A keto diet, also known as keto meals, is a high-fat, moderate-protein, low carb diet plan that is becoming popular in the food and nutrition industry right now. This diet requires you to consume lower amounts of carbs and high levels of healthy fats. It is often mistaken for the Atkins diet. However, even though they both require low carbs, Atkins preaches for more proteins, while a keto diet preaches more fats. A keto diet aims to ensure your body reaches ketosis, turning the body into a fat-burning machine.
If you are tired of looking for a certified nutritional and dietary plan to help you with your weight loss process, then a keto diet is all you may need. This low carb diet plan has proven to be highly effective for athletic performances, muscle retention and growth, and, most popularly, weight loss. So, we are about to dive into a keto diet.
It is no longer news that many athletic and sports personalities around the world now opt to follow the keto diet plan, and stand by it. For those of you who watch WWE wrestling, a perfect example is Triple H. At almost 50 years, some of the younger wrestlers are not as young and fit as he is. That is one advantage of a keto diet to your body. A keto diet helps reach goals of more energy, weight loss, and muscle retention, plus other things. The diets may be a little confusing at a glance, but there are some tips that can help give a better understanding of a keto diet.
Understand The Keto Diet
Many people still have difficulties differentiating between a keto diet and an Atkins diet. They are different dietary patterns with their principles. They have some similarities, which include a low carb diet plan, but while Atkins is very moderate in fats and high in fats, Keto diets are high in fats and moderate in protein. The difference is the emphasis on fats for the keto meal plan. So, for the keto diet explained, we have these tips:
Consume Enough Healthy Fats
People tend to run away from consuming too much fat while on keto diets, but the truth is you will need enough healthy fats. Avoid unhealthy fats and trans-fats, and go for MCT (Medium-chain triglycerides). Some may ask why? The answer is because of their molecular structure, MCTs are converted to ketones easily.
Staying Hydrated
Regular drinking of water is essential for people on keto diets. Staying hydrated will boost physical and athletic performances. It also helps flush out toxic wastes, ensuring the body is functioning optimally, and keeping the body metabolic processes at their optimal best. The right amount of water you should consume while on a keto meal plan is 32 -48 ounces by midday. Also, taking water once you wake up can help start the metabolic process. Some of the main sources of fats that are healthy are nuts, oily fish, seeds, whole eggs, nut butter, red meat, and avocado.
Be Wary Of The Number Of Proteins You Consume
The structure of keto diets is built on moderate protein consumption. Consumption of healthy fats is vital in keto diets. For the people who need to build muscles, there is no need to increase the protein levels in your keto diets to achieve this goal. This may interfere with the process of ketosis. Too much protein could cause glucogenesis (the conversion of amino acids into glucose sugars). These glucose sugars can take you off the path of ketosis, which is not what you want when on a keto diet.
Misconceptions of Keto Diets
Atkins diet used to be the people’s choice, due to its preference for moderate-fat, high protein, and low carbs. Nowadays, Keto diets are leading in the list of healthy diets. The keto meal plan is made up of moderate protein, low carbs, and high fat. This diet has been known to help in muscle retention, growth, and, most importantly, fat loss. You should see a keto diet as a way of turning the body from glucose to a fat-burning engine, making you lean and sharp in the shortest time possible.
No matter how good keto diets are, they will always have their critics. However, these criticisms emanate from the misconceptions people have about keto diets, leading them to negative conclusions.
There are many myths and misconceptions about keto meals, though some are worth highlighting over others. Here are some of the top misconceptions of keto diets.
Your Brain May Need a Large Quantity of Protein to Function
Many people believe that due to the low levels of carbs in keto diets, there is a high risk of brain damage. Following a keto diet strictly makes ketones another source of fuel for the body and brain. Even though glucose is still needed in small quantities, it can be gotten from proteins and the low level of carbs contained in keto diets, in a process popularly known as gluconeogenesis.
Keto Foods Can Also Lead to Muscle Waste
Criticisms are always centered on the belief that keto foods lead to loss of muscle. There is no truth in this belief. On the contrary, keto diets help in muscle mass growth and maintenance, if followed strictly. This is because the keto diets make the bodywork differently from an average intake of low carbs. The regular diets may cause muscle loss, but not keto diets.
Keto Diets Cause Deficiencies in Vitamins
People presume that ketogenic diets lead to a high level of vitamin deficiencies, putting the health of the body in jeopardy. This also is not the case. Many fruits indeed contain fructose, some other vegetables and foods are full of micro and macronutrients, which the body needs every day. Keto dieting is not just all about eating bacon, eggs, and cheese without consuming vegetables every day.
Ketogenic Diets Can Cause Clogging of Arteries
This is the most popular misconception. This is because people think that consuming fat is not good, and nothing can change their minds. They believe it is hazardous because it tends to clog arteries and may lead to heart diseases. But, healthy fats like polyunsaturated, natural, and monounsaturated fats can lower levels of cholesterol. Unhealthy fats like artificial saturated and trans-fats should be avoided strictly.
Keto Damages Bones
Another misconception is that keto foods make bones excrete calcium, leading to a condition called osteoporosis. It is not entirely true because only high levels of proteins can cause loss of calcium, and keto diets do not contain much of that.
How To Start A Keto Diet
The answer to the question, what is keto diet has been given, but the next question is, how do you start? Someone once said, “Everything is difficult till it becomes easy.” This quote applies to just about everything, including the keto diet, and the slim fast keto. When you start a ketogenic diet, your main aim should be to go into ketosis and maintain the process. There should be no need for you to worry about weight loss, the number of calories, or any other thing that may cause unnecessary distractions. Your main focus should be on ketosis and maintaining it. Some say it takes at least 21 days for a habit to be formed, whether good or bad. In reality, it may take up to 66 days or more to do that.
Steps for Adopting Keto Diets
The first three weeks may be very vital to setting the ball in motion with the diet. So, getting the early twenty-one days right may make all the difference, and from that point, motivation comes to continue the process, and enjoy all keto benefits.
Some of the important steps you should consider taking are:
Taking Note of What to Eat and What Not to Eat
This can be seen as the most important part of this process. Keeping track of what you eat and what not to eat can help you stay on course. You may consider eating foods such as eggs, meat, nuts, poultry, coconut oil, low carb vegetables, cheese, seeds, olive oil, butter, cream, fatty fish, and other healthy foods.
However, you should desist from eating fruits, root vegetables, cereals, pasta, rice, bread, sugary foods, starchy carbs, alcohol, artificial sweeteners, etc. Knowing the right proportion of what to eat is also important. The aim should be a ratio of 5% carbs, 20% protein, and 75% fat. Carb intake should be around 50g a day.
Know How to Plan your Meals
A good meal plan should prove to help in making your stay in line without going through brainstorming and guesswork every day. You should try to plan all meals for the week at one time. A recipe book may be resourceful and would give you more ideas. However, making meals at home is healthier and much more budget-friendly.
Take a Lot of Water
You are advised to take eight-ten cups of water a day. The body needs water for the metabolism of fat and digestion.
Try to Stay Active
Exercising every day will keep you fit and healthy, as well as accelerating the process of fat burning. However, in the first few days of eating keto diets, you should not overstress yourself with high-intensity activities. Do not overstress the body. After a few days, when the body is more accustomed to the keto diets, you can now start your normal routines or work-outs. By the third week, you should be back to your peak.
Cope With the Keto Flu
When you experience the keto flu, just know it will pass, so there is no cause for panic. The diet doesn’t make you sick but is detoxing the body. See it as a part of the process of ketosis.
Start a Food Guide
Have a complete record of whatever you eat and its effects on your body. The foods may have different results. Try focusing on the ones that give you more energy.
Keep Records
You can also use keto strips or ketone meters to measure your progress and confirm whether or not you are in ketosis.
How Does A Keto Diet Work?
Many articles have keto diets explained as meals as a miraculous way to stay fit and healthy, and people are so carried away by this news that they fail to ask questions. Now, it is true that keto dieting is excellent, but there are some conditions surrounding how great it can work for you. Although it can lead to a healthy and rapid weight loss in people, there is no confirmation that this works perfectly for healthy people. A test analysis of some patients comparing the consumption of low-fat and low-carb diet plans showed that low-carb diets led to slim fast keto, but also harmful levels of cholesterol.
You should also know that keto dieting can give a keto boost in the short run because people may not be able to sustain these diets for a longer period. When you give up on the keto diet plan, it leads back to weight gain, so losing weight should be a long-term plan, and should involve healthy lifestyles that are easier to manage. So, when you decide to start a keto diet, you should ask yourself, how long will I keep up with this diet?
Benefits and Other Effects
Keto diets, although renowned for its ability to cause weight loss, give you a keto boost, and help battle seizures in kids who have epilepsy. But the diets should go along with medication for optimal effect. Also, keto dieting has been known to help people with high sugar levels because it reduces insulin levels and decreases weight gain. Insulin is gotten from carbs, and since keto meals reduce carb intake, lower levels of insulin and sugars are sure. Studies have shown that keto diets help insulin sensitivity and reduce medication for diabetic patients.
Other researches show that the tendency to cause weight loss may not only depend on the keto dieting but other factors (mostly individual or family-related). These factors may include exercise levels, sex, stress pattern, race, and level of sleep, location, family history, health status, and many other factors. Since we all have varying degrees of these factors, what works for Mr. A may not work for Mr. B. This does not undermine the ability of keto diets to solve health problems, but it merely means that these factors may affect efficiency.
Keto diets are more beneficial to unhealthy people than healthier persons.
Is Keto Dieting Safe?
Keto meals may seem God sent to most of us, but the truth is there are some slim fast keto advantages as well as keto side effects associated with it.
These side effects mostly arise because the body is trying to adapt to the new diet pattern leading to keto burn, and it is temporary. Keto flu, as it is commonly called, is the most dominant of the keto side effects and lasts a few days or longer depending on your body system as an individual.
The symptoms of this flu are mild, and because it does not last for a long time, it is worth all the health benefits you can get. They include:
Reduced Mental Function
After just a few days of eating ketogenic diets, studies show that there may be a decrease in the role of the brain due to the metabolic processes that are taking place. The high fats give the brain the nutrients it needs, and the low carbs starve the brain for a little while, at least until the brain adjusts to the meal plan.
Low Levels of Energy
Carbohydrates make up most of the energy we use daily, and so it is vital to include them in our daily diets. But, having these carbs contradicts the aim of keto dieting and the low carb diet plan (which works on the principle of low carbs and high fat). However, after some time, the body adjusts to getting energy from the fats instead of carbs. Before then, the side effect of energy loss will be experienced.
Hunger and Sleep Issues
Ketogenic diets deals with eating healthy foods that contain the body requirements to stay healthy. This simply means that there may be quantities of these diets to be taken at a time. The stomach may have grown more used to being filled, high on nutrients, or not. However, when you start keto dieting, all that goes away. It may lead to hunger and affect sleep patterns. Sleep is not natural to come by when you are hungry. But, looking at the advantages in the long run, and the fact that the body will finally adjust to the diet gives all the hope you may need.
Some other keto side effects include nausea, low physical performances, digestive discomfort, and some unknown side effects. Try reducing the carbs before eliminating them, so that the body begins to burn more fats, and gives you a keto boost. Also, take more water and mineral salts, because keto diets could alter the balance.
In conclusion, a good knowledge of the keto diet, and how it helps in healthy weight loss may just be the difference between a healthy and an unhealthy lifestyle in an individual. So, start eating keto foods today, resist the fear of keto side effects and keto burn, and enjoy all its health and nutritious benefits.
