Ketogenic Diet for a Healthy Lifestyle
Originally, the ketogenic diet was mainly used as an insider tip by bodybuilders who enjoyed building muscle while effectively losing weight and body fat. If you haven’t heard of the ketogenic diet before: it’s also known as, “anabolic diet”. In this diet regime, you mainly have to go without carbs and sugar while eating a lot of proteins and – what may seem odd at first – fat.
Similar to the paleo diet, you can enjoy a lot of meat, cheese, eggs, some fruits and many veggies, but have to kiss the bread, noodles, rice and potatoes goodbye. It’s crucial that during the ketogenic diet, you always consume less than, exactly 30 grams of carbs a day. This will keep your insulin levels low and make it seem to your body, as if there was a serious supply bottleneck – otherwise the desired ketogenic effect will immediately forfeit. Namely, in the beginning it takes up to three days for the full effect of your ketogenic diet to really start kicking in, as so-called ketosis. This means that your body will adapt to the crisis and change the way it burns energy. Less fat gets stored, while at the same time more growth hormones are released – an ideal support for your training regime. As there are hardly any carbs to go by, your body will start looking for alternative sources of energy and – yay! – find them in previously stored fat: This is called ketosis: An ideal support for fat burning and your fitness workout.
After the adaptation phase, the ketogenic diet will soon reward you with less body fat, firmer skin, a cleansed body and a boost in life energy. Currently, there are even studies in the works looking to prove the ketogenic diet’s, positive effects on fighting cancer, as tumor cells are known to feed and thrive on sugar. Of course, ketogenic recipes and dishes can be tasty, too – be it an omelet with zucchini and fried bacon or baked feta cheese, with vegetables of your choice and a steak and olive oil, eggs or nuts. In each case, you don’t have to go hungry, even though noodles, potatoes, bread and rice are mainly taboo. It is best to always pay attention to the amount of carbs you consume, for the reasons listed above.
The ketogenic diet, recommends you consume about 2,500 kilocalories a day, consisting of 60% to 70% fat, 30% to 40 % proteins and definitely less than 30 grams of carbs. Otherwise, the super-fat burning machine ketosis, will immediately start stuttering.
Every three weeks however, you can and should give your body a break, in what is called a, “refeed day”. When you can catch up on carbs and turn things around. This will help prevent your body from getting too haggard, ensuring a sufficient supply in nutrients such as vitamins, which are easier processed from carbs than from proteins.