Ketogenic diet and fasting: the new health trends
There are lots of publications on the benefits of ketogenic diets. Nonetheless, many still do not understand what all the fuss is about. And when they do, it is an uphill task to find the right diet that will help them sustain ketosis.
Ketosis is an induced state of the body, which results from the unavailability of primary fuel sources. When the body doesn’t have enough glucose to burn as fuel, it is forced to look for alternative sources, mostly fat. The breaking down of fat releases ketones that reduce the blood’s pH. As your body acidity levels rise, you risk falling into a coma or dying.
“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”
Hippocrates
On the upside, ketosis reduces weight, and it could lower the risk of developing heart diseases. In light of this, it is common for people to adopt one form of a ketogenic diet or the other. The aim here is to reduce the intake of carbohydrates to force the body to break down fat and maintain muscle.
⚡️Rather than dieting, some people choose to fast because fasting for 3 to 4 days will lead to weight loss.
A ketogenic diet is a high-fat diet in its basic form, which tries to lower the intake of carbohydrates to 50 grams or below in three days. So, how do you know when you reach ketosis?
Timothy Ferris recommends that you use a machine called Precision Xtra by Abbott to check your “glucose and blood levels of beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB).” Once you reach a concentration of 0.5 millimolar, you are already at an early stage of ketosis.
For Dominic D’Agostino, an associate professor at the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine, a mild to moderate ketosis state with concentrations ranging from 1 mmol to 3 mmol is the ideal keto state. Dominic D’Agostino has experimented with many ketogenic diets, and he has discovered that the only way to maintain ketosis is to eat food that contains a lot of fat and moderate protein.
Did you know? Dominic D’Agostino, an associate professor at the University of South Florida demonstrated that even advanced weight lifters could maintain or increase strength, performance, and hypertrophy after 2 weeks of keto-adaptation, consuming 75-80% calories from fat and restricting carbohydrates to 22-25g per day.