Anyone who has ever gone on a diet knows that it’s the worst. Your friends are heading to Los Betos, but not you. Your mom makes lasagna for dinner – sorry. Want a fry? Nope. Recently, one of Sahuaro’s students started a diet that went viral when one of the Kardashians decided to try it out.

Senior Colin Aldrich, who is 6’5″, finally had enough of carrying around unwanted extra pounds and decided to give the keto diet a try (not because of any Kardashian influence), because he felt inspired to have a healthier life and to help him and his family eat healthier. While on the ketogenic diet, you can’t eat any bread, pasta, sweets, chips, and other unrefined carbs. Colin says that “he eats three meals and no snacks. Never any snacks.” A typical day for Colin:  eggs, sausage, and matcha tea or black coffee for breakfast; chicken, cottage cheese, kale/avocado for lunch; and either fish, pork, or chicken with spinach or green beans for dinner, and fats like oil and butter are encouraged. The first week he says “is the worst thing about this diet” because during your transition, you get something similar to the flu, but its referred to as the keto flu.  He had a hard time describing the keto flu, but he says it feels like a stomach flu, as he had many stomach aches.

Before starting this trendy diet, Colin did his research, because he read that if you do this the wrong way, you could starve yourself to death. He started this diet in September and has since lost 40 pounds, and feels like he has accomplished something.

The ketogenic diet is a low carb, moderate protein, and high fat diet, which puts the body into a metabolic state known as ketosis. When your body is in a state of ketosis, the liver produces ketones, which become the main energy source for the body. It’s based around the premise that your body was designed to run more efficiently as a fat burner, rather than a sugar burner.

Colin says sometimes he “looks at bread or chips and it just makes him want to throw up” because of how he eats now. He is also doing this to inspire others, and so far he has inspired one of his friends and his friend’s mom to do join him on this weight-loss journey. Besides the food limitations, another downfall to this specific diet is that it can be very expensive because you are supposed to eat a lot of meat, and quality meats are costly. “It’s going to be really hard to do it while in college,” Colin admits – especially while he is living in a dorm room.

So, besides weight loss, what are some of the other benefits to the keto diet?  According to KetoDash, Keto has been shown to have huge benefits for people that are pre-diabetic or have Type II diabetes; you experience an increase in mental performance because ketones are a great fuel source for your brain; Keto helps to provide your body with a more reliable energy source, allowing you to feel more energized throughout the day; since the early 1900s, it’s still one of the most widely used treatments for children suffering from uncontrolled epilepsy; it helps control blood pressure and cholesterol, and one of the more common improvements that people on the keto diet experience is better skin – aka less acne.

Since doing this ketogenic diet, Colin says, “Since this whole experience, I’ve learned a lot from it, like how to cook really good meats.”