Ketogenic eating works. It has also been sold so badly for so long that serious people dismiss it on style alone. So let's strip the identity out of it and run it like a discipline.
Not fat — protein. Fat is the lever you adjust to reach ketosis; protein is the structure that keeps the run from eating your muscle and your discipline. Build each meal around a whole-food protein, then add fat to satiety, then greens. If a meal has no protein anchor, it isn't a meal, it's a snack wearing a costume.
The "keto flu" is not a phase — it's a deficiency. Sodium, potassium, and magnesium all drop as water and glycogen go. Salt your food like you mean it, supplement potassium and magnesium deliberately, and the headaches, cramps, and afternoon fog disappear. Most people who quit in week one quit over an electrolyte problem they never named.
Thirty days, run like a trial: fasting glucose and ketones (blood, not breath strips) two or three mornings a week, weight and waist weekly, energy and sleep noted honestly. If the numbers don't move by day thirty, the approach doesn't owe you another thirty. Data ends the argument.
Where keto earns its keep: metabolic resets, craving loops, and the inflammatory patterns that respond to removing processed carbohydrate. Where it doesn't: the January version of yourself. And an adult version has an exit strategy — reintroduce carbohydrate around training, not around weekends, and keep the protein anchor and the whole-food standard you built on the way in.
Disciplined protocols deserve disciplined infrastructure — PrescribeUSA keeps the clinical documentation and sourcing side clean while you run the human side.