Unless you’ve been under a rock for the past year or so, you’ll have heard people banging on about the wonders of going keto.

Because it’s a high fat, high protein diet, devotees tend to plump for a sort of Atkins 2.0 style of eating – breakfasting on eggs and bacon, and dining on meat, cheese and nuts.

There’s no denying the weight loss results many people experience in a super-short space of time – and that’s because keto is incredibly low in sugar.

Zana Morris, founder of The Library gym, previously told Metro.co.uk that ‘any fat around your middle is entirely insulin-related’.

In other words, if you have a belly fat that you aren’t comfortable with, it could be down to your consumption or inability to process sugars. And as all carbs are sugar, that could mean going low-carb.

So what happens if you’re a vegan who’s looking to reduce any sugar-related body fat or who simply wants to maintain their weight using keto?

Plant-based keto is possible

The problem with most regular plans is that they misunderstand what the ketogenic diet really involves. While you’re getting a massive gut full of protein (a lot of which your body cannot metabolise), you miss out on vital antioxidants and fibre from fruit and vegetables.

According to scientists from Tufts University, an incredible one in 12 deaths world wide is caused by not eating enough veg, and one in seven are caused by a lack of fruit.

Far from being a zero-carb plan, you’re supposed to get all of your carb needs from green vegetables. If you ate a couple of portions of broccoli, spinach, kale, sprouts etc at every meal, not only would you not miss your grains or processed carbs, but you’d also be chock-full of iron, vitamin K, A, C, folate and fibre.

And when you consider that half of your plate should be made up of those green veggies, it’s pretty easy to see how you could go vegan keto.

Ditch your meat or fish for grilled tofu or tempeh. Give a quarter of your plate over to avocado, hummus and nuts. Make salad dressings from lashings of olive oil and lemon juice.

In other words, a vegan keto diet is more like a low-carb Mediterranean style of eating – full of heart healthy fats, proteins and fibre.

One person who is sold on its benefits is Liz – MeatFreeKeto on Instagram – a vegan keto blogger who shares her low-carb plant-based recipes and ideas with more than 12,000 followers.

She turned keto for its anti-inflammatory properties. By ditching sugar and gluten, she found that her digestive system worked more efficiently and that her hormone levels evened out.

Restricting an already restricted diet may be dangerous

The issue, however, is the fact that any restrictive diet can involve missing out on vital nutrients.

If you swerve colourful fruit and veg because you’re obsessing over sugar content, you end up missing out on vital vitamins and antioxidants that we know are absolutely crucial for maintaining good health.

Plant-based foods tend to be much more quickly digested than animal based ones, so if you’re cutting out grains, root veg, dates and fruit, you could find yourself getting really hungry really quickly.

And then, of course, you’ve got the fact that as vegans, we cut so much out of our diet already that any further restriction could cause issues with how we view nutrition and eating habits.

For true ketosis to be triggered (that’s the process by which your body starts to use its own body fat for energy), you’ve got to be eating a very low amount of carbs every day. We’re looking at around 5-10% of your daily calorie intake, which for the average woman is going to be about 20kcals. So that’s about a bowl of courgetti.

Standard keto macronutrients are split into about 70 per cent fat, 20 per cent protein and 10 per cent carbs.

Again, think about that from a vegan perspective. You don’t have the help of oily fish or nutrient-dense fatty cheeses. You’ve got avocado, nuts (possibly nut cheeses), coconut products and yoghurt to get most of your daily calories from. Unlike lots of animal products, lots of plant-based proteins aren’t also rich in fat – they’re really low in the stuff. So vegan keto requires you to meticulously plan each section of your plate and to track everything.

If you can do that and you want to do that, cool.

Keto can help with metabolic conditions

We know that keto can help with certain conditions like type 2 diabetes and polycystic ovarian syndrome.

Both of those are affected by insulin resistance.

70-80% of women with PCOS have insulin resistance. High levels of insulin increase testosterone which cause the facial hair growth, acne, hair loss, and missing periods – so anything that can help to bring down that insulin is worth looking into.

One study found that a keto diet helped to reverse Type 2 diabetes in 10 weeks and those results were maintained for up to a year with an average weight loss of over 2st.

Claire Goodwin, AKA the PCOS Nutritionist previously told us that the most simple nutritional advice she’d give to all women with PCOS is to ‘just eat real food’.

‘And by real food, I mean anything that you can eat directly from nature, like vegetables, fruit, fish, nuts, oils, seafood and ethically raised, grass fed meat and oils.

‘Secondly, remove sugar and sweeteners.  70-80% of women with PCOS have insulin resistance (pre-Type 2 Diabetes), so sugar (and that includes natural sweeteners like dates and maple syrup) is only going to be exacerbating this.’

While she’s not vegan herself, it’s clear that she’s an advocate for very simple, no-fuss eating that focuses on whole foods.

But not all keto is quite what is seems

That doesn’t mean binning fruit and rice, it means eating everything in moderation and filling up on unprocessed grub. If it’s been milled, refined, sweetened, give it a miss.

‘Keto is played up in the media as being the thing that helped people to lose their weight,’ Claire and James Davis, also known as the Midlife Mentors, say.

‘It’s a lifestyle, not a diet – you can’t dip in and out of ketosis so you have to kiss goodbye to eating out or being social around food. It’s not sustainable for most people.

‘The Lancet did a massive study on it (over 15,000 people) and there are all these advocates of keto dismissing their findings!

‘There’s lots of dishonesty around it too. You see influences these days claiming to be vegan, posing with beers going “oh, I’m still enjoying beers on keto!”. No, you’re not.’

Eating healthily doesn’t have to be complicated

Just remember that eating well doesn’t have to be this complicated.

You can get similar results from eating a properly whole food, vegan diet – balancing hormones by ditching refined foods and working out regularly to stimulate your metabolism.