Top 10 reasons Keto Fails
Ketogenic Diet
Losing weight or attempting to keep fit can feel like a full time job. The market is flooded with a barrage of unhealthy food choices that can easily derail a healthy diet. It is difficult to get enough physical activities to cross-check the calories we consume, that is why hi-jacking our metabolism with a dynamic diet is the best way to reach your fitness potential. Ketogenic Dieting is one of the best ways of dieting for weight loss, brain function, and more.
What is Keto/ketogenic?
It is a diet approach designed to teach your body to use fat for fuel instead of carbohydrates. Hence, you can burn your own body fat for energy. On a typical carbohydrate diet, the body will utilize glucose as the principal source of energy because it is easier to burn. By bringing down the consumption of carbohydrates, the body is actuated into a state known as ketosis. The goal is to hit approximately 70% fat, 20% protein, and 10% carbohydrates. This is unlike the Standard American Diet (SAD diet) which is 40% carbohydrate or more. See appendix for list of fats, proteins, and carbohydrates.
Ketosis is a process the body starts naturally to enable us to survive when consumption of food into the body is low. Amid this state, we create ketones, which are delivered from the breakdown of fats in the liver. The ultimate objective of a carefully kept up ketogenic diet is to drive your body into this metabolic state. We don't do this through starvation of calories only starvation of sugars. Our bodies are extraordinarily versatile to what you put into it – when you overburden it with fats and take away sugars, it will start to consume ketones as the essential vitality source. Ideal ketone levels offer you wellbeing of the body, weight reduction, better physical and mental performance.
The body’s metabolism works similar to a fire. A fire burns fuel to create heat and so does our metabolism. Think about this as an analogy; the fat is the logs, the protein is the kindling, and the carbohydrates are the paper. When you put paper on a fire, it burns within a few seconds. Logs however take a while to get going but then burn all night. This is similar to fat metabolism; it takes longer to get going but once the mechanisms are in place your metabolism burns much hotter, longer, and more efficiently. That is the point of reaching ketosis, to burn fat efficiently.
History of the Keto Diet
Ketogenic diet became well known as a treatment for epilepsy in the 1920s. Be that as it may, the diet was long forgotten because of the development of new anticonvulsant drugs. The first logical examination into fasting as a cure for epilepsy was carried out in France, in 1911. The ketogenic diet was found to enhance the patient's psychological capacities.
Fast forward to recent years, some research reveals that a ketogenic diet can be useful to prevent certain infections, Alzheimer's, cancer, epilepsy, and so on. The reason for a few of these is that diseases feed off of sugar. Things like cancer cells can have four times the sugar receptors as regular cells, but most cancer does not metabolize fat for fuel. Also, the brain is a very fatty organ, at 60% fat composition. By fortifying the brain, we may be able to elude certain brain-based diseases.
Since these breakthroughs, our western medicine world has been largely dictated by the pharmaceutical explosion. We are now entering a time where diet changes are paramount to our survival. The millenials are the first generation not expected to outlive their grandparents. Our obsession with drugs must stop, and we must take responsibility and control of what goes into our mouths. It is best we continue this logical search for an optimal diet that can cure our western diseases. With today’s knowledge, keto is the most logical way to go for many conditions or genetic predispositions.
What can this help?
Ketogenic diet brings typical glucose levels down due to the kind of food you are expected to consume. Some research demonstrates that the ketogenic diet is a more viable approach to control diabetes, unlike low-calorie diets. In case you're pre-diabetic or have Type II diabetes, you ought to truly consider a ketogenic diet.
Keto also has therapeutic implications with conditions such as:
- Leaky gut
- Small intestine bacterial overgrowth (SIBO)
- Yeast overgrowth
- PCOS
- Infertility
- Arthritis
- Depression / anxiety
- Memory diseases
- Seizures
- Diabetes
How It Works-Monitoring Carb Reduction
Just like many other Low Carb Diets, Ketogenic diets work with the reduction of consumption of glucose. Since most people live on a high carb diet, our bodies ordinarily keep running on glucose (or sugar) for vitality. When glucose is reduced from food consumption, we start to consume stored fat or fat from the food we eat. This mechanism will lead to weight loss.
Since sugar reduction is how it works, sugar must be closely monitored. I recommend using a phone app to track your food at the beginning just to verify where the carbohydrate or glucose molecules are hidden. Some are hidden where you least expect. If you do not monitor your sugar or carbohydrates at the beginning, you may get frustrated as to why you are not reaching your goal of ketosis. There are many keto specific phone apps out there. That is one assignment this month. Please find an app that suits your needs or at minimum start counting sugar.
Ketogenic Foods
To begin a ketogenic diet, you will need to prepare. That implies having a feasible eating routine. What you eat determines how quick you get into a ketosis state. The more prohibitive you are on your starches (under 15g every day), the quicker you will get to ketosis state.
Try not to Eat
- Sugar – nectar, agave, maple syrup, honey, etc.
- Grains – wheat, corn, rice, oats, etc.
- Starch/Tubers – potatoes, yams, beets, turnips, etc.
- Fruit – apples, bananas, oranges, etc.
You Can Eat
- Leafy Greens – spinach, kale, cabbage, collards, etc.
- Meats – Anything with fins, feathers, feet or eggs
- Above ground vegetables – broccoli, cauliflower, squash, etc.
- Nuts and seeds – macadamias, walnuts, sunflower seeds, almonds, etc.
- High Fat Dairy – hard cheeses, high fat cream, butter, etc.
- Avocado and berries – raspberries, blackberries, etc.
- Other fats – coconut oil, any nut oil, animal fats (bacon grease, duck fat, chicken fat, lard).
- Sweeteners – stevia, erythritol, and other low-carb sweeteners
- Liquids – apple cider vinegar, bulletproof coffee*, sea salt water, bone broth, collagen, protein powder, tea, lemon water, exogenous ketones
- *bulletproof means adding a fat source to your coffee; you may use coconut cream, grass-fed butter, MCT oil, etc. This cuts down on the acidity of the coffee while providing extra brain fuel.
TOP 10 REASONS FOR FAILURE
Here are the top 10 reasons for failing this diet and how to avoid them. Actually, these are the top reasons for failing most diets.
- No focus on quality
Be careful not just to eat bacon, cheese, and keto cookies. You still need to eat your vegetables and meats. Coffee is not a meal.
2. Feeling obligated to eat
If you are not hungry, you can wait until you are. When you become fat adapted, your appetite will change. Listen to when/what it wants. If you don’t want dinner, you don’t have to eat it.
3. Forgetting veggies
A ton of B vitamins are needed to break down fats with the oxidation cycle. Make sure you have at least 3 cups a day of greens or green drinks. 4. Too many “keto” treats, not enough food
Don’t have your entire day’s calories in just fat bombs and keto brownies.
5. Obsessed with tests
If your urine test strip doesn’t say you are in ketosis, do not get discouraged. You will gain many benefits of this diet before it shows up on a test. Also, it takes a few days to weeks to get into measurable ketosis.
6. Cheat meals or carb replenishing
As discussed earlier, high carbohydrate meals will make you sugar dependent again and knock you out of ketosis.
7. Becoming a cheese-aholic
We discussed dairy for a whole chapter, it is not meant to be your main calorie source.
8. Ignoring exercise or exercising too hard
Exercise will likely be difficult the first few weeks. Accept that you will not be hitting personal records for the beginning. Take more time for yoga and leisure exercise during this phase.
9. Quitting to early-or going in too strong too fast without allowing adaptation
As stated, it takes a few days for some and a few weeks for others to hit ketosis. Do not get frustrated if you do not lose 10 lbs. in the first 2 weeks.
10. Treating it like an all or nothing deal
If you do fall off the bandwagon or realize you have been eating a no-no food for a while, do not quit. Learn from your mistakes and keep moving. Do not have one bite of cake and go eh, might as well eat the whole thing plus a pizza. Think about your vehicle for a moment. You do not just get a door ding and go eh, might as well total it.
How to Conquer the Drawbacks
You will likely notice body changes beside weight and not all of them are wonderful at first. Remember, we said this was an adaptation and forced adaptation is hard. How good you feel on keto the first few weeks is entirely dependent on your sugar dependency prior to starting. Here are some temporary negative side effects, how to combat them, and the reasons behind them.
Constipation-
Bowel changes can be due to eating less, consuming dairy, or dehydration. Some will use the restroom less due to less bulk of food consumed. Carbs are bulky. This is similar to how your dog poops more on cruddy dog food due to all the filler calories. Moral of the story, eat less means poop less. However, if the stool is difficult to pass you may need to drink more water, increase electrolyte consumption, or decrease dairy foods.
Weird Stool Consistency
Your stool may vary a great deal in the first few weeks. This can be due to yeast die off and a change in gut flora. It may be due to mucus formation from dairy. It could also be from your gallbladder trying to catch up to fat consumption, which causes your stool to float.
Sleep Changes-
When your body is trying to increase your blood glucose, it uses adrenaline or Cortisol. Both of these are sleep inhibitive. They will likely wake you up a lot the first few weeks before becoming fat adapted. Taking exogenous ketones may help this adaptation. You will likely notice you require less sleep when you are fat adapted as well.
Acne or Rash
When you have a massive yeast die off in the body it often shows up as a rash. Increased hormone/Androgen production can also cause acne. You will likely have some hormone swings while your body is adapting.
Increases Trips to the Restroom
Sugar/Insulin makes you hold water weight. When you have less glucose and insulin, you hold less water. This means you pee, A LOT at first.
Keto Flu
This is another word for sugar withdrawal. Remember, to some people a sugar addiction is similar to cocaine. Some people have a morphine like addiction to grains and dairy. So when these individuals quit they can get shaky, sweaty, angry, dizzy, etc. Again, exogenous ketones may help.