Which Diets Actually Work? What is Ketogenic diet?

The ketogenic diet has been rising in popularity, and for good reason — it is simple and yields significant results. Whether you want to lose fat, increase energy, enhance brain health, improve your blood sugar levels, or improve your overall health, keto may be the diet you are looking for.

However, before we learn how to start a keto diet, we must develop a deeper understanding of what it is and why it is so effective. Knowing what and why behind this way of eating plays an integral role in your keto diet success as well as knowing how to get started. So you're ready to adapt to a ketogenic diet to lose weight and improve your health you've come to the right place making any big lifestyle or diet changes can be challenging especially at first there are a lot of new routines to learn and old habits to unlearn but we've seen over and over again with the people in the stayfitfree.net community that over time keto becomes the new normal and the dramatic results are so worth it what's the best way to get started with a ketogenic diet. 

Here we'll outline three steps to keto success. 

First let's define what a keto diet is?

 Simply put it is a high fat low carb low to moderate protein diet by drastically restricting carbohydrates in your diet the body will enter and sustain ketosis a metabolic state where the body burns a highly efficient alternative fuel called ketones not only does the keto diet help with weight loss but current research also indicates that it can help to improve health conditions like heart disease, type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer's disease.

 

To start your keto journey off on the right foot here are our top three key pieces of advice eat the right foods eat the right amount of those foods and prepare for the keto flu.

 Let's start with food your goal on a consistent basis is to replace carb heavy foods with keto friendly foods. This will help you eat fewer calories than before and help jump-start and sustain ketosis you will need to focus on meat high fat dairy and healthy oils, leafy green and above-ground vegetables nuts and seeds, avocado, berries and keto approved sweeteners.

 You'll need to entirely avoid grains, sugar fruit and starchy vegetables. for more info see our video keto cooking, keto food list for plenty more information on what to eat and what not to eat on keto.

 You'll be relying a lot more on home-cooked food than packaged processed or prepare foods it's important to note that you don't have to figure out how to do this on your own there are so many resources on stayfitfree.net including meal plans, shopping lists budget breakdowns and recipes will teach you to avoid common pitfalls how to read labels and nutritional information and which keto foods can be swapped and substituted for foods that are off-limits.

 You might be surprised how many things like bread, pasta, cookies and ice cream you can still enjoy if you just learn how to make them keto friendly. It's not just eating the right foods though that is the foundation of the diet you must also learn how much to eat which brings us to our-

 Second point 

A keto diet can help you to restrict your calorie intake in a slow and steady way which leads to long-term weight loss but it can be hard to do this if you're not carefully tracking what you eat one way to figure out how much you should be eating. Keto diet is to check on your progress every few weeks and adjust accordingly if you're not seeing the results you want you can also use the stayfitfree.net keto calculator which we find to be a more precise method you'll also need to track your macro nutrients or macros those are fats, carbs and protein which need to be kept in careful balance to keep your body in ketosis.

As a general rule we recommend eating below 35 grams of carbs a day and aiming to get 70% of your calories from fat and 25% from protein.

 The keto calculator can help you dial in exactly what to be aiming for each day and will keep you on track for a deeper dive into macros. 

Check out our video macros and keto calculator finally when you're starting out on a ketogenic diet. You must prepare for the keto flu when you first cut back on carbohydrates, your body will experience some changes as it adjusts to your lifestyle one possible change is the keto flu an umbrella term for the flu-like symptoms you may encounter like fatigue or mental fogginess usually these symptoms only last a short while but it is best to be prepared you will need to drink more water increase your sodium, potassium and magnesium intake and eat more fat especially MCTS. Most importantly check in with yourself from time to time to monitor the changes in your body composition and how you feel to be sure that the ketogenic diet is the right choice for you for more info on keto be sure to watch the other stayfitfree.net videos and check out the wealth of information on our website stayfitfree.net