Starting out wanting to be a jazz musician, Jonny speaker studied at Juilliard and played piano for the Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre. After studying music and psychology at NYU and working in musical theatre, the Jonny became an addict and was eventually able to recover. This experience inspired them to become a zealot for healthy lifestyles and become certified as a personal trainer. Later, he became Dean of the Equinox Fitness Training Institute, during which time he started questioning the conventional wisdom of low-fat diets. Jonny went back to school to obtain a PhD in holistic nutrition and board certification from the American College of Nutrition, earning the CNS (Certified Nutrition Specialist) designation. He's written books and columns, appeared on television shows, and lectured around the world.

I'm passionate about helping others. I've worked in design, web development, and marketing. All of those experiences have been an important part of my career journey.

I'm learning to love running. I'm a new Track & Field fan, a die-hard hockey fan, and I truly believe there's nothing a trip to the beach can't fix.

How long should I stay on a low carb diet?

How long should I stay on a low carb diet? Well, the answer is going to be a little bit frustrating, as many of my answers probably are, but it's truthful. And the answer is, it depends. It depends on you, it depends on your goals, it depends on why you're doing the low carb diet. Now, many people, I mean, in the thousands, stay on low carb lifestyles forever. I was pretty much low carb for a decade. I've allowed my carbs to come up a little bit more, but I'm still probably on the lower side of things. And again, it depends on how strict you're defining low carb. Is a 40-30-30 diet low carb? Many people don't think it is, but it's certainly lower than the American standard. So, my answer to you is basically, look at what you're doing it for, and look at whether or not you're getting those results. If you feel crummy on a diet, whether it's low carb, low fat, vegan, carnivore, whatever, it ain't the diet for you. It's that simple. It may be a perfect diet for other people, but it's not a good fit for you. However, if you feel good, if you have energy, if you're not crashing in the middle of the day, if you're pretty much alert and performing well, if you're sleeping well, if you're losing or maintaining weight, you can stay on that diet forever.

It depends on your goals and how you're feeling. Many people stay on a low-carb diet for years, but you should assess your results to determine if it's the right fit for you. If you feel good, have energy, and are meeting your goals, you can stay on it indefinitely.

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Can I exercise while on a low carb diet? Absolutely! Now, if you're making a switch from the standard American diet, you know, where you're doing 3, 4, 500 grams of carbs a day and all of a sudden you're going to switch to low carb, you may feel a little crappy for a couple of days. There is a turnover period when your body's getting used to burning fat as opposed to sugar and there may be a couple of days of uncomfortable feelings, but once you've kind of stabilized, you can and should exercise just as much as you did before. In fact, Stephen Finney, one of the great researchers in the low carb field, has done some amazing studies with Olympic quality bicycle riders and cyclists and he found that it took them about a month of fat adaptation, of adaption to a low carb intake, to be at exactly or better than where they were before they started the low carb diet. So yes, you can exercise. Charles Poliquin, the great late Charles Poliquin, one of the great trainers of all time, low carb diets had all his people, all his teams, everybody that he coached exercise all the time. So, again, that's the answer. Yes.

Yes, you can exercise while on a low carb diet and it may take a few days to adjust. Research has shown that Olympic cyclists were able to perform better after a period of fat adaptation. Charles Poliquin, one of the great trainers, also had his teams exercise regularly while on low carb diets.

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So the question is, is low carb bad for your kidneys? And it's a great question because there is a general belief in the medical integrative medicine community that high protein diets are bad for people with kidney disease. And that is controversial, but probably true. There was a study recently at McGill University that looked at a lot of other studies and said, you know, actually high protein is good for kidney function, but a lot of studies question that. But we're talking about people who have existing kidney disease and we're talking about excessive amounts of protein. Remember, you can do a low carb diet that's 80% fat and only 10% protein, which is really too little. And it's still a low carb diet. So the question has to be broken down into is high protein bad for kidneys versus is low carb bad for kidneys? Because a low carb diet is certainly not bad for the kidneys. I would monitor my protein intake with a health professional if you have existing kidney disease. But let's be very clear that the high protein intake, if you are doing a high protein version of a low carb diet, that high protein intake is not making your kidneys bad. It's sort of like if you had a broken leg or you had a fracture, a step class is really bad for you because you've got something that isn't healed there and you're gonna be stressing it. But step classes don't give you broken legs. So be very careful in assuming causality when we talk about low carb in kidneys. Protein is extremely important for all bodily functions. And unless you have existing kidney disease and a prescription to not increase protein above a certain amount, you can certainly do low carb and you can certainly do a high fat version of the low carb diet.

Low-carb diets are not bad for your kidneys unless you have existing kidney disease and a prescription to not increase protein beyond a certain amount. If you do not have kidney disease, then it is safe to do low-carb and a high fat version of the diet.

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Are keto diets dangerous? I'm going to give you the simple and clearest answer. No, they're not dangerous. Now, here's the caveat. There's always somebody who misunderstands the rules and does some cockamamie diet that's like 99% fat and no protein. And that's not, and it's keto, but that's not what we mean when we talk about keto diets. A keto diet done correctly. And there's a million articles online. I've written many of them myself. There are even better stuff online that gives you a step-by-step guide to how to start a keto diet. And if you do it the correct way, there's absolutely no danger that I know of. I've never seen a study that shows any danger. And I can't think of a mechanism by which there would be one. I did answer another question about high protein on a low carb diet and its influence on kidneys, but we're talking about people who have existing kidney disease and are eating lots and lots of protein. A high, high protein diet is unlikely to be keto because it will knock you out of ketosis. So we're really talking about high fat diets. And the answer is no, they are not dangerous.

A keto diet done correctly is not dangerous.

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Does a low carb diet help with weight loss?

Does a low carb diet help with weight loss? You bet it does. In fact, many people use it for just that, even though there are many benefits far beyond weight loss. Now, a couple of caveats on that. It doesn't help everybody. There are always some outliers who don't respond the way you would expect. But in general, in almost every study I've ever seen where they compare low carb to low fat or low carb to a different kind of diet, it does as well or better. It never does worse, but it does as well or better than any other kind of diet when it comes to weight loss and sustainable weight loss as well. It's kind of my go-to if I'm dealing with someone who has real trouble losing weight because that's always, or almost always, going to be hormonally related in the sense that they're eating a lot of food that raises insulin, which is basically carbohydrates. So when you go low carb, you raise insulin less. Insulin's your fat storage hormone. Voila! You lose weight. And it's a very common result and it's certainly a diet that I would recommend to help with weight loss.

Yes, a low carb diet can help with weight loss. It is a common result and many studies have shown that it does as well or better than any other kind of diet when it comes to sustainable weight loss.

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What are the benefits of a low carb diet?

The question is what are the benefits of a low carb diet? First of all, let me give an unabashed plug to my book Living Low Carb because there's about 250 pages worth of material on what the benefits of all kinds of low carb diets are. But let me give you the short answer here. The short answer is it eliminates some of the biggest poisons in the American diet or at least reduces them substantially. By that I'm talking about sugar and especially fructose which drive a lot of metabolic issues and it also eliminates or significantly reduces grains. So you get lower inflammation, appetite control, hormone balancing, weight loss, detoxification, did I mention appetite and craving control? Much easier with a lower carb diet. More protein, less sugar. That's pretty much the summary and if you want more details on how it affects a variety of conditions, please take a look at my book Living Low Carb.

The benefits of a low-carb diet include reduced inflammation, improved hormone balancing, weight loss, detoxification, better appetite and craving control, and reduced sugar consumption.

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Is a low carb diet safe for everyone? Well, first of all, my personal bias is that there is nothing on the planet Earth that is 100% safe for every person. That said, it's one of the safest eating plans I can possibly imagine. For most of our species history on this planet, we did in fact eat lower carb diets. Agriculture is only 12,000 years old. The history of our species is about 2.4 million years. So I would say that lowering the amount of carbohydrates in your diet and replacing it with high quality protein and fat is a very smart and very safe strategy for most people for most of the time.

Low carb diets can be safe for most people, but it is important to make sure that high-quality sources of protein and fat are included in the diet.

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