Ketogenic or Keto Diet For Beginners

 

what is the ketogenic diet?

 Now the ketogenic diet is a sustainable enjoyable high fat moderate protein low carb lifestyle quite honestly that's based on evolutionary logic and rigorous scientific literature. There is so much science backing up the ketogenic diet I think we're in really good shape when we look at the overall health effects and what it's going to do for our body composition and for a multitude of other things. But before I get into the diet specifically we have to talk about what the ketogenic diet is about like what our ketogenic diet is all about creating ketones are beta-hydroxybutyrate acetoacetate and acetone.

 

Macronutrient

 

You think it's gonna go way down the rabbit hole of science I'm not even gonna go into detail on those ketone bodies I just want to explain that these are the ketones that the body creates ketones are basically a fourth macronutrient. The macronutrients that we know are proteins fats and carbohydrates but ketones are sort of a miraculous fourth macronutrient although we don't find it in nature. Our liver creates it and this whole separate macronutrient gets treated in the body in a different way than proteins fats or carbohydrates. So we're gonna break down why these ketones are awesome and why you need them and why you lose so much weight on the keto diet.

 

Brain in Keto Diet

 

Let's go ahead and break it down why do we ketone it's like why does our body even create them in the first place it seems like it's not just for weight loss right? see, it comes down to the fact that our brains draw so much energy from our bodies. So we don't realize that this little two to the three-pound brain inside of our head uses up like 25% of our daily energy needs that is a lot of energy. And the crazy thing is people don't realize this but the brain actually runs mainly on glucose.

So what that means is that when we are in periods of starvation or when we can't have carbohydrates for whatever reason from an evolutionary standpoint this would happen all the time. It would mean that the body would have to start breaking down our proteins in our muscles and in our joints in order to create glucose. 

To fuel our demanding brain now show me the logic in that being an efficient process why would our body want to sacrifice? 

All of its own tissue just to fuel the brain that's where ketones come in so the body has a mechanism where it says oh if there are no carbohydrates. We shift the fuel source over to ketones the liver starts creating ketones which happen to fuel the brain and fuel the body perfectly if not better than glucose. So that's how this all comes into equation it's simply that it's an evolutionary logical thing but it also has more to do with just enhanced metabolic health.  That's why ketones are so important and why we actually have them but how do these ketones actually have us lose weight how do they affect us there well for one just the act of going onto the ketogenic diet forces us to utilize fats for fuel.

 

Carbohydrates

 We are always kind of have this barrier between us right with carbohydrates whereas if our body learns how to use fats because we're on a ketogenic diet the cellular tissues actually begin metabolizing that fat for fuel which allows us to stay very lean. Because the fat that's on our body becomes an avid fuel source. It lowers insulin is a fat-storing hormone despite what some people will say insulin is the absorptive hormone and if insulin is high in the blood or even activated we're going to be storing it. So if insulin is low because we're on the ketogenic diet we're in a good spot and were much less likely to store fat. 

Even if we're not actively burning it, at that point in time now let's back this up with some research because that's just kind of how I roll there's a study that was published in the journal lipids took a look at 40 individuals and put them on either a high-fat low carb ketogenic diet or a high carb low-fat diet. And it measured them for about 12 weeks and it wanted to take a look at a couple of different things. But basically what they did is they took the keto group and they said okay eat as much food as you want and they ended up capping out at about 1,500 calories. 

Because the keto diet is so satiating so the keto diet group ate about 1,500 calories. And then the high carb group did is they had them match calories to the keto group so they ended up being matched at about 1,500 calories so at the end of the day it was your caloric. They both ate the same amount of calories they just let the keto diet kind of paved the way now what they found at the end of the study is nothing short of just insane the keto diet group even though they ain't the same amount of calories as the other group lost twice as much weight. okay, not just a couple pounds twice as much weight okay they also had improvements in their overall lipid profile they had a decrease in their triglyceride levels lots of positive things.

 

LDL

 

 

LDL did increase but that's not always a bad thing because the very small particle LDL it's the bad LDL there was a decrease in that so they actually had an improvement in their overall total lipid profile. Now the kind of disseminating this information took a look at 162 people divided into three groups in these three groups all ate 2000 calories to start they had a high carb low-fat group. They had a moderate carb, moderate fat, moderate protein group sort of a standard diet. And then they had a low-carb ketogenic diet again started them all at 2000 calories. And the interesting thing about this story is not only was it very controlled but instead of just seeing how much weight they would lose. 

They wanted to see if the metabolism would improve, so what they did is they said okay we want you to maintain your weight for 20 weeks on these diets. So we're gonna feed you exactly what needs to be fed in order to maintain your weight basically they're trying to see if the metabolism got faster want to know something wild at the end of 20 weeks. They were having to feed the ketogenic diet group people 209 more calories than when they started and way more than the other groups showing that the ketogenic diet boosted the metabolism to the point that even for these subjects to maintain the weight. They had to eat over 200 calories more than they were before so they were shifted to a keto diet and suddenly their bodies incinerating more fuel pretty cut-and-dry.

 

Keto Menu

 

well, the thing is there's a lot of different things that you could eat. The basics of it meats you can eat your grass-fed grass-finished beef. You can eat your good-quality pork you can eat your good-quality pork chops you would eat your good-quality bacon you would eat gain meat. So you can eat venison you can eat poultry so chicken turkey all of that stuff is good to go you can eat a pigeon if you wanted to. 

Then we move into some of the other ones we've got eggs you can eat eggs and don't worry about the cholesterol because your body needs the cholesterol, especially on the ketogenic diet. Cheeses guess what almost all cheeses are fair game now. I'm critical of some cheeses because as you get down the ketogenic rabbit-hole I think that you should probably pay attention to eating cleaner cheeses. But for all intents and purposes, cheese is good to go maybe not processed cheese but enjoy it. Coconut tons is one of the best sources of medium-chain triglycerides and good healthy fats that you could possibly get. So I highly recommend eating lots of coconuts.

Then nuts honestly some nuts have higher carbs and others but again for most of it, you can eat all the nuts. You can eat walnuts, pecans, almonds, and cashews. Now when comes down to seeds, you can enjoy your seeds too so that means you can have chia seeds, flax seeds, pepitas, sunflower seed anything like that. 

Veggies just because you're not consuming carbohydrates don't mean that you can't eat veggies. You shouldn't have high sugar veggies like bell peppers. But all the leafy greens you're good to go most of even the starchy veggies like a lot of squashes and things like that you can have spaghetti squash a zucchini or you can have a lot of these veggies and the cool thing is you can make zoodles with zucchini.

People think oil is just canola oil you've got so many different options coconut oil, palm oil, avocado oil, macadamia nut oil, walnut oil. So you want to make sure you're getting grass-fed grass-finished to spend a couple extra dollars and get the good stuff but actually by the way if you guys do eat good quality meat.

The ongoing study has found that not only the ketogenic diet reversing type 2 diabetes but it also has a 74 percent success and retention rate after 2 years. That's higher than anything else in the world of diets so that retention rate that success rate people are still happy after two years of eating this lifestyle. Because they don't feel like they're deprived of anything it's that amazing. 

Keto adaptation

 

Keto adaptation is that's a period of time that it takes for your cells to get accustomed to using fat for fuel. So it varies and it can take as little as 10 days to as long as three months to really start getting adapted. But studies have shown that the keto-adaptation phase actually continues for years meaning you get more and more efficient at utilizing ketones. 

So one thing that you need to know is that the mitochondria which is where energy is kind of manufactured in the body go through mitochondrial biogenesis. So mitochondria dies off and then it creates new mitochondria and it takes time for each generation of mitochondria to just slowly make them adapt. It takes you know probably about 10 12 weeks or so for the mitochondria to start to develop that affinity for fats. So give yourself 10 to 12 weeks before you feel really really good on keto. The first few weeks you might feel a little bit lethargic it's kind of a keto flu stuff where your body's just adjusting your minerals.

 

 

To start the keto diet what do I do?

 

The first thing the reference is just the simple macros that you need to follow. That's gonna be 75% fat 20% protein calories and 5% carbs give or take that's just kind of a rough idea. Your ketones at least when you get started you can use the urine strips but the problem if the urine strips are they measure excess ketones they don't measure what your body's actually utilizing. 

So I recommend using blood testing I know you have to prick your finger you don't have to do it but just do it for a little while until you realize what kind of things you can get away with eating. Because some people can eat more carbs and others and some people this and that you just want to find your sweet spot. The macros that I laid out that's kind of my sweet spot and it is for a lot of other people but you have to find your own sweet spot so outside of weight loss are there other benefits like what other things can we expect with the ketogenic diet. 

Well, the first one is you're gonna fight cravings so whether you struggle with your weight or not if you're someone that deals with cravings then you probably want to try the keto diet. The reversal of diabetes now I'm careful to say it can reverse diabetes that's a pretty outlandish claim. The studies do say that they have seen evidence of reversing diabetes all because of the controlling of insulin so that's a powerful thing in fact there's a study that was published in the frontiers of endocrinology that showed that people that were diabetic that's on the ketogenic diet actually ended up having an 81% reduction in the overall amount of insulin that they had to take they reduce their insulin medication.

 So powerful effects that's again shown in good scientific literature and then there's also evidence that shows that it's good for heart disease that's it who would have thought that eating cheese and bacon and eggs would be good for heart disease right well it all has to do with inflammation. If we don't have the inflammation from all the sugar and the carbs then our arteries work better and our cells are functioning better. But we also improve our lipid profile remember we're reducing our triglycerides and even if cholesterol is going up we're reducing the kinds of cholesterol not just LDL but that specific LDLs that aren't measured in a general lipid profile that are actually bad for our heart.

So we're doing ourselves a solid service it is really powerfully good for the heart then we have the daunting thing that nobody probably wants to talk about because it's sad and honestly hits home for me and that's cancer it's got some powerful anti-cancer properties. 

Thank you for reading this article. You are most welcome to suggest to me if you find any mistakes in this article.