The Ketogenic Diet: What You Should Know Before You Start
If you have searched for answers about nutrition and how it relates to weight loss or how you can use nutrition to achieve your body goals, then there is a good chance you have come across a ketogenic diet (or keto diet).
The ketogenic diet has increased in notoriety in the world of fat loss and personal fitness because many people see it as a quick fix for all their weight and other physical problems. You can’t blame them. However, the work of the ketogenic diet speaks for itself, with benefits such as dealing with type 2 diabetes and helping people with cognitive decline.
In this article, we will go through what a ketogenic diet means, what it contains, some of the benefits, and how you should take it properly for a successful weight loss program.
What is a ketogenic diet?
A ketogenic diet is a low-carb, medium-protein, and high-fat diet that can help you burn fat easily. Many studies on its nutrition and how it helps the body break down fat have shown that a ketogenic diet is not only helpful but also healthy for people who want weight loss. For this reason, it has been growing in popularity for a while, as doctors and other medical experts are constantly recommending it to many people.
How does it work?
The idea of a ketogenic diet is simple: burn fat in the body instead of carbs. Ketogenic diets ensure you take in low carbs and high fat so that the body enters a metabolic state known as ketosis. At this stage, the body begins to convert fat into ketones in the body. Ketones are the molecules that help supply energy for the brain. So instead of the body burning carbs, it burns fat, thereby promoting weight loss.
If you continue with this nutrition for a while, your body gets used to burning fat instead of carbs for fuel, and your brain adapts to it too.
Some benefits of the ketogenic diet
- It helps with weight loss
The ketogenic diet nutrition plan is highly effective in helping people lose weight. As explained earlier, it does this by making the body adapt to burning fat and ketones in the body for fuel for the brain as opposed to the use of carbs.
- It helps people who struggle with epilepsy
Epilepsy is a condition that is caused by excessive brain activity. This condition makes people who have it struggle with seizures. For many, drug therapy can help their seizures, but for many others, either their body cannot handle the side effects from the drug therapy or the drug therapy doesn’t work for them. For this reason, many researchers have been forced to try out new methods that could help people with this condition, and a ketogenic diet nutrition plan has been one of the successful ones.
Studies have shown that for people who don’t respond well to drug therapy, a good ketogenic nutrition plan can help reduce the severity and frequency of the condition. It also helps in the improvement of brain activity for up to 65% of people who use it.
- It is useful for dealing with diabetes
As stated earlier, a ketogenic diet is helpful in weight loss, and it does this by converting fat to ketones, as opposed to carbs, which are normally used. This means that much fewer carbs are left in the body. In other words, a ketogenic diet nutrition plan helps reduce the level of blood sugar in the body. This is good news for people who struggle with either type 1 and type 2 diabetes.
- It may help some cancers
There is good reason to believe that a ketogenic diet plan can help to fight cancer when used along with chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation. Because some kinds of cancer like breast cancer is linked to other conditions like diabetes and obesity, reducing the effects of these conditions can help in reducing the chances of tumor growth.
Also, more research on mice has shown that a ketogenic diet can reduce the progression of some cancers to other parts of the body. This is good news for the world of medicine as cancer is one of the leading causes of death around the world. Thankfully, a weight loss diet can help prevent many people from dying yearly.
Doing keto right
If you want to be successful in your fat loss program using a ketogenic nutrition plan, then there are some things you must do:
- Reduce your carb consumption
Carbs are normally burnt in the body as fuel for the brain and other parts of the body, and they work well that way unless you are using a ketogenic diet meal plan. Ensure to decrease your carbs so that your body can burn more fat.
- Eat more healthy fats
Eating more healthy fats can increase the rate at which your body burns ketones to fuel the brain. Healthy fats are not the same as dangerous fats that can make you gain weight. These healthy fats include avocado oil, fish oil, and olive oil. Since fat loss is your main goal, you have to ensure you don’t take more oil than necessary, or you will set yourself back in the process.
Conclusion
A ketogenic nutrition plan can be difficult to pull off, especially when your body enters the state of ketosis. At the initial stage of your weight loss program using a ketogenic nutrition plan, you can get the keto flu, which makes you feel weak and tired. If you scale through this period, then you will start to access some of the benefits of this nutrition plan.
In addition to the benefits listed above, you can also enjoy increased energy and focus, appetite and hunger reduction, and increased blood ketones.
Finally, remember that as it is with other diet plans you wish to try out, a ketogenic diet plan should be discussed with your doctor before you embark on the journey to lose weight and gain a lot of benefits in return.
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