In this article we will break down how to get started with a ketogenic lifestyle a little bit more in depth. Now what is the ketogenic diet? The ketogenic diet is a sustainable, enjoyable, high fat, moderate protein, low carb lifestyle that’s based on evolutionary logic and rigorous scientific literature. There is so much science backing up the ketogenic diet that we’re in really good shape when we look at the overall health effects and what it’s going to do for our body composition and for a multitude of other things.
Before we get into the diet specifically we have to talk about what the ketogenic diet is about. What are ketones? Because the ketogenic diet is all about creating ketones. The ketones that the body creates are basically the fourth macronutrient. Our macro nutrients that we know are proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, but ketones are sort of a miraculous 4th macronutrient, although we don’t find it in nature. Our liver creates this whole separate macronutrient that’s treated in the body in a different way than proteins, fats or carbohydrates. So we’re going to break down why these ketones are awesome and why you need them and why you lose so much weight on the keto diet.
Why do we need ketones
Why do we need ketones? Why does our body even create them in the first place? It seems like it’s not just for weight loss. It comes down to the fact that our brains draw so much energy from our bodies we don’t realize that. This little two to three pound brain inside of our head uses up 25% of our daily energy needs. That is a lot of energy and the crazy thing is people don’t realize this, but the brain actually runs mainly on glucose.
So what that means is that when we are in periods of starvation or when we can’t have carbohydrates for whatever reason (from an evolutionary standpoint this would happen all the time) it would mean that the body would have to start breaking down our proteins in our muscles and in our joints in order to create glucose to fuel our demanding brain. Now where’s the logic in that being an efficient process? Why would our body want to sacrifice all of its own tissue just to fuel the brain? That’s where ketones come in.
The body has a mechanism where it says if there’s no carbohydrates, we shift the fuel source over to ketones. The liver starts creating ketones which happen to fuel the brain and fuel the body perfectly if not better than glucose so that’s how this all comes into equation. It’s an evolutionary logical thing, but it also has more to do with just enhanced metabolic health, so that’s why ketones are so important and why we actually have them. But how do these ketones actually make us lose weight?
How do ketones affect us
How do these ketones actually make us lose weight? How do they affect us? Just the act of going into the ketogenic diet forces us to utilize fats for fuel. We always kind of have this barrier between us with carbohydrates. Whereas if our body learns how to use fats because we’re on a ketogenic diet, the cellular tissues begin metabolizing that fat for fuel, which allows us to stay very lean, because the fat that’s on our body becomes an avid fuel source.
The other thing is it lowers insulin. Insulin is a fat storing hormone despite what some people will say. Insulin is the absorptive form and if insulin is high in the blood or even activated, we’re going to be storing. So if insulin is low because we’re on the ketogenic diet, we’re in a good spot and we’re much less likely to store fat, even if we’re not actively burning it at that point in time.
What can you eat
The thing is there’s a lot of different things that you could eat. What’s important is that you know the basics of it. You can eat meat, you can eat your grass fed, grass finished beef. You can eat your good quality pork, you can eat your good quality pork chops, good quality bacon, game meats, you can eat poultry. So chicken, turkey, all of that stuff is good to go.
Then we move into some of the other ones. We’ve got eggs, you can eat eggs and don’t worry about the cholesterol, because honestly your body needs the cholesterol, especially on the ketogenic diet. Cheeses-guess what, almost all cheeses are fair game. Coconut, tons of coconut, one of the best sources of medium chain triglycerides, good healthy fats.
Nuts, some nuts have higher carbs than others, but again for most of it you can eat all the nuts. You can eat walnuts, you can eat pecans, macadamia nuts, all these are good to go. When it comes down to seeds you’re going to enjoy your seeds too, so that means you can have chia seeds and flax seeds, you can have papitas, you can have sunflower seeds, anything like that.
Veggies-just because you’re not consuming carbohydrates doesn’t mean you can’t have any veggies. Maybe avoid high sugar vegetables like peppers, but all the leafy greens are good to go. Most of even the starchy veggies like a lot of squashes. You can have spaghetti squashes and zucchini. You can make zoodles with zucchini so you have noodles and you can make lasagna out of zucchini.
Then oils, people think oil is just canola oil, you’ve got so many different options. Coconut oil, palm oil, avocado oil, macadamia nut oil, walnut oil, so many different choices. You’re never going to fall victim to not enough food, there’s plenty of food to go around.
With the meats one thing you want to pay attention to, is your system is running clean on a keto diet. So you want to make sure you’re getting grass fed, grass finish spin. A couple extra dollars and get the good stuff.
