The Keto Diet Plan For Beginners (PART 1)
When it comes to dieting, it seems that there’s a new one every week when some celebrity shares their secret diet plan that has a foreign sounding name and helps them stay in shape. But one diet has continued to endure and genuinely seems to work for many people. The ketosis diet has become popular because of its straightforward approach, and reliance on foods that are truly healthy for you.
At Axis Labs, we’re advocates for the keto diet, it’s why we offer products like KETORUSH, and Fat Bomb. We’re also advocates of making informed decisions about your health and wellness, so we’re proud to present this two-part series on the ketogenic diet!
What is Ketosis?
Your body derives energy from a variety of places, namely carbohydrates, fats, and proteins found in your food. It will first and foremost turn to easy sources of energy like carbohydrates. But when your body doesn’t have a ready source of carbohydrates to burn, it instead turns to fats. When your body starts burning fats, it enters a state of ketosis. While it might sound like a product or additive, ketosis is actually a natural part of your metabolic process. As your body breaks down the fats you’ve provided it, an acid called ketones is produced. Your body uses ketones as the main source of energy instead of carbs. This shift from burning carbs to fats for energy means that you’re burning fat at a much higher rate than you were previously. This means that you can achieve your weight loss goals faster.
Why is it so Popular?
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There’s no denying that the ketogenic diet has enjoyed its share of the spotlight in recent years, it has been around much longer than many realize. The first proposal of this diet was actually in 1921 by physician Russel Wilder at the Mayo Clinic. Wilder was interested in using diet to address inflammation and epilepsy in children and adults. Since then, there have been various versions of the diet, but the keto diet of today is the most refined, and hopefully, effective iteration. Perhaps the main reason the diet is so popular today is that it's easy to understand: enjoy a low-carb, high-fat diet and avoid processed foods. Indeed, many people enjoy the ketogenic diet because it doesn’t require them to completely overhaul their eating habits. Of course, the promise of the keto diet has much to do with its popularity. Your body has the potential to become a fat burning machine, jumpstarting your metabolism, stabilizing your blood sugar, and even improving your brain function. What’s not to like about those results? |
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4 Quick Tips to Get Started
If you’re interested in the ketogenic diet, you’re likely looking for ways to get started fast. Fortunately, you may be able to coax your body into ketosis fairly quickly if you follow some of these tips.
#1: Cut Carbs
This is, of course, the whole point of the diet, so starting here is your best bet for seeing results fairly quickly. It’s estimated that 45 to 65 percent of the average American diet is made up of carbohydrates. That means that most people are consuming 225 to 325 grams of carbs every day. To enter ketosis more quickly, the ketogenic diet requires that you limit your intake of carbs to just 25-50 grams per day. Any more, and you can actually throw your body out of ketosis. To visualize 50 grams of carbs, that’s about three small slices of bread, a banana, or a pear. Things like fruits are unexpected sources of carbs.
#2: Limit Protein Intake
Your body makes use of proteins to build and maintain strong, powerful muscles. It also uses proteins to repair your body’s tissues, produce hormones and enzymes, and much more. However, on the keto diet, you’ll want to reduce the amount of protein you ingest. Followers of the ketogenic diet aim to make protein only about 20 percent of their daily calorie intake. But the goal here is to not deprive your body of the nutrients it needs to stay healthy. Instead, reducing proteins actually limits any chances your body has to turn excess proteins into carbohydrates through a process called gluconeogenesis. Those newfound carbs can then force your body out of its state of ketosis.
#3: Practice Fasting
Fasting is a great way to help your body enter into ketosis. Many naturally jump to the conclusion that fasting means not eating anything at all. That’s not always a healthy choice. Instead, being selective in when you eat allows you to fast throughout the day. For instance, some ketogenic diet followers eat during an eight hour period in the day. The next 16 hours of the day, they don’t eat. Another way to do this is to follow a low-calorie diet in addition to the keto diet. This means that men might limit their calories to about 1,500 per day, and women limit to 1,200. By fasting or consuming fewer calories, your body relies on its stored fat to offer you the energy you need.
#4: Use Keto Supplements
Of course, sometimes we could all use a little help on our diet. That’s where keto supplements come into play. These supplements are formulated to help you enter ketosis and stay there, even if you have more than your daily limit of carbs. That’s because they make use of a compound called exogenous ketones. These are another form of the ketone beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB) that your body naturally produces on it’s on. Studies have found that the exogenous ketones found in keto supplements don’t directly burn fat, but help in other ways. Instead, they work as appetite suppressants and diminish our hunger hormones. The use of exogenous ketones has also been shown to lower blood sugar levels, which can be helpful for those with Type 2 diabetes who are following the keto diet.
