Removing glucose from carbohydrate foods will cause the body to burn fat for energy instead. In some ways, it’s similar to the Atkins diet, which similarly boosts the body’s fat-burning abilities through eating only low-carb foods, along with getting rid of foods high in carbs and sugar. Another major benefit of the keto diet is that there’s no need to count calories, feel hungry or attempt to burn loads of calories through hours of intense exercise. Therefore, when you’re following a ketogenic diet plan for beginners, your body is burning fat for energy rather than carbohydrates, so in the process most people lose weight fast and excess body fat rapidly, even when consuming lots of fat and adequate calories through their daily food intake. Once glucose is no longer available from food sources, we begin to burn stored fat instead, or fat from our food. We cannot make glucose and only have about 24 hours’ worth stored in our muscle tissue and liver. Because most folks live on a high carb diet, our bodies normally run on glucose (or sugar) for energy. Keto diets, like most low carb diets, work through the elimination of glucose. However, when glucose levels are cut off due to low-carb intake, the body starts to burn fat instead and produces ketones that can be measured in the blood (using urine strips, for example). These foods are broken down into sugar (insulin and glucose) in our blood once we eat them, and if these levels become too high, extra calories are much more easily stored as body fat and results in unwanted weight gain. Today the standard keto diet goes by several different names, including the “low-carbohydrate” or “very-low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet”(LCKD or VLCKD for short).Īt the core of the classic keto diet is severely restricting intake of all or most foods with sugar and starch (carbohydrates). Unfortunately, long-term fasting is not a feasible option for more than a few days, therefore the keto diet was developed to mimic the same beneficial effects of fasting.Įssentially, the keto diet for beginners works by “tricking” the body into acting as if its fasting (while reaping intermittent fasting benefits), through a strict elimination of glucose that is found in carbohydrate foods. Researchers found that fasting - avoiding consumption of all foods for a brief period of time (such as with intermittent fasting), including those that provide carbohydrates - helped reduce the amount of seizures patients suffered, in addition to having other positive effects on body fat, blood sugar, cholesterol and hunger levels. What is the ketogenic diet exactly? The classic ketogenic diet is a very low-carb diet plan that was originally designed in the 1920s for patients with epilepsy by researchers working at Johns Hopkins Medical Center.

This state results in consistent, fairly quick weight loss until your body reaches a healthy and stable weight.

Once the blood levels of ketones rise to a certain point, you officially reach ketosis.Without glucose coursing through your body, it’s now forced to burn fat and produce ketones instead.

Increase your consumption of healthy fats, which help create satiety.

Fortunately, if you’re new to this type of eating plan, a keto diet for beginners, or keto basics, is surprising simple to follow. Making that switch will place your body in a state of “ketosis,” when your body becomes a fat burner rather than a sugar burner. It works because it changes the very “fuel source” that the body uses to stay energized: namely, from burning glucose (or sugar) to dietary fat, courtesy of keto diet recipes and the keto diet food list items, including high-fat, low-carb foods. Rather than relying on counting calories, limiting portion sizes, resorting to extreme exercise or requiring lots of willpower, this low-carb diet takes an entirely different approach to weight loss and health improvements. In fact, these are some of the direct benefits of the keto diet. The keto diet works for such a high percentage of people because it targets several key, underlying causes of weight gain - including hormonal imbalances, especially insulin resistance coupled with high blood sugar levels, and the cycle of restricting and “binging” on empty calories due to hunger that so many dieters struggle with. Unlike many fad diets that come and go with very limited rates of long-term success, the ketogenic diet (or keto diet) has been practiced for more than nine decades (since the 1920s) and is based upon a solid understanding of physiology and nutrition science.

Keto fat protein carb percentages