What's up with the ketogenic diet?

The Ketogenic diet

When you go on a diet you have many options like low fat high carb diet, moderate fat, protein and carbs, high protein low carb diet and the most controversial diet is the ketogenic diet. You may ask what is the ketogenic diet?

When your body hasn’t got any glucose it the bloodstream, the only thing that your body has is your body fat, which your body can use as triglyceride and body ketones. You can also get into ketosis by lowering your amount of carbohydrates you consume in your body by 25-50 grams which is like 500-1kg of vegetables only per day. The ketogenic diet is also used to treat epilepsy and is very effective for that usage. The media took notice it in the 1970 with the famous Atkins Diet which was invented by Dr. Atkins who claimed that you can lose weight without eating carbohydrates, only fats and protein. The idea was controversial because then was mainstream to eat low fat and high carbohydrate diet which got many people sick because the fat was replaced by sugar. The Atkins diet was the firt one to open door for many other diets like the Zone diet, The Atkins Revolution and the Paleo Diet. All of which require you to limit your daily intake of carbohydrates.

So how to start?

The quickest approach for going into ketosis is to workout with high reps and eat a high protein diet for 2 days and no carbohydrates and little fat. After that you can go on eating only high fat and high protein foods like red meat, chicken legs, fatty fish and lots of leafy vegetables. Your main goal is to eat a large proportion of your diet 60 % from fats and choose the one that has mono unsaturated fats like olive oil, canola oil, peanuts, almonds, pumpkin seeds and all kinds of seeds and nuts. With this diet I recommend not to lift heavy weights because you can’t and to lift moderate to light to failure so you can maintain your muscle. Also add low intensity cardio so you can lose the weight faster but not burn your muscles. Do it every day like 30-60 minutes and workout with weights 2-3 days every week.

Does it work?

The Ketogenic diet is a diet that can be used for losing weight quickly and effectively reducing hunger and cravings because of the slow release of fatty acids and protein in the bloodstream. If you do it right with increasing the amount of protein, mono unsaturated fat and vegetables it can be great tool for quick and easy way to lose fat and maintain muscle. For some who can’t keep up with the restriction of carbs and 3 weeks of adaptation to the new diet a more balanced approach is better solution than restricting of one macro nutrient. At the end it’s best to try it for 3 weeks and see it how it works, some other approach is that bodybuilders use is to cycle carbs and do 3 weeks of no carbs and then a reffed with supple amount of carbs. But that is more advanced and if you want to lose weight the best diet is the one you stick with it for the long run.