, such as a registered dietitian, before trying lazy Keto. They can help you achieve the diet safely and effectively and guarantee that you meet all your nutrient needs.
Final Thoughts
A lazy keto is an appealing choice for those who find the traditional keto diet too limiting. While it limits carbs, there are no rules regarding your consumption of calories, protein, or fat.
Overall, lazy Keto may offer the same possible benefits as the traditional keto diet, at least in the short term. These involve decreased appetite, quick weight loss, and healthier blood sugar control in those with type 2 diabetes.
Nonetheless, there are downsides to neglecting your consumption of calories, fat, and protein.
For one, you may not obtain the metabolic state of ketosis, to which many of the traditional keto diet’s benefits are associated. Also, lazy Keto has not been well analyzed and ignores the importance of overall diet quality.
Experts agree that if you’re going to do the lazy keto diet, it’s crucial you also highlight the quality of the food you eat. Still, it could help you shift to the traditional diet.