Brussels Keto is a small, independent site about the ketogenic diet and low-carb living, written for people doing it in Belgium. The aim is simple: give you the practical answer first, back it with evidence where the evidence exists, and be honest when it does not.
Who writes it Everything here is written by Hannah Reed. Hannah has eaten low-carb for years, reads the research rather than the headlines, and writes plainly.
Hannah Reed writes Brussels Keto. She has eaten low-carb for years, reads the research rather than the hype, and writes plainly for people doing keto in Belgium. She is not a doctor, and nothing here is medical advice.
I started this site because most of what I found about keto sat at one of two extremes. Either it promised miracles, or it warned you off in a panic. Neither matched what I saw living it day to day, or what the actual studies said when I sat down and read them.
Most of the worries about keto are vaguer than people think, but kidney stones are an exception: this is a real, documented risk with a clear mechanism, and it deserves a straight treatment rather than either dismissal or alarm. The good news is that the same understanding that explains the risk also tells you how to avoid it, and for the average person drinking enough water the danger is modest.
A keto weight loss plateau catches almost everyone: a few weeks of satisfying loss, then the scales stop moving, and the worry sets in that the diet has stopped working. Plateaus are normal, usually fixable, and rarely a sign that keto has failed. The trick is to diagnose the stall calmly rather than panic and crash harder, which tends to backfire. Here is how to think about it.
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MCT oil turns up in half the keto shopping baskets and most of the online advice, usually with a promise of sharper focus and deeper ketosis attached. It is a genuinely useful fat, but it is also oversold, and using it badly is a fast route to an uncomfortable afternoon. Here is a plain account of what it is, what it does, and how to fit it into keto without wasting money or regretting it an hour later.
People use “keto” and “low carb” as if they were interchangeable, and in casual conversation nobody minds. Nutritionally, though, they describe two different things. Every ketogenic diet is low carb, but plenty of low-carb eating never comes close to ketosis. Knowing where the line sits helps you pick the approach that suits your body and, just as importantly, one you can actually stick to.
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Get keto tips in your inbox Practical, evidence-minded notes on keto and low-carb living, with a Brussels slant.
If you have keto blood work done, there is a fair chance your thyroid numbers will raise an eyebrow: free T3, the active thyroid hormone, often comes back lower than before. For anyone who has been told low thyroid is bad news, that looks like a warning sign. The reality is more interesting, and for most people more reassuring, than the number alone suggests. Here is what is actually going on.
A bowl of white rice carries around forty-five grams of net carbs, which is more than a whole day’s allowance on most keto plans. So rice, in its ordinary form, is out. What people miss is not really the rice itself but the job it does: a mild, fluffy base that soaks up sauce and bulks out a curry or a stir-fry. Several low-carb swaps do that job well, and a couple do it badly enough to put you off for life.
Ask a room of keto eaters what they had for breakfast and a good half will say eggs. There is a reason they turn up on nearly every low-carb plate: they are cheap, quick, filling and about as close to a purpose-built keto food as nature manages. The questions people actually worry about are narrower. How many is too many? What about the cholesterol? And is there a better way to cook them than the sad, rubbery scramble?
Most people need roughly 1.2 to 2.0 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day on keto, leaning towards the higher end if you train hard or are older and want to hold on to muscle. For a 70kg person that works out at about 85 to 140 grams a day. The mistake beginners make is setting protein too low, not too high, usually because they have read somewhere that protein is dangerous on keto.