What is the Keto Diet? A Beginner’s Guide || Controlling Blood Sugar and Diabetes ||

 

What is the Keto Diet? A Beginner’s Guide

Welcome to Keto Diet 101! This beginner's guide to the Ketogenic diet will give you the knowledge you need to get started on the keto diet and start losing weight.

Now, the keto diet isn’t the most straightforward to adhere to, especially for beginners. Lots of the guides I’ve read over the years go into so much fine detail from the start, that it can be a little overwhelming and feel like you need a science major just to get started.

So in this guide, I’m going to do my best to avoid using too much jargon and going into too much detail on the science of the diet. Instead, I’m going to focus on the simple steps you need to take to make sure you’re doing the diet properly and will be able to achieve your goals.

In order to help you understand what’s going on in your body on this diet, there will be a little science but I’ll try to keep it minimal and focus on what you need to do. If you don’t understand something or want a little more clarification, feel free to send me an email or pop your query in the comments section!

With that little intro, let’s jump in and get you started on your keto diet journey!

The Keto Diet. Turning you into a Fat-Burning Machine!

The Ketogenic Diet is a way of eating that will completely change the way your body gets energy from food, and done properly can lead to rapid fat loss.

The diet is high in fat, moderate with protein, and very low carbohydrate sometimes referred to as a Keto Diet or a Low Carb, High Fat (LCHF) diet.

Your aim is to reach the state of Ketosis, where your body stops using sugar for fuel and instead starts to burn your body’s stored fats alongside those in your diet as it’s the primary fuel.

This change in working can lead to a range of benefits, like avoiding the post-lunch slump after a sugar high, improved mental clarity throughout the day, and an increased sense of consistent energy.

The diet has been around since the early 1900s, but it’s only recently that people have come to see this as one of the most effective ways to lose weight fast. Read on to learn everything you need to know to get started on the Ketogenic Diet.

The Keto diet is built around the theory that your body is better designed to burn fat than it is to burn sugar. But for most people in the modern world, sugar and carbs are the main fuels we use to power our bodies.

For many years we’ve been told to avoid fats, to eat low-fat cheese, skimmed milk, and fat-free ice- cream. We’ve avoided the fats but still find ourselves with a growing obesity epidemic? Why is that?

When you eat a high-carb meal, your body works to break those carbohydrates down into its favorite source of energy – Glucose

It then needs to get that glucose around your body and use it, so your body produces the hormone – Insulin.

Insulin tells your body that it should burn the sugar and carbs you’ve just eaten first, which makes sense. The problem is that while your body is using that sugar, it doesn’t need any of the fats you may have just eaten, so it stores the fat for later!

In fact with enough sugar in the bloodstream, your body will start turning the sugar into fats too! through a process called Lipogenesis.

Your body gets so reliant on this glucose for energy that it can’t go long without a top-up. This leads to hangry office workers and reaching for the snacks.

So what’s the alternative?

When you reduce the number of carbs and glucose coming into your body, it has to start looking for an alternative energy source. Enter all that fat that it’s been storing away all this time! Your body undergoes changes in the transition onto a Keto Diet, and eventually enters the metabolic state called Ketosis.

Ketosis is a natural function of your body, where fats become the main energy source instead of sugars. Your body produces ketones from the stored fat, which can fuel the brain and body.

This is a survival trick for when food is scarce. Our ancestors needed this ability for hard times, but we can use this trick to lose weight without starvation, by only limiting the carbs. Most people have enough fat on their bodies to live off ketones for weeks without food!

Reaching ketosis doesn’t happen overnight, but our bodies are extremely adaptive. When we take away carbs and load up on the fats, it will soon turn to produce ketones for fuel. Optimal ketones can lead to rapid fat burning, improved mental performance, and steady energy levels.

Read on for more detail on the Keto Diet, use the contents menu below to jump ahead if you wish: