ketogenic diet daily walkthrough

Calories in/Calories out:
This is technically true, but just trying to count calories and just will yourself to eat less and move more is really hard. It's difficult because eating carbs every meal puts you in an anabolic state, promoting your cells to store energy. This isn't necessarily bad for someone trying to gain mass in general. To lose body fat, it’s much easier to first change one’s diet in a way to target a catabolic state. Once in this state, the appetite is suppressed. With less of an appetite it becomes surprisingly easy to put up with the calorie deficits that are necessary for weight loss.

Ultimately we want to convince our bodies to finally metabolize the body fat that we have been accumulating all of our lives (presumably for some Game of Thrones style winter). To do this we must convince our cells to undergo ketosis instead of glycolysis for energy. We do this by replacing carbohydrates with fats. Once fat is seen by your cells as a fuel source to be used up and not stored, your fat cells will start to burn off fat and also release fat into the bloodstream to be used by other cells.

How to get in ketosis: (keep insulin low)
Cells can only metabolize carbohydrates for energy (Glycolysis) or fat (ketosis), but for the most part not at the same time (kinda like a hybrid car). Glucose is quicker to metabolize than fat so even if there’s a little (>5 g) present in a meal, the body will prefer to metabolize that first. When there is excess glucose (broken down carbohydrates) in your bloodstream, Insulin is produced [a growth signaling hormone that shuttles calories in general (carbs, fats, proteins) to all cells (for this discussion: muscle cells, liver cells, and unfortunately fat cells)]. Muscle cells and liver cells can store store glycogen but it's not much. Once those reserves have been filled, the liver starts converting the glucose into fat [this is because there's no more room to put glucose anywhere in your body and it's toxic to have too much in the bloodstream (this is how the liver also deals with alcohol and is the mechanism behind fatty livers in alcoholics & nonalcoholics)]. The blood then gets elevated fat while it also has maxed out insulin levels. The insulin then starts moving fat into fat cells, thus increasing stored body fat. So in conclusion insulin isn't bad. It's just that when you combine high insulin with high levels of fat (fat from your liver converting all that excess glucose). When you consume fat and you have low levels of insulin. The fat is used up as energy instead of needing to be stored somewhere you don't want.

How to keep insulin low:
Fats barely raises insulin. Proteins raise it more. Carbohydrates raise it the most. The amount of insulin produced is related to how fast the food is digested. So "faster" foods spike your insulin higher. Fastest to slowest:
Carbs: sugar, starch
Protein: whey protein, egg whites, beef, pork, fish, turkey, whole egg, casein (found in dairy products).
Fats: mct oil, coconut oil, butter
Fiber: Dietary Fiber in general slows the digestion process. Even though calories from dietary fiber are technically carbohydrates, they don’t get broken down in the stomach. Instead they make it to the small and large intestines where they are consumed by gut bacteria, so these calories can be neglected.
Carbs raise insulin the most and most people's liver is filled to max capacity of glycogen after every meal. When the liver is like this your body is not going to want to burn fat. Instead your body will metabolize glucose till after your stomach is empty of carbs, then it will start emptying your liver of glucose and finally after some of that has been used up, your body will switch back into ketosis.

How to remove carbs and still enjoy food:
No meals should ever feel depriving, though the first few days you may feel some cravings for carbs. Fat and protein can take a while to breakdown. With the addition of fiber from vegetables, these meals should leave you feeling more satisfied for longer periods of time. This is because you have slow digesting foods inside you that still contain enough calories (from fat) to supply you with energy for longer. As far as palatability goes, to make any food taste good without carbs one just needs any combination of the following: fat, salt, and maybe apple cider vinegar (or any vinegar) or maybe lime or lemon juice to add a sour flavor. Most condiments (not hot sauce) contain sugar so be sure to check.

1st Meal- Butter Coffee
Ingredients:
Fats: Unsalted Grass-fed Butter (Kerrygold is the only brand at Walmart)
Coconut oil
MCT oil (start with a small amount)
Himalayan pink salt (source of trace minerals)
Healthy additives:
Turmeric
Ceylon cinnamon
Black pepper
Vanilla bean
Cloves

Why?
The purpose of breakfast is to take in calories for energy, while raising your insulin as little as possible. Also know that for breakfast liver cells are more sensitive to absorbing glucose. However, to promote ketosis it’s necessary to keep the liver's level of stored glucose (glycogen) as low as possible. Doing this allows your liver start to converting fat to ketones. As you first get into it, having some protein (like some bacon or eggs) as well for breakfast can help with satiety, but since protein does raise your insulin some it is more ketogenic to go with just fat.

2nd Meal- non starchy veggies, <35 grams of protein, and all the fat you need to feel full.

Possible ingredients:
Veggies: [Green, low calorie veggies] celery, green onions, spinach, kale (any non starchy vegetables).
Protein: meat, bacon, eggs, cheese.
Fat: avocados, olives, butter, coconut oil

Why?
For lunch you wanna focus on keeping insulin low. Just about all veggies and fruit have carbs, however you can pick foods with a low amounts of carbs that also have fiber to go with it and slow down the digestion and the result is that your insulin stays low enough to still burn fat even though carbs are present. This way we also get all the good stuff in plants: vitamins, minerals, and fiber but not have to stop burning fat. As for the protein, eating too much will cause your body to convert the excess into glucose (gluconeogenesis) and that in turn will disrupt ketosis. As for fruit during lunch, olives and avocado are just about the only ones that have low enough levels of carbs to keep you in ketosis. Also if you're having trouble getting the low calories veggies to be palatable, just add butter, coconut oil, salt, hot sauce, or throw in some bacon.

3rd meal- (like lunch, but more lenient with carbs)
Ingredients:
Veggies:few carbs are okay for this meal.
Protein: fast proteins are more accepted than they were for lunch
Fat: this depends on how many carbs there are. More carbs means less fat
Carbs: Starches are prefered over sugers. Now is the best time for fruit if ever (but fruit is still not optimal because of the fructose content. Fructose is like glucose that prefers to go to the liver, so after low carbin it for a while it's not bad, it is prefered to keep liver glycogen lower by only taking in glucose when it’s more likely to go to muscle cells)
Ex: white rice, sweet potatoes.

Why?
It's the end of the day and if you have properly kept your insulin low, then your cells should have been using up their stored fat and glycogen. Also at the end of the day all of your cells are less sensitive to If carbs are eaten, now is the time to do it. At first it’s probably helpful to have carbs every dinner then try taper it off to one carb dinner every couple of days (the longer you go the deeper into ketosis you will get). Also carbs help you sleep better so timing it so you get some as your last meal works out pretty well. This meal is the appropriate time to cheat. The basic idea of the whole diet is to make sure that you only take in carbs when your body has somewhere (liver or muscle cells) to put them. Once your liver and muscles are full, all carbs either get burnt up immediately or converted to fat (because there's nowhere else to put it) and sent to fat cells (because of the high insulin levels). The liver will eventually use up its glycogen, but this (depending on how fat-adapted your body is and how much intense exercise is being done) can take a while. Also the body can turn protein and fat into glucose. Just know that the more carbs you eat, the less fat you will burn and the more you will store. This effect carries on to the the next day because the more full of glycogen the liver has, the less it will convert fat to ketones.

Snacks?
You should find that if you do this diet properly, your appetite in general should decrease and in between meals it should be almost non existent. Perhaps the best aspect of this diet is its power to eliminate your appetite. Anytime you find yourself wanting food in between meals it's because the last meal didn’t put you in a good place to burn fat. If you are craving something sweet but don't want to take yourself completely out of ketosis there are still options so you don't need to give in to the carbs. I really like unsweetened coconut flakes. Especially with dark chocolate added they taste good and are loaded with fiber, and are a decent source of potassium. Remember how cells store glucose as glycogen? Well they require potassium to do that so when one is low on potassium and they're consuming carbs, the subsequent glucose spike can only be used as immediate fuel or converted into fat to be shuttled into fat cells. So the glycogen is never stored anywhere for later use. Consequently ~30 min after the glucose spike the sweet tooth kicks back in! It's recommend to get ~4000 g of potassium per day. The best sources are avocados at ~800g (if you wanna keep burning fat), sweet potato ~500g, or vegetables.

How to know you’re in ketosis?
There are products that measure this value (from blood, urine,or breath), but you can also tell from the way you feel. At first there should be a huge difference in energy level and focus. This is because the brain is experiencing a new type of fuel. Also, you tend to hold on to less water (you might drop some pounds the first few days, this is just water weight). Ketones are acidic so the body has to get rid of them in various ways. As a result you can expect to have a few ketone-laced burps and urine that smells kinda like corn flakes.

Exercise? (if you feel like it)
To incorporate exercise to burn more fat, it’s important to exercise at times when your body is ready to burn fat. This is done by avoiding carbs before. The best exercises for fat loss are: low level cardio, heavy weight lifting, and HIIT. Carbs after an intense workout (heavy lifting or HIIT) actually help if you’re trying to increase muscle mass. Also after intense exercise, muscle cells are more sensitive to glucose. This lets you take in a lot more carbs without it turning to fat and increases how much fat you burn the next day. If you want to do cardio to burn fat, you need to bring the intensity down. To do this any kind of cardio is good just make sure that you can breathe through your nose the whole time. Specifically, your heart rate should be under 70% of your max heart rate. At this pace your body can focus on aerobic metabolism. This will leave you feeling less hungry after because you are burning fat not glucose.