Diet trends tend to come and go. But the ketogenic (low carb) diet will not be one of them.
Solid studies have proven keto have major health benefits:
· Burn fat off the body, (including resistant belly fat)
· Lasting weight loss
· Improves cognitive performance
· Protects the brain from cognitive decline
· Preserves muscle tissue and help build muscle
· Suppresses insulin and improve glucose markers
· Reverses insulin resistance
· Helps diabetic patients to control diabetes without insulin
· Reverses type II diabetes if caught early (must add a solid exercise program to do this)
Why Keto = Fast Weight Loss and Improved Health
It’s really not about losing weight to get healthy see, it’s about getting healthy to lose weight and keto help you to improve health so you can lose weight and maintain that new weight.
Eating this way is also very anti-aging. The keto diet is rich in healthy dietary fats and all the fat-soluble vitamins essential for collagen synthesis.
5 Musts to Help You Get into Keto Easily and Feel More Energetic
It does take around 2 to 10 days for some people to get into ketosis, depending upon how used to running on glucose their body is. This is because the body has to manufacture whole new enzymes to use ketones for fuel.
Some people begin to experience side effects when going through this adjustment period like flagging energy or “keto flu.”
Therefore, it’s crucial to follow the program to keep the liver healthy while dumping all this fat off the body.
Here are the 5 musts I recommend to make adjusting to keto and IF easy and effective.
1. You must add intermittent fasting to stay in fat burning mode longer and lose maximum weight
Intermittent fasting combined with keto is a power combo for major weight loss. Both of these approaches are all about suppressing insulin so you can use your own fat for fuel.
IF suppresses any insulin spikes to that 6 to 8 hour feeding window, leaving you in fat burning mode the other 16 to 18 hours a day. By eating ketogenic when you do eat—restricting your carb intake to 20 to 50 grams of carbs a day—you suppress insulin and hunger, so you can go longer between meals without feeling deprived. So you’re running on your own fat for fuel all day.
Intermittent fasting and keto work together to turn on powerful hormones that activate fat burning. It lowers insulin, which increases fat burning and raises fat-burning growth hormone by 5 times its normal level.
2. You must add 7+ cups of vegetables to prevent a fatty liver
You must eat lots of vegetables to prevent a fatty liver when you’re doing a ketogenic diet. Why? Because you’re going to be literally melting your fat stores and dumping huge amounts of fat through the liver. The reason keto and IF work where Atkins fails, in fact, is by encouraging vegetable carbohydrate that prevents nutrient deficiencies. You stay in ketosis as long as you eat chiefly non-starchy vegetables—so no beets, corn, and watch the potatoes for maximum ketosis.
I recommend dark, leafy greens because they are very healing for the liver and contain minerals that improve the detox pathways of the liver. Plus, they’re rich in potassium which is essential for avoiding keto flu.
Bitter greens like kale, beet tops, and Swiss Chard literally melt fat off the liver. The more bitter the better.
This is easy accomplished by adding a kale shake at the first meal or having a big salad with lots of dark, leafy greens, hard boiled eggs and bacon, dark meat chicken or grass-fed beef, cruciferous vegetables, and low carb dressings like Newman’s blue cheese or ranch dressing.
3. Add potassium citrate and nutritional yeast to prevent side effects
You want to prevent side effects such as low energy, dizziness, or keto flu when you’re making that switch from burning glucose fuel to fat fuel. And I want to stress how important this is because often, just one bout of keto flu will send people heading for a carb binge to feel better.
But don’t do it! These feelings of fatigue and weakness will pass and they’ll pass even faster if you supplement with potassium citrate and nutritional yeast (to get your B-vitamins).
When you first begin intermittent fasting and keto, you start dumping a lot of fat andwater weight off the body, which can lead to feelings of dizziness, fatigue and sapped energy.
Potassium citrate will help with this a good electrolyte powder can contain as much as 1,000 mgs of potassium. Supplementing with electrolytes is smart because all the water weight you’ll lose will can dehydrate the body.
Nutritional yeast is one of the best natural sources of virtually all the B vitamins around, helping you power through that keto adjustment period without feeling weak and tired. Make sure its organic and non-GMO.
4. Adjust fats to go longer between meals
One reason why fat is so great for weight loss is that it not only produces no insulin spike—it is the perfect food to prevent HUNGER which is the enemy of successful dieting, right?
Fat spikes insulin by 0. Plus, it prevents hunger and cravings that can throw you out of ketogenesis. So add more fat. Since you’re eating so low carb, you’re going to lose major weight. Guaranteed.
5. Watch hidden sugars
Sugar is everywhere, and is in everything—especially condiments and packaged dairy foods like salad dressing, cottage cheese, yogurt—all kinds of foods you might think are keto-friendly that aren’t.
You MUST read your labels. You’ll find good brands of low-sugar salad dressings like Newman’s or you can make your own with apple cider vinegar and olive oil Eating a whole foods diet, shopping the outer rim of the grocery store, sticking to fattier cuts of grass fed meat, and choosing foods like eggs, sugar-free almond milk, full fat cheeses, and vegetables will help you be super-successful at keto and help you stay in fat burning ketosis.
