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Matthew Stuckey here, and I want to make a video on the topic of keto, the Atkins diet, and various low carbohydrate diets. And so let me just say that when it comes to diets, people are very strongly opinionated, but oftentimes I don't think people necessarily consult the Bible to determine all of their views. And I believe the Bible gives us guidance on nutrition and diet. I've actually preached a sermon before, I had a biblical health series, and I had a sermon on diet. And so let me just say that I don't believe that keto is the worst diet in the world, but I also don't think it's the best diet. I wouldn't look at the Bible and walk away and say that the Bible's teaching you to have a low carbohydrate diet. But I also say this, that depending on what your stage is in life, if you're in a situation where you need to trim down and lose weight, I'm not necessarily saying that you should not try various different types of diets. When I was in high school as a freshman, I used to run more than an hour a day, so I stayed in pretty good shape, you know, I was training for soccer. And then I pulled my hamstring at the end of my freshman year, and as I was not able to work out much, I started to gain weight pretty rapidly because of the fact, you know, I was no longer running an hour plus every day. And so I'm not in a position in my life right now where I feel like I need to go on an extreme diet, but I'm not necessarily saying it's wrong if you're in a situation where you have major health concerns, because I have had various different types of diets because of the various health concerns I've had for myself where I cut out certain foods. And so if you're in a situation where you need to lose weight, then, you know, I'm not necessarily saying it's wrong, although I wouldn't walk away from the Bible and say this is the best diet for most people. And so let me just give you the good about the keto diet from a biblical perspective, and then I'll also give you, you know, what I would consider the bad as well. Number one, I believe that removing sugar and unhealthy carbohydrates is a very good thing to do. I do believe that the worst thing about our diets are unhealthy sugars. Oftentimes I consider, you know, sugar almost like a poison. It really has a terrible effect on your body. Now I do not believe it's a sin to eat a donut or a cinnamon roll or to eat sugar. I would not say that. I will say this, though, that, you know what, sugar in the Bible is more of a luxury. You know, it's not something, you know, it's listed the few times it's listed when it talks about the sugar cane where it's basically listed for people that, you know, have pretty much everything that they would want. So it's something for people that have a lot of money. It's something considered very luxurious in the Bible. We live in a different world today where you can get anything at the grocery store. You can have all these junk foods just really easily, and it's actually not a good thing for us. In the past they actually had to cook real meals, and in general they were probably eating a lot healthier than we are today. So one great thing about the Atkins diet is it gets rid of probably the worst thing in most of our diets, and that is unwanted sugar. One thing I've heard people say that are really into the organic diets, and I'm not against the organic diets. I agree to it to some degree. I try to follow it, but they kind of feel like if anything's all organic, as long as it's all organic, you can eat whatever you want, and, you know, you'll see some people that will be all organic, but they eat tons of sugar and tons of cakes, and I'm just thinking, man, I'd rather eat, you know, a carrot that was not organic than just eating, you know, cake. You know, I think that would be healthier for you, but, look, sugar is something that's very dangerous for our bodies, and if you actually look at it from a biblical perspective, you're going to see that just sugar cane itself or just, you know, things like donuts and cakes, it's more of a luxury. It's not necessarily something where you're supposed to have every single meal like we can have it or just snacks throughout the day. The other thing is this, the good about the keto is it will absolutely cause you to lose weight. There's no question that if you go on keto, you know, you will rapidly lose weight, and that is one of the things that really draws people into these low-carb diets, because most people that are going onto the low-carb diets, they're doing it for the purposes of losing weight, not necessarily just their permanent lifestyle where they're already pretty fit and then they're trying to keep a healthy diet, but they're doing it to lose weight, and absolutely it will cause you to lose weight. There's no question about that. I personally read the Atkins diet, the main book that was written by, I think his name was Robert Atkins, but I read it back in college and they explained the science behind it and how it worked, and of course I'm not an expert at that, but you know, it seemed like there's a lot of credibility to what they were saying of why you lose weight rapidly. I've done the Atkins diet or keto diet for pretty much four days once in college because I had friends that dared me, and I wasn't really trying to lose a lot of weight, but I lost weight pretty quickly, so I can definitely say personally that it does work as well to lose weight. Now what about the bad though about the keto diet? Why would I not suggest this to be your diet? Well, not all carbohydrates are bad, and the Bible actually mentions many carbohydrates being a good thing. It says in Psalm 104 verse 15, and wine that maketh glad the heart of man, now I believe that's referring to grape juice there, wine that maketh glad the heart of man, that drinking grape juice can actually make you happy, and so drinking juice can actually put you in a good mood according to the Bible, but it says, an oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart. The Bible says bread which strengtheneth man's heart, and so when I'm looking at bread in the Bible, the Bible does not define bread as a bad thing, in fact it says it strengthens your heart, and so I would be very careful to suggest people to make a permanent change to the keto or low carb diets, and just cut out bread from their diet when the Bible says bread actually strengthens your heart. Now of course having too much bread could be a bad thing for you, you know I believe the Bible teaches having a balanced diet, but the Bible does say bread strengthens your heart. Now what people would say in response to that, is well bread is different nowadays than it used to be, the way they process it, and the way they make it, and there is truth to that, but at the same time, there is something different between eating oatmeal, versus eating a saltine cracker or rich cracker, or you know, sky flakes, right? There's a difference between eating junk carbs versus eating oatmeal, and more healthy bread. Now if you find healthy bread, what you're going to find is it has more protein and more dietary fiber, and also more fat, and I do understand that. So I understand, you know, the whiter the bread, the quicker you're dead, I understand that principle, but I don't think it's a good idea, you know, to just cut out all bread from your diet, when the Bible says bread strengthens your heart, you know that is actually something that's good for you in the right amount. The other thing is this, the Bible says give us this day our daily bread, so bread is kind of the staple part of your diet, according to God's word. You know the Bible talks about a land flowing with milk and honey over and over again, now I believe that indicates that milk and honey were not necessarily something that everybody had, they're something that's kind of luxurious, and in today's world, having honey, honey's a very expensive thing, but it's filled full of sugar, but it's actually very good for you in a lot of different ways. Now I wouldn't tell somebody to just eat 2,000 calories of honey every day, but honey can actually be a very healthy thing for you, it can help with sickness and illness, it can help you recover from a lot of different things, and milk is also something that's very good, you know, but milk does have a lot of carbohydrates in it as well, it's kind of got a mix of protein and fat and carbohydrates, and having real milk can be something that's pretty expensive. The benefits of milk are it very much helps your teeth, it strengthens them. The Bible also says in Genesis 1 verses 11 and 12, and God said, let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself upon the earth, and it was so, and the earth brought forth grass and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself after his kind, and God saw that it was good. I believe vegetables are very healthy for you, I also believe fruits are very healthy for you. I believe that the Bible shows us that anything made by God was very good, the Bible says, and so look, you know, you have bread, you have milk, you have honey, you have fruit, there's many carbohydrates that are actually very healthy for you according to the word of God. So having a balanced diet is, you know, the best approach to this topic. The other thing is, you know, keto will help you lose weight very rapidly, but you have to ask yourself, is it actually a good thing to lose weight that rapidly? Now if you're in a situation where you really need to lose weight, then there could be validity to that, but you know, if you're just kind of, you know, in decent shape, maybe you're trying to trim down 15, 20 pounds, is it actually healthy to just, you know, go to this crash diet that causes you to lose 20 pounds in a month, is that really how God intended it? And the thing is, you can lose 20 pounds in a month potentially with keto, even if you're not super heavy, but is that actually healthy for your body? It might be that you need to make some sort of lifestyle change because maybe you're not able to exercise as much. You know, I've said before that, you know, if you go back to the time where most people had laboring jobs and you're working by the sweat of your brow, you're probably not that concerned with how many calories you consume because you need energy to get through the day. We just live in a day where many people have jobs that are very sedentary, they're at their computers a lot, and so you're not getting as much normal exercise on your diet. You might really want to try to get some exercise as one of your hobbies and you know, you might have to change your diet some because of that, where you don't eat as much food, but I would still say a balanced diet for most people would be the way to go. The other thing is this about keto. So for the bad, you know, not all carbohydrates are actually bad for you. Many of them are very good for you, according to the Bible. Number two, rapid weight loss is not necessarily good for you. And number three, people often gain weight on keto and it will cause you to lose weight rapidly, but then oftentimes people end up gaining weight that are on low carb diets. And there's a couple reasons for this. Number one, you can't necessarily cheat the system. You know, you might need to make a lifestyle change of just eating less calories and you know, just eating healthier foods and adding a little bit of exercise. You know, there might not be a quick fix. It might take, you know, six months or a year to just slowly trim down those pounds. And when you lose weight so rapidly with keto, sometimes it gives you a false sense of security. It's kind of misleading weight loss where you lose weight rapidly, but you're also going to gain that weight back or at least a lot of it. And so since people are losing so much weight, they figure, man, I can start eating 4000 calories instead of 2000 on this keto diet. And then they start eating, you know, just bacon and lots of fat and sausage and it's all fat and protein, so it's good. I'm going to be okay. And then they end up gaining weight in the long run because they're adopting a really unhealthy lifestyle. So I would just suggest this, you know, there are some good things about keto. I'm not saying it's the worst diet in the world. It gets rid of the biggest problem, which is sugar and unhealthy carbohydrates. However, you know, fat is not something that's considered good in the Bible. I don't believe fat is as bad as sugar, but let's not pretend that fat is just vitamins and, you know, just protein and just really healthy for you. I mean, the Bible talks about fat being a dangerous thing as well. So I would say this, that if you're going to adopt the keto diet for a temporary basis to trim down a few pounds, I would just highly encourage you to make sure you're eating some green vegetables because you want to make sure you're getting vitamins to your diet. Vitamins are important. I understand that if you eat lots of meat, you're going to get protein, you're going to avoid sugar, but you still need vitamins in your diet. It's actually something that's very important for you. The other thing is I would overall just not encourage most people to try to adopt this diet. Unless you're in a situation where you need to lose a lot of weight, and you're going to definitely have to make some lifestyle changes if that's the case. But if you're just trying to trim down 15, 20 pounds, I would just say that if you try to always make quick fixes to solve the problem, you could end up finding yourself on the other side of the weight where you've actually gained weight six months down the road or a year down the road. I would just encourage you to try to get a little bit more exercise, try to cut out some of the junk food. Because if you try to just do quick fixes for this, you might end up finding yourself gaining weight. That is what often happens with people that follow a keto diet. So my overall opinion from a Bible perspective, I don't think keto's the worst diet in the world or low carb diets because sugar's more of a luxury and it's a good thing to get rid of. However, bread strengthens your heart. It's a good thing for you. Milk and honey are not necessarily a bad thing. Of course, 2,000 calories of sugar in a day are terrible for you, but so would 2,000 calories of protein or 2,000 calories of fat. You need to have a balanced diet according to the Bible. Thank you and God bless.