Learn everything you need to know before starting the Keto Diet plan including it's history, guidelines and components, and all of the science behind it.
The ketogenic diet is a nutrition plan that takes advantage of a very interesting aspect of the human body and how we process and react to certain foods, this aspect is called ketosis.
Ketosis is a metabolic state n the body that happens when our diet has extremely low quantities of carbohydrates that triggers fatty acid oxidation to become our main source of fuel.
When fatty acid oxidation reaches a certain threshold and carbohydrate availability gets very low, the body begins producing what are known as ketone bodies.
These "keytone bodies" are then used in specific tissues throughout the body, especially by the brain.
The ketogenic diet can allow us to survive without food intake, or on a diet that is very low in carbohydrates for extended periods of time. From an evolutionary point of view, ketosis appears to be an adapted survival mechanism of the body.
For the purpose that you may want to try a ketogenic diet, we're assuming you're looking at using it as a tool to lose fat. This diet should achieve that goal by allowing you to live on such low levels of carbohydrates that you will lower your insulin levels much lower than normal.
It is suggested that insulin plays a large role in the composition of your body by regulating fat storage, so by targeting insulin levels via a ketogenic diet, it can help you capitalize on the chemical properties of your body, ketosis, and thus help you burn bodyfat.
The ketogenic diet is not really like most other diets that have arisen from health and fitness enthusiasts. It appears that the ketogenic diet arose from the medical field in the use of controlling seizures and in children with epilepsy.
Over the years, it has been assimilated into main-stream culture and has been a popular choice for fat loss.
In order to get into ketosis, and ultimately stay in ketosis for a good amount of time, you're looking at keeping your carbohydrate intake to certain levels. This threshold varies per person, but typically somewhere between 5% and 15% of daily calorie intake should work.
Following a keto diet can be difficult, and could get boring if you're not prepared. There are many keto recipe blogs out there that can help, but many of the recipes you'll find contain "interesting" ingredients you may not be used to. We have compiled a few sample keto diet plans and shopping lists to help you get started.