We help our clients overhaul their nutrition including adopting carb cycling, going low carb, quantified structured diet for weight loss & muscle building. Today we will give you all the knowledge basis to start Ketogenic Diet.
So what is Keto Diet?
Keto is a food consumption strategy in which you reduce carb intake & replace with fat to bring your body’s metabolism to state of Ketosis. In this state, your body uses fat as a fuel to burn for /generate energy. Such a strategy can bring huge values for you-Weight loss, get healthy look good.
In order for ketosis to happen, your body should be low /eliminate main & preferred source of fuel: carb(glucose/sugar).
This can happen in two ways:
- Fasting: When you do fasting, your body burn all glucose stores & start using fat as a fuel to generate energy.
- Reducing consumption of carb: You start consuming more of fat & stop/reduce the consumption of all the food that gets converted into glucose.
Oh man! We all love carbs! don’t we?
Most of the American & Indian diet consist of 50% carb & more than 65% of the population is overweight. So what is the strategy they adopt? Eat Carb, Generate Sugar, Burn carb, rinse, repeat. In this process very less fat burning takes place. You keep on adding to your glucose warehouse in your body. Excess sugar/glucose not burnt just gets converted into fat that piles up on your body.
So what happens when you replace glucose with alternative source of fuel? You start burning fat. If you are doing that prolonged fasting or have adopted a diet high in fat, medium in protein & low in carb, your body would be forced to use fat as a fuel to generate energy.
So Is Carb that bad?
When you consume carbs, your body releases insulin to regulate sugar flowing in your bloodstream. When you reduce carb consumption, your body produces less insulin & becomes insulin sensitive which essentially translates into a host of health benefits.
There can be different keto strategies you can adopt. Some of them include:
- < 5% carb of total calorie intake
- < 60 g of total carbs
- <30 g of net carbs
Please note that biochemistry of every body is different & ketosis will work different for every body. There is no specific rule/criteria to which strategy you should adopt. You can pick one & track the progress. When you adopt Ketosis, it may lead to fast fat loss for some , low insulin levels & increased physical endurance for others.
Here comes a very important discussion!
What are Ketones?
When you stop consuming carbs & fueling your body with glucose, your body resorts to its fat storehouse for fuel- Liver
In the absence of glucose, your liver breaks the stored fat into usable compounds known as Ketones. These Ketones are used by your body & brain for fuel. You may feel differently when you adopt Ketosis since your brain is getting fuel from entirely different sources.
Your body gets fuel in two different ways when into Ketosis:
- Body itself makes Ketones when you are in fasting/low or no glucose consumption.
- Consume actual Ketones.
So Does Ketosis helps in Weight Loss? Probably yes.!
When your main source of diet is fat, your body enters into Ketosis. Compare fat with coal. You have piel of coal for winter. When you burn some of them for energy, your coal stores becomes smaller. In Ketosis, you are getting smaller.
Another reason people lose weight when they adopt Ketosis is: Thermodynamics.
When you adopt Ketosis, you stop consuming altogether a macronutrient- Carbohydrate.
Consider a situation when you stop consuming Soda, Fruit smoothies, Chips, Chocolates, Candies etc & replace it with fat. What happens? You reduce calorie intake since these foods are calorie dense & seldom offer nutrients.
So you start burning more calories than you consume every day/week which results in weight loss regardless of the composition of food consumed.
And the opposite is also true! You can overeat fat to gain weight. Do not expect to consume 4000 plus calories of avocados, butter, Ghee & Bacon & lose weight.
