Many of the advantages of the ketogenic diet are rooted in its ability to control hunger much more effectively than other diets:
- Ketogenic Diets control blood sugar and minimize insulin spikes.
When we eat carbohydrates, our blood-glucose levels rise rapidly. This causes an equally rapid insulin response from the pancreatic gland. The insulin disperses excess blood glucose, which causes you to feel hungry all over again. By eating a low carbohydrate diet, we keep our blood sugar levels low and steady, and as a result, carb-induced hunger spikes are avoided. Reducing insulin levels is paramount to success with any diet, as insulin is the hormone that tells our bodies to store fat. By keeping our insulin levels low, we create an environment within our bodies that limits fat storage and promotes fat lipolysis.- Ketogenic Diets allow us to eat food that is satiating and filling.
Many find that restricting calories on a ketogenic diet is extremely easy. If you’re doing the ketogenic diet properly, you’ll be consuming the vast majority of your calories each day from fats and protein, both of which are extremely filling and can be quite delicious. Once you remove things like refined sugars and simple carbohydrates from your diet, you’ll find that 2,000 calories (or however many you aim to consume) leaves plenty of room to fill yourself up each day. Many keto dieters even find themselves having a hard time consuming enough food each day!and now, a deeper scientific explanation according to me and MY understanding:
(If you find discrepancies in my theory please let me know, I would love to hear your thoughts and opinions/ research I am not aware of)
Here are eleven things I think you should know about how your body works and the ketogenic diet:
1. The ketogenic diet is high fat, moderate protein, and low carbs
2. Because our bodies are built to survive, they will only use the easiest and most accessible source of fuel to produce energy, storing the rest. This means that in today's world where most of the population's metabolisms are running on high carb diets - where there is a constant influx of glucose readily accessible in the blood stream - the first thing the body will use for energy is carbs, second either dietary or muscle protein (it can be easily made into glucose), and last, fat, because it is the one nutrient that cannot be made into glucose for the body to use.
3. If you cut carbs but don't increase fat, the body will resort to it's second most available nutrient for energy: protein. This means essentially the body is still running on glucose, and often breaking down muscle in the process. Your metabolism's access to your fat stores is slightly increased because without the blood sugar spikes caused by carbs, your body has a decreased need to produce insulin. Insulin is basically a hormone that tells your fat cells to take the glucose out of the blood and make more fat cells (it does other stuff but we won't get into that). So without the insulin your body is finally able to do the opposite of making more fat cells: breaking them down. On a low carb high protein diet your metabolism is basically running in the same mode as before, except without the insulin. The other difference is that your glycogen stores will eventually empty, causing you to lose water weight (glycogen requires a lot of water to be stored) but not fat. (unless of course you are either burning so many calories or eating so few that you even run out of protein and are finally forced to use fat - again, this often includes muscle breakdown)
4. The requirements for fat to be the very first nutrient metabolized by the body are: 1. for your metabolism to be in a mode where glucose is NOT the main molecule used for energy and 2. for your fat cells to be accessible, meaning less insulin telling them to make more fat cells.
5. You can't just think to yourself, hey body, stop using glucose to make ATP, use fats instead, and stop making insulin! Your body WANTS to use glucose. That is what it has been trained to do your whole life, thanks to the prevalence of high-carbohydrate foods in our modern day diet. And as long as you are using glucose, your pancreas will continue to secrete insulin to manage it. Your metabolism cannot enter a different mode until it has been re-trained. And your body is very stubborn - it will not agree to be retrained unless forced.
6. In order to force your metabolism to start retraining into fat-burning mode, you have to starve it of glucose. That is the only way. (Unfortunately, the brain doesn't just need a source of ATP to survive, it also needs the actual molecule glucose. However there is one other type of molecule that the brain will take instead of glucose - ketones. This is perfect because guess what? One product of fat metabolism is....ketones! So starving yourself of glucose, as long as consuming enough fat, is okay)
7. So what combination of nutrients will accomplish this? The ketogenic diet, the perfect solution to the metabolism problem. High fat, extremely low carbs, and moderate protein. You don't want to cut the protein intake because amino acids are ESSENTIAL for certain body processes to take place. in other words, you will die without enough amino acids... same with essential fatty acids actually. Carbs, however are the one macronutrient that contain no essential-to-maintaining-life molecule. We often think we need carbs to maintain health because they are found in such foods as fruits and grains which provide much-needed vitamins and antioxidants. however, carbs themselves are not responsible for these nutrients. We can get an adequate amount of these nutrients from other sources such as meats, nuts, seeds, and fibrous vegetables (do contain carbs but mainly in the form of fiber which is not broken down into glucose by the body)
8. FAT IS NOT BAD. Fat is good for you. It actually helps raise good cholesterol and lower the bad. The only time fat does more harm than good is when combined with carbohydrates, which doesn't happen on the ketogenic diet.
On a side note, when we think back to our ancestors who first roamed the earth, what did they eat? Well they were hunters and gatherers right? So they had meat, meat, and more MEAT, and stuff they could find on trees and in bushes (nuts, berries etc.) all LOW IN CARBS, HIGH IN FAT, AND MODERATE PROTEIN. Ironic huh? Eventually, yes they started growing stuff like wheat and corn which was slightly okay then when it wasn't genetically modified and full of toxin-producing molecules (hence the reason celiac's disease was nonexistent like 200 years ago)
9. The ketogenic diet must be implemented until your body has been retrained to use fats as its main source of energy instead of glucose. This may take days, even weeks depending on a person's level of dependence on glucose and insulin. The first few days are heck because your body doesn't have what it wants (glucose) and doesn't know how to deal with it effeciently yet so it goes into a mild state of ketosis (ketones in the blood) by breaking down small amounts of fat but then tries to compensate by making you irritable, dizzy, exhausted, etc. so you don't use up any more glucose. But once your metabolism realizes that it can start using fat for all energy needs it will let go of the need for glucose and slowly start metabolizing more fat and in turn supply your brain with plenty of ketones, relieving the sense of moodiness and so-called "brain-fog". When your body is fully adapted it has become efficient at using fat to make atp and ketones and is no longer dependent on glucose. Fat will be the first molecule metabolized.
10. The important thing is to wait until your metabolism has gotten the hang of things and is used to metabolizing fat over glucose before you reintroduce carbs into the diet. If you do it before you have become fully adapted your metabolism will buckle and go straight back to it's old ways and you will have to retrain it all over again. So basically a cheat day once a week (in the hopes of revving your metabolism like some nutritionists suggest) before your body has adapted will cause you to be in perpetual state of perceived hypoglycemia. However, if you have given your body enough time to get good at the whole metabolizing fat thing to the point where it prefers fat over glucose, you can do a carb-load and then quickly return to fat metabolization by cutting carbs again and depleting your glycogen stores through exercise. Also, if you wish to return to eating carbs regularly after a long ketogenic diet, your body will not be as dependent on glucose and it will react in a healthier way to carbohydrates, while continuing to metabolize fats.
11. And the best of all...when your body metabolizes fats so readily that you are constantly in a state of ketosis, all of the extra ketones produced are breathed or urinated out of the body. This means that a portion of your fat is essentially peed out or breathed out while on the ketogenic diet. Cool huh? This also means you can test whether you are in fat burning mode or not by peeing on what's called a ketostick. It tests for acetone in the urine, which basically a broken down ketone body.
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