Introduction to the Keto Diet
Hello and happy new year, fellow Steemians. As we all reflect on 2017 and look forward to what 2018 brings us, I thought it’d be a great time to introduce people to the ketogenic diet, colloquially known as a keto diet. I’ve had an enormous amount of success losing weight with keto and figured resolution time would ideal to create a nice synopsis and compile some of my favorite keto resources into one spot. My goal is to take a deeper dive into the long term and further health benefits in later posts. Pictured above is the perfect start to a keto day, bacon and eggs fall almost perfectly on the ~70/30 fat to protein ratio suggested in the diet.
What is the keto diet?
Keto at its most basic level is a high fat, low carbohydrate diet. The main purpose is to restrict carbs and consume enough calories from fat to put your body in a state called ketosis. The most common ratio I’ve seen is 65% Fat, 30% Protein, and 5% Carbs. Many people often track this more simply by restricting carbs, excluding fiber, to less than 20, 50, or 100g per day.
What is ketosis?
Ketosis occurs when your body switches from burning glycogen for fuel to ketones. It accomplishes this by limiting the amount of glucose, and subsequently glycogen, in the blood so your body is forced to look elsewhere for energy. This initial switch can take a few days or up to a week depending on how restrictive you are with carbohydrates. Once the body is depleted of glycogen, fat molecules are broken down by the liver to release ketones which are then used as fuel. We can dive further into the pathways and why the body initially prefers glucose/glycogen in a later post.
Tricks for getting into ketosis
As stated, ketosis can take a few days but there are some intentional things we can do to enter the state more quickly. I mentioned that depleting glycogen is necessary for the body to switch its fuel source. A fasted workout is a great way to accomplish this and becomes even more effective when supplemented with exogenous ketones or MCT oil. The easiest and most effective way in my opinion is to drink some bulletproof coffee after a fasted morning workout. MCT stands for medium chain triglycerides and are easiest to equate to the fat burning analog of sugary gel packets that athletes sometimes take. Something referred to as the ‘keto flu’ can occur in the period your body is not quite used to burning fat. The keto flu is generally attributed to a lack of salts and electrolytes. Sipping on some beef or chicken broth is a great way to keep these up and to stay hydrated.
Can I drink alcohol while on the keto diet?
Yes you can! You need to avoid drinking beer and most wines to stay in ketosis. The easiest way to track is sticking to base liquors and zero calorie mixers. A favorite drink of mine was bourbon, club soda and a dash of bitters or a simpler jack and diet. There are two other caveats. First, the ketogenic diet does lower your alcohol tolerance and when combined with some quicker than normal weight loss can make you a very cheap date. Second, both ketosis and alcohol breakdown rely on the liver. Drinking will stagnate your keto and weight loss as it prioritizes the breakdown of alcohol in the blood stream.
Below are some good resources to get started, but feel free to leave some questions in the comments. My next post will talk about some common keto foods and highlight how easy it is to eat a ketogenic diet without breaking the bank or
Best Keto Resources
https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/
Dr. Dom D’Agostino is on the forefront of applied ketogenic and fasting research as a therapy for a variety of diseases. Below is his website as well as his interview on Joe Rogan's podcast. Quick note, the medical definition of ketogenic diet is a lot more restrictive, so Dom tends to refer to the standard keto diet that most people use by it's medical name of modified ketogenic or modified Atkins diet.
P.S. Steak is definitely keto approved:
Any diet that approves steak is my kind of diet ;) Would be cool to do an article on good fats vs. bad fats - since you don't get the benefits of quality animal fats if you're taking in refined vegetable oils...
I'll definitely add that to the list of topics to explore. It's really as shame how much damage the initial correlation studies have done to the Western diet. The switch to margarine and other hydrogenated oils has had such an effect on people's health.
You should check Alex, both here and on his web page - he's done a ton of articles on fat-based diet. @alexfergus.com
Thanks, I'll definitely check him out.
A lot of people might say wow so much fat! But they have no idea how nourishing animal fat is to our bodies. Animal fat has been consumed in liberal amounts for thousands of years! It is a must in our diets! Thank you for sharing this great post!
The big factor at play is really that some nutrients cannot be absorbed or converted unless fat is present. Also we are finally understanding the effect of cholesterol on hormonal regulation and that it's not just some artery gunk.
I read somewhere someone developed seasonal allergies after he went on this diet, could of been a one off case though. Coconut oil is supposed to be a good addition to this diet, is it something you've incorporated into it?
That's strange, I'll see if I can find anything. The toughest thing about researching the anecdotal effects of keto is that anytime someone comes up with a problem, googling returns more results of people SOLVING said anecdotal issue.
It can actually get a bit frustrating. The only real hard issue that I've found regarding keto not being suitable for people is who have a different expression of the APOE gene: https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/gene/APOE#
I'm wondering if there is some connection between whichever expression of the gene that person had and their allergies. This is all just conjecture and I'll definitely see if I can find more info on it.
Edit: Also forgot to mention the coconut oil, that is what I use for MCT in my coffee. I believe most MCT oils are derived from refining down coconut oil.
Some people's stomachs / digestive track may just not be compatible with that amount of meat as well.
That said, changing your diet this drastically will have results similar to the application of a new pharmaceutical drug. 99% of people could do it and be fine, but that 1% could have some weird things happen (e.g. the seasonal allergy story or some unusual digestive infection / issue). It's bound to happen just because everyone is a bit different in their genetic make-up. The same can be said for pharma drugs where 1 random person will have crazy weird side effects, which you hear rattled off at the end of drug commercials.
Great post and interest topic choice, @flountown!
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keep it health bro