What Does a Ketogenic Diet Consist Of?

A ketogenic diet consists of eating a low-carb, high-fat diet to lose weight. To start a ketogenic diet you will want to limit your carb intake and increase your fat intake with healthy fats. The fats that most western diets include is unhealthy fat, or trans-fats, also called partially hydrogenated oil. Read food labels to see what kind of fat it includes before buying. You’ll want your ketogenic diet to consist of healthy fats. Healthy fats include fat from coconut oil, avocados, eggs, butter, and grass-fed meat and diary. See our recommended items for a ketogenic diet & our grocery list to help you buy the right foods for a ketogenic diet.

How Many Carbs Per Day to Stay in Ketosis?

You’ll want to eat less than 50g of net carbs per day. Your carbs should come from vegetables, nuts and seeds and keto friendly fruit. Less than 50g of net carbs each day is enough for most people to stay in ketosis. Make sure to get your carbs from vegetables (10-15g), nuts and seeds (5-10g), and fruits (5-10g). When reading food labels in the US, subtract the fiber content of the food from the total carbs to get your net carb count. This will give you the carb count of the food so you can add it to your daily tally.

Switching From Keto to Normal Diet – What’s the Process?

If you’ve been on a keto diet for some time and have lost weight, but you are perhaps struggling with the macros & tracking food… what can you do to switch from keto to a normal diet? I recommend trying a more paleo diet and/or eating a diet of healthy foods – do not buy any food that’s in boxes… continue watching your carb count, but don’t stress about the foods you eat if you are #1 – eating real foods & #2 exercising more than 30 minutes per day. The best way to get back into a normal diet, and not gain weight, is to keep up with the aspects of a healthy diet that you’ve adopted, and stay away from all garbage foods with garbage carbs.

Can You Eat Fruit on a Ketogenic Diet?

Yes, and no. You can eat fruit on a ketogenic diet, but it’s not a simple proposition. One way to go about eating fruit is to use the “size matters” rule. The smaller the fruit, the better it should be for a ketogenic diet. Think berries. Blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, and so on. Bananas are chock full of carbs, apples, apricots, cantaloupe, watermelon, clementine oranges, kiwi fruit and so on make it hard to stay under 30 carbs per day and stay in ketosis with a normal ketogenic diet. Ruled.me has a great list of fruits and info that will answer your burning question: Can you eat fruit on a ketogenic diet?

How Many Days to Get into Ketosis?

Generally it takes a few days to get into ketosis if you strictly adhere to a ketogenic diet meal plan. If you deviate and eat sugary foods, high carb snacks or get your macros off, you’ll likely not hit ketosis – ever.

Struggling to get into ketosis? Try adding exogenous ketones to your diet.

Some people find it more difficult to enter ketosis, or they can’t get into ketosis without a prolonged keto flu period, or their body is so used to eating garbage that they struggle with becoming keto adapted.

Exogenous ketones usually help most people step into ketosis faster. If you are having a problem entering ketosis or want to give yourself more ketone fuel, exogenous ketone supplements are a great way to boost ketones in your blood stream. Read our article on Exogenous Ketones to learn more about how exogenous ketone supplements can help you get into ketosis faster and help most people eliminate the keto flu faster.

What are Ketones?

Ketones are a chemical your body produces when on a restricted diet that focuses on low carb, high fat foods. By putting your body in a state that feels like starvation, your body will produce ketones naturally. Ketones are utilized as a fuel source, a fat burning source, and make your body more efficient.

Exogenous ketones are made by scientists in a lab and turned into an ingestible product so that you can accelerate ketosis faster in your body. By adding exogenous ketones (or ketone supplements) to your diet, you are giving yourself a kickstart to ketosis – an opportunity to function at a more efficient fuel burning level.

What is the Keto Flu?

The keto flu is your body’s response to the withdrawal of carbohydrates from your diet. It’s the transition period your body goes through when learning to burn stored body fat (instead of chips, white bread, pizza and sodas) for fuel causes you to experience flu-like symptoms that make you feel absolutely lousy for a few days. The keto flu usually lasts only a few days to a week depending upon factors like how addicted to carbs your body is, how fast you dive into the keto diet, how much fat you eat and so on.

To mitigate the keto flu, eat more healthy fat, keep protein lower, supplement your water with electrolytes, drink a lot more water than you have been, and exercise til you sweat a lot. Then drink more water with electrolyte supplements ( I’ve purchased and used this product – LyteShow ) added so that you get back what you’ve lost. You can also add exogenous ketones to your diet which will add ketones to your body faster and helps most people achieve ketosis more quickly.

What’s the Fastest Way to Get Your Body into Ketosis?

Getting your body into ketosis is a pretty straightforward process that people tend to over complicate. But basically if you follow the below steps you’ll get your body into ketosis pretty quickly.

• Reduce and restrict your carbohydrates to below 20g per day when just starting a ketogenic diet. Limit carbs to this number for the first month and then gradually increase carbs while monitoring your body with ketosis sticks.
• Limit your protein intake because too much protein can lead to lower levels of ketosis. You’ll want to stick between 0.6 and 0.8 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass. A 150lb person needs to eat approx 120 grams of protein a day… which could be a daily intake of the following: 1 4oz hamburger (33g), 2 scoops of protein powder (30g per scoop), 4 slices of bacon (17g or approx 4g per slice) and 2 hard boiled eggs (6.3g each egg) if just meats.. of course the rest of what you eat has protein in it so be sure to keep up with your macros, read food labels and write everything down. Don’t eat too much protein as it can affect ketosis.
• Eat more fat. Because your body will rely upon fat as the primary source of energy on a ketogenic diet, make sure you get anough fat in your diet. Don’t starve yourself of the fats you need to live and lose weight.
• Get more water than you would have normally on a non-ketogenic diet. Water is the stuff of life, and it will help curb your food cravings. Drink water first thing in the morning… and then drink it all day long. Stay hyrdrated!
• Combine the ketogenic diet with intermittent fasting.
• Exercise – at least half an hour daily!

Is the Ketogenic Diet Safe?

This is a huge question for everyone starting a new diet for weight loss, especially when it takes you outside the norm of what you are used to doing. The ketogenic diet runs counter to the USDA food pyramid, is completely unlike your normal eating routine and poses a few challenges for those who don’t cook at home most of the time. But, the studies that are out there do support that the ketogenic diet is a safe way to approach weight loss and health.

The present study shows the beneficial effects of a long-term ketogenic diet. It significantly reduced the body weight and body mass index of the patients. Furthermore, it decreased the level of triglycerides, LDL cholesterol and blood glucose, and increased the level of HDL cholesterol. Administering a ketogenic diet for a relatively longer period of time did not produce any significant side effects in the patients. Therefore, the present study confirms that it is safe to use a ketogenic diet for a longer period of time than previously demonstrated. – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2716748/

How to Start a Ketogenic Diet for Weight Loss?

To start a ketogenic diet for weight loss, wean yourself off the foods you normally eat for about 30 days. Drink more water and ditch sodas, start replacing those bags of chips you munch on at lunch, dinner, and tv time with healthier versions of themselves. Begin to re-balance your dinner plate so it has 2/3 greens, 1/3 proteins and give yourself some time to cleanse the carbs from your diet before jumping into the ketogenic diet cold turkey. Learn more here.

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Disclaimer: I’m not a dietitian or nutritionist, but a health enthusiast, clean eater and ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting partaker. I started this website because I love the keto diet and intermittent fasting lifestyle. My favorite way of eating is to eliminate as many carbs as possible from my diet, eat lots of greens, and real food, forego anything that comes in boxes or is manufactured or produced in a factory or made from chemicals that mean absolutely nothing to the average person. I’m recommending products in this article that have affiliate links and will pay me a small commission if you purchase something to help you along with your keto diet. I always recommend products I think will be beneficial based on other people’s reviews of the products or my personal research on the efficacy of the product, on your ketogenic diet journey.