It's Not Keto Flu: The Unedited Original of My Carb-Withdrawal Rant
This is a three-minute clip from a folder of unedited originals. The words track my YouTube video It's not keto flu! It's carb and sugar withdrawal mostly almost sentence for sentence, and it was recorded the day before that video went up. So this is most likely the raw take behind it. If you've seen that post, you've heard the argument. This one is here for the record, and for the part at the end I want to say again more firmly.
In this recording
- [0:01] I open by disagreeing with the name. It isn't influenza, it isn't contagious, and in my opinion it isn't caused by keto either.
- [0:01] What most people feel in the first week or two, I said, is withdrawal from sugary foods and carbs, and I called it an addiction withdrawal (live RWQH5170).
- [1:02] Calling it "keto flu" puts the blame on keto and makes keto sound unhealthy. I flag that this part is more my opinion than science.
- [1:02] My second complaint: the label lumps cramps, headaches, bad sleep and fatigue together, and they have different causes.
- [1:45] Fatigue in weeks one and two is expected. Glycogen is gone and the liver hasn't ramped up enough to run you on ketones yet. You're not fat adapted.
- [1:45] Cramps are probably an electrolyte shortfall.
- [2:26] "You need electrolytes" is too vague. I name them: sodium, potassium, magnesium and calcium, which can mostly and most safely come from vegetables.
- [2:26] If you're going to supplement, talk to your doctor first, because sodium and potassium imbalances can put you in the hospital.
Watching this in 2026
What strikes me is how little changed between the raw take and the upload. The argument was set before I hit record: unbundle the symptoms, and don't blame the diet for a rough first fortnight.
The part that holds up best is the unbundling. Tired because you aren't fat adapted yet is a waiting problem. Cramping is a minerals problem. Lumping them together under one name means people grab the wrong fix. I go into the tiredness side in fat adaptation and why am I so tired on keto.
The withdrawal idea is still my opinion, and I said so on camera. None of the evidence pages has a study that tests sugar withdrawal as the cause. The one paper on keto flu itself is a content analysis of online posts. In it, reported symptoms clustered in the first weeks and were mostly described as passing (Bostock 2020). That backs up "it's temporary." It can't tell you what causes it.
The line worth repeating: ask before you supplement
The last sentence is the one I'd put in bold now. Electrolytes aren't harmless just because they're "natural."
The evidence page gives a mechanism for why sodium matters early on. In a 1975 study, raising insulin while holding blood sugar steady cut how much sodium and potassium healthy men passed in their urine (DeFronzo 1975). Cut carbs, insulin falls, and you'd expect more sodium to go out. The page is clear that no highly cited trial measures this directly on a keto diet in adults. It's insulin and fasting physiology, not a keto trial.
For reference, US guidance puts the adult sodium adequate intake at 1,500 mg/day and says to cut back if you're above 2,300 mg/day. Potassium is 2,600 mg/day for women and 3,400 for men (NASEM 2019). WHO suggests potassium-containing salt substitutes in place of regular salt, except for people at risk of high potassium (WHO).
That exception is why "talk to your doctor" isn't filler. If you have kidney disease or take blood pressure medication, potassium supplements and salt substitutes need a doctor's go-ahead. The same goes for big changes in salt if you're on blood pressure or diabetes medication, since the diet itself can shift what you need. A few weeks later I made a full video naming the four electrolytes (making sense of electrolytes). In 2018 I measured the salt out with bouillon (the bouillon routine).
Key points
- This is very likely the unedited original of video 9r2Y74AnjUQ, recorded a day before it was uploaded.
- "Keto flu" bundles separate problems: tiredness before fat adaptation, cramps from electrolytes, and (my opinion) sugar withdrawal.
- The withdrawal theory is untested. Online reports suggest symptoms mostly pass in the first weeks (Bostock 2020).
- Name the electrolytes: sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium. Food first.
- Kidney disease, blood pressure meds or diabetes meds: talk to your doctor before supplements or salt substitutes.