What Everybody Ought To Know About Ketosis
Recently I wanted to explore the world of Ketosis. I thought I knew a little bit about ketosis, but after doing some research I soon realised how wrong I was. 3 months later, after reading numerous books, listening to countless podcasts and experimenting with various diets I know have a sound understanding of ketosis. This resource is built as a reference guide for those looking to explore the fascinating world of ketosis. It is a resource that I wish I had 3 months ago. As you will soon see, a lot of the content below is not mine, instead I have linked to referenced to experts who have a greater understanding of this topic than I ever will. I hope this helps and if there is something that I have missed please leave a comment below so that I can update this. Also, as this is a rather long document, I have split it into various sections. You can click the headline below to be sent straight to the section that interests you. For those that are really time poor I have created a useful ketosis cheat sheet guide. This guide covers all the essential information you should know about ketosis. It can be downloaded HERE. Alternatively, if you're looking for a natural and sustainable way to improve health and lose weight head to this page - What is Ketosis? What Are The Benefits from being in Ketosis? Isn’t Ketosis Dangerous? Ketoacidosis vs Ketosis What Is The Difference Between a Low Carb Diet and a Ketogenic Diet? Types of Ketosis: The Difference Between Nutritional, Therapeutic & MCT Ketogenic Diets Is The Ketogenic Diet Safe? Long Term Effects Thyroid and Ketosis - What You May Want To Know What is a Typical Diet/Macro Breakdown for a Ketogenic Diet? Do I Need to Eat Carbs? What do I Eat On a Ketogenic Diet? What Do I Avoid Eating on a Ketogenic Diet? Protein Consumption a Continue reading >>
The Ugly Truth About Ketogenic Diets
Here's what you need to know... Ketosis occurs when carbs are in such low quantities that your body relies almost exclusively on fatty acid oxidation and ketone metabolism. Ketogenic diets have about 70-75% of your daily caloric intake coming from fat and about 5% from carbohydrates. Ingesting protein above approximately .8 grams per pound is enough to kick you out of ketosis. Ketogenic diets improve body comp, but so does any diet that reduces calories from any source. There is no literature to support that a ketogenic diet is beneficial for promoting increases in muscle mass. Ketogenic diets affect performance negatively. Questions About Ketosis While the ketogenic diet has been used widely and rather effectively in some cases, there's still a lot of confusion about it. What exactly is a ketogenic diet? How does it differ from low carb dieting? Most importantly, at least for the T Nation demographic, is the question of whether ketogenic diets allow you to put on, or at least keep, muscle. Ketosis: What is it? Ketosis is a metabolic state that occurs when dietary carbohydrates are in such low quantities that your body must rely almost exclusively on fatty acid oxidation and ketone metabolism. That sounds simple on the surface, but let's unpack that explanation a bit. To function, your body requires a substantial amount of energy in the form of ATP. So, let's just assume that the average person uses about 1,800 calories per day to create enough ATP to keep him alive (not including any physical activity). Now this is where it gets interesting. You have this thing in your skull called a brain. It uses about 400 or so calories per day and runs almost exclusively on glucose. (There's some evidence it can use small amounts of fat and lactate, but in the big picture it's not Continue reading >>
9 Reasons Why You Aren’t In A State Of Ketosis
If you’re having trouble getting into ketosis, it is useful to understand the factors that actually impact blood ketone levels. When I first started on the ketogenic diet, I made sure to educate myself fully on how I can efficiently get into a fat-adapted state (ketosis). Just like everything else, there’s going to be some hurdles you’ll face when adopting a keto lifestyle. Watch out for these 8 ketogenic pitfalls you could be potentially be falling for. 1. Carbohydrates Pretty much all steps involved in producing ketones are inhibited by insulin, this means that ketone levels are extremely sensitive to carb intake. There isn’t an exact amount of carbohydrates that works for everyone to get into ketosis. But, there is a general guideline that works for most people. It has been estimated that around 50 grams per day or lower of carbohydrates will elevate your blood ketone levels. You should be eating less than 30 grams in order to get into ketosis. From personal experience, I found that if i’m more active on any given day, I can get away with eating more carbohydrates and still have decent blood ketone levels. I actually have been able to get away with upwards of 100 grams of carbs and still be in ketosis. I believe this is because when you are active, you are burning extra glycogen storages that come from carbohydrates. 2. Protein. Just like carbohydrates, increasing your intake of protein to fat in your diet will limit your ketone production. The reason behind this is because over half of amino acids in proteins are converted into glucose in the body, thus, producing an anti-keto effect. This is not as big of a deal for athletes / people who are very active because the body is utilizing the protein and amino acids to the point where it is not hindering your k Continue reading >>
Ketogenic Diet Faq
With all the new people finding, switching, and transitioning into a low carb diet, I figured it was about time I put together an FAQ on all the common questions that are asked when someone is starting out. I don’t go too in depth in the answers, but I tried to give a direct answer and then link to a more in depth article on the topic to help you fully understand it. If you have any other questions you’d like to be added, changed, or are unsure about – please feel free to leave a comment below so I can fully explain, or make changes to the answers on this page. Best wishes, and to all the new people out there – good luck and happy dieting! Frequently Asked Questions Click any of the questions below and it will take you to the answer. How Long Does It Take To Get Into Ketosis? A ketogenic diet is not a diet that you can whimfully choose to go on and off of at any point. It takes time for your body to adjust and go into a state known as ketosis. This process? Anywhere from 2 – 7 days, depending on your body type, activity levels, and what you’re eating. The fastest way to get into ketosis is to exercise on an empty stomach, restrict your carbohydrate intake to 20g or less per day, and be vigilant with your water intake. To improve the rate at which you enter ketosis, there is a method called Fat Fasting. I’ve written an article on Fat Fasting on a Ketogenic Diet and everything involved with it. Make sure that if you use this method, it is only for a few days, otherwise it can bring harm to you. Where Can I Find Low Carb Recipes? Everywhere on the internet! There’s recipes on almost every health website nowadays, and a quick Google of what you want will definitely help you out. You can even convert high carb recipes that use sugar or fruits in them to low c Continue reading >>
Can I Exercise While On A Ketogenic Diet?
One of the most common questions I’ve noticed, in regards to keto, is whether exercise is needed for results. Having done both, I wanted to share my experience with exercising while on a keto diet. Do you need exercise to lose weight while in ketosis? If you’re like me, chances are you haven’t worked up a good sweat in ages. At my heaviest, I could only dream about running around without having to instantly catch my breath. The thought of any form of exercise was intimidating. Technically, weight loss is all about burning more calories than you consume. So to answer this question, no, you don’t need to exercise to lose weight. Keto can help you feel full longer (fat being more satiating than carbohydrates, it can help you manage your cravings and stick to a more strict caloric deficit. While the majority of weight loss comes from sticking to a solid diet, exercise can aid in the journey. Not only will it help speed up the process, but you will notice tons of other benefits. Why should you exercise on Keto? Enter ketosis faster One of the questions I get asked a lot is: Will working out help me get into ketosis faster? Being in ketosis means your body enters a state in which your body does not have enough glucose (glycogen) to burn for fuel and begins using fat as a source of energy. By exercising, you expend more energy and burn through your glycogen stores at a faster rate, allowing your body to achieve ketosis at a faster pace. Fill out and tighten loose skin If you have a ton of weight to lose (50lb+), chances are your skin has stretched out while putting on those pounds. It will take some time for your skin to readjust, but you can help reduce the loose skin issue by filling out your body with muscle mass. Increase your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) Continue reading >>
Exercise And The Ketogenic Lifestyle
I recently wrote about finding motivation, and in that article, I touched upon exercise, but I didn’t write much about how it relates to the ketogenic lifestyle. So that’s what I wanted to do now. For the past 40 or so years, because of the faulty calorie hypothesis, exercise was used as a tool for weight loss, often times the primary tool. The other being, “eat less”, but we’ll get into that later. Because the hormones responsible for fat accumulation and fat burning (LPL and HSL, respectively) are adjusted during exercise, I don’t put fat loss as a big reason for exercise. That doesn’t mean that exercise cannot be fueled by body fat, in fact, if you’re in ketosis, almost all your exercise will be fueled by your body fat. But calories aren’t the key factor. So, if calories are not the mechanism for fat gain or loss, then what role, if any, does exercise play in achieving health and fitness goals? A bunch. But before I get into that, I just need to bring up a question that everyone needs to answer for themselves. Why do you want to exercise? What goal does your exercising help you achieve? If you don’t know the answer to that, you’re almost guaranteed to fail in your exercise life. A ketogenic lifestyle incorporates a unified approach to all aspects, in order to achieve something better. So, having said that, and having asked you to ask yourself why you choose to torture yourself (or why you are thinking about doing it), let’s talk about exercise. Exercise plays several roles in a healthy lifestyle, a ketogenic lifestyle. Stress relief Mental acuity Fun Let’s start with the first, stress relief. This is the most important reason for regular exercise. Exercise causes a lot of biochemical responses, such as increasing cortisol, the hormone respon Continue reading >>
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How To Workout On Keto Diet
To get into ketosis you need to go through a period of adaptation. To do that you have to either fast or restrict your carbohydrate intake to a bare minimum. For faster results, you can also exercise. But there are different ways how to workout on keto. Our body can use various fuel sources. The most preferred one is glucose, which is basically carbohydrate or sugar molecules, that gets absorbed very quickly. Next, to that, there are free fatty acids that can either be derived from dietary fat intake or our own body fat. Lastly, the third ones are called ketone bodies that are like “superfuel”, reigning supreme over the other two. By default, we’re hardwired to use glucose as our main fuel. This is reinforced even more by the high amounts of them in our diet. To create energy sugar enters the Krebs cycle during the process called glycolysis. What comes out is pyruvate that gets converted to ATP. The body can store about 2000 calories of glycogen (15g are circulating the blood stream, 150g are stored in the liver and 300-500g in muscle cells). Liver glycogen stores can be depleted already after an overnight fast. It’s our first fuel tank. To release glucose from muscle cells we need a lot more. This supply is scarce and used only when there’s no other way. When we would have to run from a lion or sprint after the bus. Muscle glycogen stores get tapped into only during very intense and glycolytic activities. When in an anaerobic mode we’re utilizing solely glucose for fuel to produce ATP with no oxygen. Free fatty acids, on the other hand, are almost infinite in terms of caloric storage. We can deposit as many triglycerides in our adipose tissue as we can possibly consume. Despite glucose being the body’s primary fuel source, most of the time we’re using f Continue reading >>
Ketogenic Diet : 5-week Plan, Exercise Routine, Benefits & Tips
ketogenic diet is a low-carb diet plan that has helped many women and men to lose up to 15-18 pounds in five weeks. This unconventional diet plan requires you to be on a high-fat (77%), moderate-protein (17%) and very low-carb (5%) diet. Here is the science behind the success of this high-fat diet. Carbs and proteins get converted to glucose in the body, but not fats! Excess glucose gets converted into fat. But, in the case of the ketogenic diet, the body is deprived of carbs or proteins, leaving the body no choice but to utilize fat as the energy source. Since fat cannot be converted to glucose, it is converted into ketone molecules. This process is known as ketosis. When ketosis kicks in, ketones are used instead of carbohydrate or sugar for fuel. This helps the body to burn the stored fat and lose weight. You will be totally amazed to see the results. But you have to stick to the plan till you reach your goal, otherwise, ketosis will stop and you will stop burning fat. In this article, you will find a detailed 5-week plan, exercise routine, benefits, and a keto diet shopping list! Let’s start. 1. Ketogenic Diet Plan Week 1 Early Morning (7:00 am) Options: Warm water with lemon Warm water with 1 tablespoon Triphala powder Breakfast (8:30 am) Options: 1 boiled egg + kale smoothie Oats and milk Quinoa Lunch (12:30 pm) Options: Vegetable soup Mushroom and lettuce salad with high fat dressing Chicken, carrot, bell pepper, and green beans salad with high-fat dressing Post Lunch (2:30 pm) 1 cup Greek yogurt and 2 almonds Evening Snack (5:00 pm) 1 cup green tea with a dash of lemon Dinner (7:30 pm) Options: Shrimp and zoodles Mashed broccoli and potato with sour cream Mushroom and cream soup Why This Works In the first week of the ketogenic diet, there is a greater loss in Continue reading >>
How Long Does It Take To Get Into Ketosis?
A question a lot of people who start a Ketogenic Diet want to know is, how long does it take to get into ketosis? After all, it is being in a state of ketosis that makes the diet, “ketogenic” in the first place. Being in Ketosis not only supercharges your body to be in an optimal fat-burning zone. It also gives you a longer, sustained energy, enhanced cognition, improved focus and other neuroprotective benefits. The Advantages of Ketosis don’t end there Being on a Ketogenic Diet and having your body rely on fats as its fuel comes with cardiovascular benefits as well. It has been shown that ketosis lowers bad LDL cholesterol while increasing good HDL cholesterol, decreasing a person’s risk of heart disease as well as improving insulin resistance amongst others. There are also studies into the ketogenic diet’s effects on Alzheimers Disease, Bipolar Disorder among others that have shown promising results. The Ketogenic Diet itself was used in the early 1900’s to control epileptic seizures and is still used today for those resistant to seizure medication. But we won’t dive deeply into all of that today. Today we’re going to answer the question, how long does it take to get into ketosis? So, how long does it take to get into Ketosis? Nobody can tell you accurately how long it will take to get into ketosis as the time it takes for your body to start creating ketone bodies varies between individuals. We all have unique metabolisms, varying resistance to insulin, previous diet, and other biological factors that differentiate us from one another. If one were to give a timeframe, it would be safe to say that typically you can expect your body to get into ketosis within a period of 2-10 days if you stick to the recommended macro nutrients. (use our keto calculator Continue reading >>
High Intensity Exercise On A Ketogenic Diet?
In this post I will explore the theory behind a Ketogenic diet for endurance athletic performance, and tell you how I tested the idea for myself using both a Half-Marathon and 5k races as performance markers. I will attempt to answer the following questions: What is a Ketogenic diet? Why might a Ketogenic diet enhance endurance performance? Will a ketogenic diet work for high intensity performance such as a 5k? What are the downsides of a ketogenic diet? In their book, The Art and Science of Low Carb Performance, Jeff Volek and Steve Phinney claim that a ketogenic diet may be beneficial for endurance sports performance. The idea behind a low carb, high fat ketogenic diet is this: teach the body to use fat as fuel by restricting carbs. By starving the body of carbs, the liver will generate ketones to act as a fuel in place of glucose. Ketones can act in place of glucose as a fuel for the body, especially the brain, which can only run on glucose or ketones. One advantage of ketones is that they don’t require an active transporter to cross cell membranes; they can easily diffuse to body tissues for energy. They’ve also been shown to treat epilepsy, increase mental focus, slow the onset of Alzheimer’s, help heart attack patients recover faster, and maybe even prevent bonking in a long distance running event. Advocates of this type of diet point out that it’s probably a much more natural way to eat, since in an ancestral environment, carbs were scarce. Fruit was much smaller and less sugary and grains have only been around in large quantities for around 10,000 years. For much of human history the theory goes, we existed in a state of ketosis, sometimes going days without food, and living off stored body fat and ketones generated from fat stores. If you are new to the Continue reading >>
Exercise And Diabetes On A Ketogenic Diet
Tweet Combining a ketogenic diet with exercise is a powerful way to reduce blood glucose levels and achieve weight loss. Some people may be concerned that a ketogenic diet and exercise may be incompatible, however, this is far from being the case as we will investigate in this guide. We will also look into the important topic of safety when exercising on a ketogenic diet which applies if you are ion any diabetes medications that can cause hypos. How the body copes with exercise on little carbohydrate For years, the world's leading exercise and diet science institutes have advocated consuming a high level of carbohydrate prior to exercise. However, modern research is showing that a very-low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet can unlock your body's capability to tap into your own storage fat for energy. A great benefit of this is that this source of energy is almost inexhaustible, as each of us are carrying tens of thousands of calories as body fat. Famous athletes, like Chris Froome, and other endurance athletes, have been able to excel in their sport thanks to a low-carbohydrate diet. Exercise at the start of a ketogenic diet In the first weeks on a ketogenic diet, you may find you need to go easy on the exercise until your body has adapted to the diet. This reportedly takes around two to four weeks. After you’ve become ‘keto-adapted’, you should be able to step the exercise up. Is this style of eating in combination to exercise an easy transition? It is important to keep in mind that both a ketogenic diet and exercise can be effective for lowering blood glucose levels. Therefore, if you are currently on hypo-causing medication, you should speak with your health team about how to manage exercise on a ketogenic diet. Benefits of exercise and keto on diabetes and heart hea Continue reading >>
The Interplay Of Exercise And Ketosis – Part I
I embarked on a self-experiment last weekend to see if I could better understand the interplay between the different types of exercise I do and ketone production (beta-hydroxybutyrate, or B-OHB, to be specific). To be clear, nothing I do with a sample size of one “proves” anything, but sometimes self-experiments can help you formulate hypotheses and, if nothing else, understand how your body works. Consider the parable of the black sheep. If you see even a single black sheep in the field, depending on your field of training, you can draw conclusions: Three scientists were on a train and had just crossed the border into Scotland. A black sheep was grazing on a hillside. The biologist peered out of the window and said, “Look! Scottish sheep are black!” The chemist said, “No, no. Some Scottish sheep are black.” The physicist, with an irritated tone in his voice, said, “My friends, there is at least one field, containing at least one sheep, of which at least one side is black some of the time.” My point is, even a self-experiment of one can be good for something. To test the relationship between exercise and ketosis I decided to examine my blood levels of glucose, B-OHB, and lactate immediately before and after three different types of workouts on three successive days. This interplay is complex and no one knows “everything” about it, including the world’s experts (which I am not pretending to be). I’m going to try to balance a fine line in this post – I want to be rigorous enough to explore the ideas with substance but not too detailed to put you to sleep. I hope I am able to balance these forces adequately. If any of you are not familiar with the work of Jeff Volek and Steve Phinney, but you are interested in the biochemistry of nutritional ketos Continue reading >>
What Is Ketosis?
"Ketosis" is a word you'll probably see when you're looking for information on diabetes or weight loss. Is it a good thing or a bad thing? That depends. Ketosis is a normal metabolic process, something your body does to keep working. When it doesn't have enough carbohydrates from food for your cells to burn for energy, it burns fat instead. As part of this process, it makes ketones. If you're healthy and eating a balanced diet, your body controls how much fat it burns, and you don't normally make or use ketones. But when you cut way back on your calories or carbs, your body will switch to ketosis for energy. It can also happen after exercising for a long time and during pregnancy. For people with uncontrolled diabetes, ketosis is a sign of not using enough insulin. Ketosis can become dangerous when ketones build up. High levels lead to dehydration and change the chemical balance of your blood. Ketosis is a popular weight loss strategy. Low-carb eating plans include the first part of the Atkins diet and the Paleo diet, which stress proteins for fueling your body. In addition to helping you burn fat, ketosis can make you feel less hungry. It also helps you maintain muscle. For healthy people who don't have diabetes and aren't pregnant, ketosis usually kicks in after 3 or 4 days of eating less than 50 grams of carbohydrates per day. That's about 3 slices of bread, a cup of low-fat fruit yogurt, or two small bananas. You can start ketosis by fasting, too. Doctors may put children who have epilepsy on a ketogenic diet, a special high-fat, very low-carb and protein plan, because it might help prevent seizures. Adults with epilepsy sometimes eat modified Atkins diets. Some research suggests that ketogenic diets might help lower your risk of heart disease. Other studies show sp Continue reading >>
How To Lose Weight On A Keto Diet In 5 Easy Steps (+ 4 Real-life Examples)
CLEARLY the “eat less”, “eat low fat”, and “just eat everything in moderation” diets haven’t worked too well for most people. So, if you’re still trying to lose weight and keep it off, then maybe it’s time to try something that’s working for tens of thousands of people right now… The Ketogenic Diet. But is it all too good to be true? Yes, we believe Keto is fantastic for weight loss. We’ve just seen it work for way too many people (check out the success stories below). But it’s also not for everyone. So, in this post, we are giving you the real facts behind all the hype as well as real-life stories of people who have lost a lot of weight on Keto. PLUS, how to get started on Keto to lose weight in 5 EASY Steps. What is the Ketogenic Diet? THE HISTORY: Originally the Ketogenic diet was created as an effective treatment for epileptic children. BUT NOW: More and more people are finding that a Ketogenic diet has tons of benefits, including: a healthy way to lose weight, control blood sugar levels, improve your brain function, and potentially even reverse a myriad of health conditions. How does keto do this? The Keto diet puts your body into a powerful fat-burning metabolic state called nutritional ketosis. NUTRITIONAL KETOSIS: In nutritional ketosis, your body generally uses very few carbohydrates for energy. Instead, it switches to using ketones (which are produced from the breakdown of fats). That’s why the keto diet is often called a fat-burning diet… You can literally be burning your own body fat for energy! (It’s still unclear whether ketosis is the magical factor that makes a Keto diet so effective for weight-loss, but whatever it is, it seems to work!) So, how do we get into this nutritional ketosis state? You can get into nutritional k Continue reading >>
My Story: How I Lost 77 Pounds
My story begins many years ago. I started my health improvement and weight loss journey in 2008 after a series of health scares forced me to look at my bad diet and non-existent exercise habits. My blood pressure and fasting blood sugar were both elevated, and I started having issues with blurred vision and pain in my feet. That really scared me, as my mother had been diabetic before she died at the age of 63, and I did not want to end up dying young and in pain as she had. So I started paying attention to how I felt after I ate. Armed with my observations, I began to change my diet. At first, I cut out the obvious processed junk foods, and started choosing real foods instead. Out went the boxed and canned stuff, and I started eating fresh meats and vegetables instead. Although my diet was much lower in carbs at this point, and I had removed many of the problematic foods, I still got my chocolate fix in every week, and I was eating bread or corn chips occasionally. Legionella Testing Lab - High Quality Lab Results CDC ELITE & NYSDOH ELAP Certified - Fast Results North America Lab Locations legionellatesting.com Six months into these changes, I felt so much better, I decided to write a website and share the information I had learned about what constituted real food and the difference it can make in your health. I called the website Healthy Eating Politics, since what I had learned about “healthy eating” was the direct opposite of what the federal government and mainstream medicine was saying. I discovered that the low fat, whole grain, high carb diet being pushed by the USDA was making people sick, and that cholesterol and saturated fat were NOT evil foods. The lie that cholesterol and saturated fat cause heart disease was doing a lot of damage to the average America Continue reading >>
