The Keto Diet / How to start
The keto diet is a low carb, high fat diet that offer many health benefits and I consider it life changing for me. This has helped me and many other loss weight and improve my overall health and get our lives back.
Keto has been used to help fight against diabetes, cancer, epilepsy and Alzheimer’s to mention a few. For me person it kept me from going on insulin for type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure medication.
The keto diet is as I stated above a low carb high fat diet which is a big switch form what we have been taught are whole lives. Basically, you are reducing the carbs and replacing them with fat to lose fats (sounds crazy right). This causes your body to go into a state of ketosis (metabolic state)
When this happens, your body will start to burn fat as an energy source and will become very efficient at turn fat into ketones in the liver. This will provide energy to the brain and the body. This will also cause a reduction in blood sugars and insulin levels which is a huge health benefit your body.
There are a lot of different ways to do keto so you will need to figure which one works best for your body and life style. They variation like the Mediterranean keto, Carnivore keto, Vegetarian keto, lazy keto, dirty keto, standard keto or clean keto. There is even a high protein keto.
For me personal I follow a more standard / cleaner keto as I am doing it for my overall health and not just for weight loss. My diet is about 70 to 75% fats, 20 to 25% protein and 5% carbs. So, this will cover what I have been doing since Oct of 2017 and not the other kinds of keto life styles.
I do track my food for carbs, fats and protein but I have never counted calories while I have been doing this life style and I have been very successful. This will go against everything you have ben taught about eating healthy
I think that keto has gotten a bad name because everyone thinks of eat more of a dirty keto style and a lot of bad fat when in fact if does just the opposite.
If you want to start a keto diet it is best to look for good sources to get your information. Once you think you have good information start off by tracking the foods and drink (anything you put into your body) into a tracker like carb manager or fitness pal (there is a lot of apps out their). Most of these apps has a free version and I person think that’s all you need to use. Look at the keto food list on this website to get an idea of the foods you can eat. The apps will tell you the grams of fat/protein and carbs to stick to.
I would start with a max of 20 carbs (need to decide if you want to use net carbs or total carbs). I started using 20 net carbs (Total Carbs – Fiber – sugar alcohol = net carbs). This will help you understand your targets that you try to hit each day. Best to the first 6 to 12 weeks to stay with whole foods. This will help you get over the sugar addiction. During this time stay away from the keto treats.
It best if you can keep it simple at first. Look for a few meal plans on line as there is some readily available and hoping to have one on the site soon.
Start to investigate supplements as your body will be flushing out a lot of salts and minerals, so investigate electrolytes to avoid the keto flu.
Try to stay away from Sugary foods, grains and starches, Fruit, beans, legumes, root veggies, low fat and diet products, condiments as most have sugars in them, unhealthy fats, processed vegetable oils, Canola oils, grape seed, Corn oils, mayonnaise, alcohol and sugar free diet food. If it says keto on the label don’t buy it.
The best thing you can do is eat whole food and keep it simple.
