All About Ketosis
Ketosis is a natural metabolic process that occurs when your body doesn’t have enough carbohydrates or glucose to burn for energy, so instead, it uses fat for fuel. Once your body reaches ketosis (that is when glucose stores are depleted), ketones, which are made by your liver from body and/or nutritional fat, is produced at an accelerate rate and these are used.
How to Get into Ketosis
Here are the steps you need to follow to reach ketosis:
- Limit your carbs to 20 grams or less per day.
- Use coconut oil when cooking. It is a natural fat, remains stable at high cooking temperatures, and contains medium-chain fatty acids that may increase ketone production.
- Exercise. While your body is transitioning into ketosis, you may not have enough energy for high intensity exercise, but going for a walk can help you reach ketosis easier.
- Add fat and don’t fear it. Consuming enough healthy fat is part of the keto diet and a necessary part of ketosis.
- Try intermittent fasting.
How Do You Know You’re in Ketosis
There are a few ways to tell you are in ketosis; they are:
- A dry mouth or metallic taste in your mouth
- Thirst
- Keto breath
- Fatigue, followed by more energy
- Decrease in food intake due to a low appetite
- Test by using ketone test strips
If You’re Not in Ketosis?
If you are following the keto diet but haven’t reached ketosis, follow these strategies:
- Track your intake of carbs to ensure you are eating less that 20 grams per day.
- Test your ketones late morning or late afternoon.
- Be patient. If you have insulin resistance, achieving ketosis may take longer. Be consistent with your diet and, when possible, increase your physical activity.
Keto & Intermittent Fasting
There are a lot of people who follow the keto diet and combine it with intermittent fasting. If you’ve never heard the term before, intermittent fasting (or IF) involves fasting and restricting when you eat. There are various ways you can do IF and combine it with keto:
- 16/8 method – eat during an 8-hour period and fast for the next 16 hours (This is one of the most popular IF methods)
- Alternate-day fasting – eat one day, fast the next, and repeat
- OMAD (one meal a day) – eat one meal a day when it suits you and fast for the rest of your day
- Weekly 24-hour fast – Choose one day of the week to fast and follow keto the rest
- 5:2 method – follow your keto diet for 5 days and choose 2 days to fast and limit your caloric intake to ¼ of your “normal” days (roughly 500 calories for women and 600 for men)
- The Warrior Diet – fast for 20 hours a day and then eat as much as possible at night
Benefits of Keto AND IF
Just as Keto has numerous benefits, so does intermittent fasting, including lowering inflammation, preserving muscle mass, stimulating autophagy (“spring cleaning” of your cell), and speeding up recovery. Here are the 4 main benefits if you combine both keto and IF:
- Accelerated weight loss even if you don’t intentionally limit your calories
- Fewer cravings as your blood sugar will remain stable
- Since ketones suppress ghrelin (your body’s hunger hormone), you benefit from a lower appetite, so you can fast for longer
- May make achieving ketosis easier as fasting helps to deplete glucose stores and lowers insulin level, thus enabling your body to burn fat for fuel faster
