The K-E Diet – Force-Feeding For Fun

Whenever you think dieting ideas can’t get any worse, someone will come up with one that is: the K-E Diet puts a feeding tube into your nose to shed 20 pounds in ten days.

The K-E Diet: For The True Masochists Among Us

If you ever were unfortunate enough to have a nasogastric tube forced down your throat, you may wonder why anyone would voluntarily agree to this treatment. The thing goes in through your nose, down the esophagus and ends up in your stomach, dripping nutrients.

It comes with side effects like a sore throat, nose bleeds, the feeling of having to throw up any given moment and monstrous bad breath. It is a very, very unpleasant experience. So bad that since 1975 the World Medical Association doesn’t allow doctors to participate in force-feedings of prisoners if they are capable of rational judgment. The prisoners. Maybe the doctors, too.

Yet one Dr. Oliver DiPietro, running a small clinic in Florida, markets it as a diet (the “K-E” in the name standing for “ketogenic enteral nutrition”) and charges people $1,500 for ten days of the fun. When the New York Times asked him, he said that a good portion of his patients are brides who suffer from “nervous eating”.

A Doctor Without A Clue

According to DiPietro, what he feeds people is equivalent of 800 kcal / day – just about half of what a 120 lbs woman should eat per day for healthy weight loss. In addition, the nutrients dripped down contain zero carbohydrates, which, the good doctor says, is to make sure that the patients reach the condition of ketosis – the body using fat for energy instead of carbohydrates.

Apparently Dr. DiPietro isn’t aware that you reach ketosis on any diet that gives you fewer calories than are burned, no matter if you eat carbohydrates or not. Still having them just means that there is enough blood glucose around to ensure brain function and to fuel demanding activities – with some carbs in your system you can actually run faster and burn more calories in less time.

Get A Reality Check, Brides

With those 800 kcal a day most people will go way below their BMR (“basal metabolic rate”), which means that in addition to fat, they also lose a good amount of muscle. This together with the lack of energy and possible dizziness from the missing carbohydrates, the insane costs and the unpleasantness of having a tube in your throat for ten days, has the K-E Diet already now qualify for one of the worst dieting ideas of the decade.

If you are a bride thinking about going through with this, you need a reality check. Your husband-to-be wants to marry you because he loves you as you are, not because he supposed that on wedding day you’d fit in a specific dress size.

If you are the kind of girl who at the wedding wants to impress her girlfriends and extended family, rent a Porsche. For $1,500, that car will stay with you for only slightly less time than the weight you reached with this crash diet. It’ll be more fun, too.

Picture courtesy of the United States Federal Government.