A Beginner’s Guide To The Ketogenic Diet (what is a keto diet & why it’s popular)

Learn exactly what is a keto diet and decide if it’s right for you. This guide is created to give you some knowledge about this ketogenic diet and how to access ketosis for weight loss, or for general health reasons, in the healthiest ways possible. Only you can see and feel how the keto diet works for you.

Disclaimer: This is not medical advice. I am not a doctor, nor a dietitian. Please consult with your doctor before embarking on a ketogenic diet for therapeutic reasons. We all have different genetic makeups.

This ketogenic diet guide will introduce you to how to achieve ketosis and why you might want to through the sharing of personal experiences and information found on the subject.

What Is A Keto Diet?

Ketogenic diets are low carb high-fat diets, usually moderate in protein. The secret to this diet is the macronutrient ratios you adhere to. Keto macronutrient ratios let your body switch from using carbohydrates for energy, to using stored fats.. something we’re all meant to do naturally.

However, by the time we’ve reached adulthood, many of us raised on typical western diets have long since blocked our innate ability to use stored fat for energy. A ketogenic diet helps us reclaim this blocked fat burning metabolism. Your body stores away fat when metabolizing carbohydrates. Once you can access this endless amount of fuel you have stored away within your own body, you start to feel a lot better.

Our Lost Relationship With Ketosis

As kids, we’d switch to the metabolic state of ketosis naturally. On long summer days, we’d skip lunch, use our stored fats for energy, and keep going strong until you had to go home.

A fat burning metabolism GOES AWAY if you don’t use it.

Today, when we run out of glucose from our last meal, we can’t access our stored fat (ketones) for energy like we used to. Years of high carb eating has silenced our stored fat burning capabilities (and their health benefits). You feel this when you get hungry. You get shaky, weak, moody, etc. Once glucose levels get low, our bodies are naturally wired to start using stored fat (ketones) for energy. But if we can’t use our ketones when we need them, our body doesn’t like that.

We no longer have the metabolic flexibility to bounce us in and out of ketosis during times of need.

The consequences: When we run out of energy from our meals, that’s it. It’s game over. We suffer cravings. We get into “hunger moods.” We turn into lesser forms of ourselves… all because we can’t access ketosis. We’re forced to gorge down the nearest fast food drive thru’s finest offerings. This then leads to problems like insulin resistance, stress, weight gain, etc. It’s a precursor to many of today’s chronic diseases.

In comes the ketogenic diet.

What a ketogenic diet does

Ketogenic diets are all about the macronutrient ratios. Until you know how much of what you should be eating, you can’t really eyeball it.

Ketogenic diet macronutrient ratio:

• ~70-75% of your day’s calories coming from fat
• ~20-25% of your day’s calories from protein
• ~5-10% of your day’s calories from net carbohydrates (net carbs are carbs minus fiber)

In comparison,Paleo diet macros:

• ~40% of your day’s calories coming from fat
• ~40% of your day’s calories from protein
• ~20% of your day’s calories from carbohydrates

Keto macro ratios help you achieve the metabolic state of nutritional ketosis. Doing this gives your body and mind a break from burning glucose full time.

The initial benefits?

You’re no longer controlled by food.

Your food cravings start to go away, and you find yourself satiated for longer periods of time.

The ketogenic diet helps unlock a blocked fat burning metabolism. While it’s not a blanket solution for everyone to practice full time (genetic makeup plays a role in whether you can thrive off a low carb high-fat diet or not), its promotion of more healthy fats and fewer carbohydrates can be a positive nutrition change for anyone.

What is a keto diet again and how does it really work?? To truly understand what the big deal is, you must first take it back a billion years or so and introduce something that’s deep within our cells, churning and burning through the food we provide it to then create the energy we use to power our minds, hearts, lungs, and lives. These little ketone-loving powerhouses, shoveling fat and carbs into the fire to keep our human engines running, are called mitochondria.

What Are Mitochondria?

Mitochondria play a key role in our health and longevity. We have so many billions of mitochondria inside our bodies, it’s mind-boggling. There are more than one quadrillion mitochondria in our bodies.

Mitochondria are our batteries. Our human batteries.

They basically ARE us.

They’re the microscopic engines that keep us alive and well. When mitochondria burn through the carbs and fat we eat, they create the energy (ATP) that powers us and keeps us alive.

Here, Dave Asprey defines them in his book, Headstrong:

Mitochondria are cigar-shaped parts of your cells, bound by a double membrane, with the inner membrane tucked and folded inside the outer membrane. The average human cell contains between one thousand and two thousand mitochondria.

Dr. Mercola calls them,

…tiny organelles (micro-organs).

All signs show that these tiny organelles love ketones. Taking that into consideration for your own life, it makes you want to be good to your mitochondria.

Mitochondria produce a cleaner “exhaust” when burning through ketones as compared to carbohydrates. This means less reactive oxygen species produced within your body, every day.

Here’s a great interview that will teach you more about mitochondria and how to optimize them and ultimately your overall health:

Mitochondria Love Ketones

Ketones are molecules created by the liver from fat stores once blood insulin gets low.

We generate an immense amount of energy every split second of the day. Our cells (mitochondria) never cease to burn through fuel. Of this fuel our cells/mitochondria burn through, we have 2 choices:

1. carbohydrates (glucose)
2. fat (ketones)

When we metabolize fat, we produce molecules called ketones.

Ketone bodies are our other cellular fuel.

The two main ketone bodies are acetoacetate (AcAc) and β-hydroxybutyrate (βOHB). The third and least abundant ketone body is acetone.

1. acetoacetate (AcAc)
2. β-hydroxybutyrate (βOHB)
3. acetone

How ketone bodies work

Ketones carry energy from the liver to our bloodstreams, then off to our brain, muscles, tissues and other organs. And they’re always in our blood. Whereas we can only store around 2,400 calories of glycogen (the molecular form of carbohydrates) per day, our supply of fat and ketone bodies is pretty much unlimited.

Consultant Cardiologist, Dr. Gabriela Segura explains in this blog post how our bodies work better with ketones. Here’s an excerpt from Dr. Gabriela:

“Our body organs and tissues work much better when they use ketones as a source of fuel, including the brain, heart and the core of our kidneys. A happy beating heart is one that is surrounded by layers of healthy fat. Both the heart and the brain run at least 25% more efficiently on ketones than on blood sugar.

Don’t our brains need carbs?

Our brain and body do require some glucose. The brain can’t store glucose. It needs a continuous supply. However, protein can be turned into glucose for fuel in our liver. We can make the required glucose using “glucogenic amino acids” from protein. It’s called gluconeogenesis.

So this means, our required glucose doesn’t have to come from carbs we eat. That’s not to say to go zero carbs, because that’s zero fun. It’s just to show you there is no such thing as an “essential carbohydrate.”

That’s why proper protein intake is important when going keto. Too little and you lose muscle mass. Too much and you stay in a glucose burning metabolic state.

Burning Ketones Vs Glucose

Ketones are the ideal fuel for our bodies unlike glucose – which is damaging, less stable, more excitatory and in fact shortens your lifespan. – Dr. Gabriela

When we burn fuel, mitochondria produce Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) and free radicals as a form of exhaust. Ketones burn cleaner, so being in ketosis means less ROS and free radical production. Once you start lowering carbs and eating more good fats, you’ll see that it has appetite suppressing qualities that you won’t find any other way besides accessing your ketones for energy use.

Once you see how ketones and mitochondria function in our bodies, you can start to see the benefits of a low carb high fat ketogenic diet. At the least you can see how lowering carbs and straying from the Standard American Diet may be a smart way to go.

Benefits Of A Ketogenic Diet

From weight loss to mental clarity to type 2 diabetes, the ketogenic diet seems to be quite the miracle diet for many. Although originally used in pediatric epilepsy, it’s proving to be just as effective for various other conditions.

Because mitochondrial dysfunction has been linked to many degenerative and metabolic diseases, cancer, and aging, the ketogenic diet offers exciting health benefits stemming from its ability to produce a cleaner form of metabolic fuel.

Here are some keto diet benefits:

• Less reactive oxygen species (ROS) produced: Carbohydrates create more reactive oxygen species than ketones do when we metabolized.
• Positive epigenetic expressions
• Anti-aging effects (from increased cell energy)
• Increased energy levels
• Reduced migraines
• Fewer hunger cravings
• Better skin (from reduced inflammation and less oxidative stress)
• Less bad cholesterol (and more good cholesterol)
• Easier blood sugar maintenance
• Natural weight loss
• Mood stabilization

The question becomes, how does it work for you? 

Does your genetic makeup comply with it?

You can find this out by practicing a ketogenic diet and then listening to your body.

Keto Diet, Insulin and Weight Loss:

Heavy carbohydrate eating requires a steady production of insulin in order to transport all that glucose around the body to either use it or store it. Once you’ve achieved ketosis and start using ketones for energy, your insulin levels even out and you store less fat on your body, a result of using it.

Keto Diet and Genetic Makeups:

Here’s an interesting comment on genetics and dieting from an article on keto diets on the Harvard Health Blog:

I’m discouraged to see that nowhere in the article nor in the comments is there a mention of a diet’s best fit to genetics. Consider if someone is an APOE E2 carrier and/or has certain polymorphisms of the APO5 gene. These are quite rare in Okinawa but much more prevalent in the USA (12% of the population). According to a number of well-designed studies, these genetic characteristics point to a higher fat, lower carbohydrate diet as beneficial and even a “moderate” carb diet as problematic.

So rather than giving one-size-fits-all dietary advice or weaponizing the word “balanced” it might be better if the medical community suggested that there are Individual differences that need to be considered. This might also help those lay folk who have had success with one dietary lifestyle or another also realize that what’s valid for them may not be good advice for others.

Types Of Ketogenic Diets

There are various forms of the keto diet. You can combine the keto mentality with your favorite diet, for example, Paleo Keto or Mediterranean Keto or you can even do a vegetarian keto diet (it would be difficult if you can’t at least do fish).

This low carb high fat diet is dependant on macronutrient ratio targets, not the types of food. Because of this, a ketogenic diet’s food influence can come from any region or other diets, like a Keto Paleo Diet or a Blue Zone Keto Diet for example.

Popular variations of the ketogenic diet:

• Cyclical Ketogenic Diet (CKD):
  • This cyclic keto diet and the seasonal ketogenic diet seem like the best solutions for long-term sustainability. They seem like the most natural way to go about eating a low carb high fat keto diet for any extended periods of time. By incorporating a low carb high fat diet most days of the week, with periods of intermittent fasting and days of “feasting”, you’re able to keep your body safe from the effects of long-term low carb dieting. One method of the cyclical ketogenic diet is to choose a day every week to feast on more than usual. Then follow that feast day with a 24-hour fast, before then going back to your usual keto diet plan.
  • The seasonal keto diet is a more elongated approach to the cyclical keto diet. In the seasonal version, you go through more drawn out periods of ketosis throughout the year. In the summer, when fruit is plentiful and ripe, you’d eat higher carbs (still far lower than a traditional Standard American Diet). When fall and winter come around, you’d use ketosis more to power you through your days.
• Standard Ketogenic Diet (SKD): Also known as Hardcore Weight Loss Keto Diet – This is the original form of the ketogenic diet. Today, it’s still used for its original purpose with much success (epilepsy), but it’s also used by many for weight loss and blood glucose management. The SKD uses 20 grams of net carbs per day with the rest of the day’s calories coming from mostly fat and some protein.
• Moderate Ketogenic Diet: This is a more human approach to it. If you’re looking to lose weight or experience some of the health benefits of using ketosis, I’d recommend trying this first. It’s still low carb, around 50 to 80 net carbs per day, but it lets you eat more carbs. These 50 to 80 grams of net carbs make a huge difference when on a low carb diet. The key to this diet is to test and find your upper carb limits.
• Targeted Ketogenic Diet (TKD): In the TKD, you eat fast acting carbohydrates 30 minutes prior to exercise. It’s for those looking to maintain ketosis while not being held back from reaching fitness goals.
• High Protein Ketogenic Diet: The funny actress Melissa McCarthy used a high protein keto diet to lose 75 pounds as reported by a million online celebrity publications. One thing to look out for if your goal is to achieve ketosis is that protein can keep you in a glucose burning state. It induces an insulin response if you eat enough of it. If you’re on a high protein keto diet, you’ll need to test your ketone levels to gauge how much protein it takes to kick you out of ketosis.
• Other names for a ketogenic diet: Ketosis diet, ketone diet, ketones diet, ketonic diet, low carb high fat diet, LCHF diet.

Common Keto Diet Side Effects

While there are side effects you may feel during the transition into ketosis, there are also glimpses of how good it will be too. If you’re super in tune with your body, you’ll notice the “keto flu” which is your body losing its dependency on sugar. It can last a few days.

The Infamous Keto Flu:

Yes, it’s real. But it’s also not a big deal. It’s no bird flu. While there are side effects you may feel during the transition into ketosis, there are also glimpses of how good it will be too. Each potential side effect can be remedied. If you’re super in tune with your body, you’ll notice the “keto flu” which is your body losing its dependency on sugar. It can last a few days.

You can do these two things to help it go away:

• Consume electrolytes, salt, and minerals
• Drink plenty of mineral water and get sunshine

Keto Flu Is NOT From Needing More Carbs

It happens because plasma volume is down (blood circulation is down). When you lower your insulin levels by going into ketosis, your kidneys excrete more salt and you can start to have a mineral and electrolyte deficiency. These symptoms are temporary and remedied by simply adding a couple grams of extra salt to your day.

Instead of drinking Gatorade for electrolytes, it’s best to use Himalayan salt in your water. Bone broth and a high quality chelated magnesium supplement will help as well. These should be a part of a keto diet, but they also help with keto flu. Keto flu’s symptoms and any carb withdrawal symptoms will go away fast if you keep yourself hydrated and full of minerals and electrolytes.

More tips listed out to help you overcome the initial hunger pangs and keto flu:

• Consume bone broth (best solution)
• Eat a tablespoon of coconut oil and 2 brazil nuts
• Increase sea or Himalayan salt intake (from 3-6 grams per day when in ketosis is normal)
• Eat an avocado with a pinch of sea salt and some ground flax seed
• Eat more low-carb vegetables at each meal
• Take a vitamin B complex supplement
• Take a chelated magnesium supplement

Symptoms of ketosis

You’ll know you’re in ketosis when you become satiated for longer periods of time after eating, and when your bad moods stop coming when hungry.

Keto side effects other than the keto flu:

• *Constipation: This one is all too real. Constipation is a very bad thing. You don’t want to reabsorb what your body is trying to get rid of. The solution is to eat more fiber. There are various low carb plants that provide all the fiber your body needs.
• *Cramps: Because you’re losing more fluids on a keto diet, you must be sure to up your water, sodium and mineral intake. The same things that cure a keto flu will help cramps.
• *Extreme Focus and Mental Clarity: Ok I added a good side effect to the list. Yes, this is a side effect of the ketogenic diet and one of the main reasons I use ketosis!

The Dangers Of Keto Dieting

Disclaimer: There are dangers to tackling this diet without really knowing what you’re doing. It’s best not to play around with something as important as yourself and your body. The side effects can be real.

If you start eating high fat, you must go low carb too. You should replace old carbs with calories from good fats and nutrient dense veggies. Do not eat fats along with high carbs. This will exacerbate your body inflammation. You can’t pack a keto diet on top of a high carb diet. It sounds stupid/obvious, but I did this at first and started getting fat. And worse things were brewing inside I’m sure. It’s easy to do this once you experience the greatness of Bulletproof coffees then want to drink three in a day along with carb-rich foods you’re used to. It’s crazy how fast carbs add up. You need to find nutrient dense foods low in carbs, so you don’t have to waste all your day’s carbs on one mango, for example.

KETOGENIC DIET AND CHOLESTEROL DANGERS

In order to keep your cholesterol levels healthy, it’s important not to cheat a lot when you’re eating a lot of fat.

Excess free-ranging glucose molecules can cause problems if you’re mixing in too many carbohydrates on top of a high-fat diet.

On this important subject, I will quote health expert Ben Greenfield from his post on ketogenic dangers. I found this blog post when researching the dangers of ketogenic diets.

I first hand experienced the negatives of combining carb-loaded breakfasts with my butter coffees a few years back after discovering Bulletproof coffees. And my health took a downward turn because of it. Luckily, I figured out what I was doing wrong soon after! Knowing this information now, I make sure not to combine excessive carbs with my periods of ketogenic diet practicing.

Here’s an excerpt from Ben Greenfield on a blog post he wrote about the keto diet’s dangers:

Free-ranging glucose molecules in your bloodstream can adhere to cholesterol particles and cause those particles to remain in the bloodstream for long periods of time, since your liver can’t properly process cholesterol when it has a glucose molecule attached to it. The longer cholesterol circulates in your bloodstream, the higher the likelihood that it will dig its way into an endothelial wall and potentially contribute to atherosclerosis or plaque formation. This is why it’s so dangerous to eat a high-fat diet, but to also have your nightly dark chocolate bar, overdo it on the red wine, or have weekly “cheat days” with pizza, pasta, or sugar-laden ice cream. If you’re going to eat a high fat diet, then you need to ensure your fasted blood glucose levels are staying at around 70-90mg/dL, and your hemoglobin A1C (a 3-month “snapshot” of your glucose) is staying below 5.5. If not, your high fat diet could actually be significantly hurting you.

Is Nutritional Ketosis Safe To Use Long-Term?

I’ve heard both sides of the argument.

I’ll start by saying that to me, it’s looking like a middle-of-the-road, seasonal or cyclical ketogenic diet is best. It’s an enticing diet to look into for the long term as it can potentially help safeguard against neurodegenerative disease among other things. I’ll share a couple expert opinions on both sides of the argument.

Nutritional Ketosis Long Term: Good

In this video presentation titled “Achieving and Maintaining Nutritional Ketosis,” Dr. Stephen Phinney shares information about how ketones can be a healthier long-term primary fuel source.

There are many good books out on this subject, including The Art and Science of Low Carb Living, Tripping over the Truth, Fat For Fuel and Headstrong.

Why Paleo Food Lists Are Great For Keto:

Since our digestion isn’t set up like a carnivore’s, a proper ketogenic diet should focus as much on fiber and micronutrients as it does on macronutrients.

This is why Paleo foods and shopping lists are so great. Paleo has a strong focus on real food and ancestral eating. It doesn’t include dairy, something you want to avoid if you’re drinking pasteurized milk from cows that produce the a1 casein protein, anyways.

Just a quick FYI: the suitable kinds of milk will have a2 casein and are usually from New Zealand or other countries outside the U.S.

Nutritional Ketosis Long Term: a second opinion

One of my favorite health experts out there today is neurosurgeon Dr. Jack Kruse. He goes deep into fascinating health and nutrition subjects including epigenetics, nutrition and more, and often explains the real reasons why we should only eat fruits and vegetables that are in season. He gives some very valuable and insightful information in regards to ketosis.

Dr. Jack Kruse referenced this study on one of his Facebook posts to show what “chronic” nutritional ketosis “can get you” when you’re not getting enough sunlight in a post.

He mentions interesting information about sunlight and food, how sunshine might actually be a form of food. The following excerpt is long and goes deep, but I want to excerpt a lot because it’s powerful information that shows you the immensity of what’s going on behind our eyes. And then it relates it to the ketogenic diet:

SUNLIGHT MEET LEPTIN: Ketosis is normal in humans when they fast, but nutritional ketosis is not the same as fasting. If you want real human ketosis to work best to improve your mitochondrial function by autophagy you just need to get sunlight on your eyes and skin daily. If it is cold out experience the cold with the sun on your eyes and skin too and when you do both of these things as seasons change in your environment intermittent fasting becomes easy and your mitochondrial heteroplasmy rate drops and your health improves. It is that simple. UV-A light stimulates nitric oxide (NO) release in the skin and eye and this has a dramatic effect on CCO in mitochondria below. Why? NO stops ECT of food electrons from cytochrome 1 to CCO in mitochondria. CCO= cytochrome C oxidase. What does this light connection really mean? It means UV light destroys the need for food electrons. And how are we supposed to get them? CCO is a red light chromophore and Sunlight is 42% IR-A light that that frequency of light makes ATP without any need for food electrons….Dan Oren, MD, PhD, researcher forYale University and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) indicated that 50 percent of the entire blood volume in the body passes through the eyes in 40 minutes, and that there is a biochemical mechanism of light involving hemoglobin within the blood (280 nm light), allowing the eyes to be an appropriate portal for phototherapy treatment. Nature uses this effect to maintain vision, the eye clock, and muscle mass via control of all growth metabolism pathways and we are blind to this reality. The retina and skin are linked all the way back to the ectodermal layer of the zygote. That is how deep the quantum connection is. Light always trump calories from food because calories are a proxy for excited electrons in food built in an open thermodynamic system. Diet and nutrition is not a closed system, therefore, using calories to determine food’s thermodynamics is a fallacy. Chronic nutritional Ketosis without sunlight is a really bad idea.

All the more reason to get out in the sun every single day, especially if in ketosis.

Now you know all the facts and what’s all included in this ketone diet, so what’s next?

Ready to try it out?

How To Start a Keto Diet

A ketogenic diet is easy if you have your macronutrient targets, and are prepared with the right recipes, stocked with the right foods, and have a general need for eating healthy ingredients.

Wondering what is a keto diet and how to do all this keto stuff?

First, here’s how to achieve ketosis fastest.

If you’re wondering how long it takes to get into ketosis, fasting and extended exercise will help get there fastest.

Nutritional ketosis is a long-term play. Whether you actually use it long-term or not, once you’ve reclaimed your fat burning metabolism, you can now access it during times of need like you did as a kid. The best way to do this is to change how you eat and how you look at food. If you can find a good ketosis diet plan and naturally adopt it into your lifestyle, you’ll feel and look great without really trying.

First, you must forget all about the food pyramids and nutritional guidelines passed down from governmental agencies that you have seen your whole life. That’s how Paleo and keto go hand in hand.

The best way to achieve nutritional ketosis is through a properly formulated ketogenic diet. And the only way to do that is to get your keto macronutrient ratios, first.

Find Your Keto Diet Macronutrients

To reclaim a ketone burning metabolism and start using ketones again, you need to find your daily macronutrient targets first.

Luckily you can quickly calculate it on one of the free keto calculators available out there. Here’s a good one.

It’s also good to be able to do it with simple math off the top of your head. That’s what this will go over. Your keto macros depend on your fitness and health goals. For the purposes of this example, I’ll use me and my percentages when I first figured all this stuff out.

USE BODY FAT PERCENTAGE TO GET KETO PROTEIN TARGET

If you don’t have a digital scale or body fat calipers laying around, the quickest way to get body fat percentage is to compare yourself in your undies to someone who looks like you in their undies.

This website has good comparison photos.

My body fat percentage was 25%

Now I can calculate protein.

1. KETO MACRO: PROTEIN

The Formula: 0.5 grams per pound of body weight.

I learned about this formula in the book, Keto Clarity.

0.5 x 175 = ~88g of protein daily target

In this post on keto macros, I go over 3 different methods of finding your keto protein target.

Every expert has their own opinion and the protein targets will range, but one thing is certain.. the target is lower than my 1 gram of protein per 1 pound of body weight days. I’ve learned that protein is best in moderation without going too low or too high.

2. KETO MACRO: CARBOHYDRATES

5% – 10% of daily calories is a good target to shoot for.

Everyone is different: Some can eat 100g carbs and stay in ketosis and still lose weight or bulk. Others have to go lower carb. Unless money’s on the line and you have a bet going on, I wouldn’t rush to “go keto.” 50 or 100 grams of net carbs is most likely far lower than your current carb intake. Starting there will help you transition to a lower carb lifestyle.

In order to lose weight faster, or if you have type 2 diabetes, experts say to start at 20 net grams of carbs per day. Eating 20 net grams of carbs per day helps kickstart your body’s fat-burning, superman keto-state.

Keto Carb Goal: Shoot for 50-80 NET carbs when starting out

It’s easy if you know what to eat.

What are net carbs?

Carbohydrates come in 3 types:

• SUGAR
• STARCHES
• FIBER

Sugar and starches can affect your blood sugar. Starches are “complex carbohydrates. They’re things like “healthy” grains, root vegetables, potatoes, beans, pasta, rice.

Fiber is the 3rd type of carbohydrate.

Net carbs DO NOT include fiber.

Fiber doesn’t affect blood sugar.

Because fiber does not affect blood sugar, it gets subtracted from the keto macros calculation.

The Formula: To find net carbs, simply SUBTRACT the fiber to get your net carb count.

3. KETO MACRO: FAT

70-75% of your day’s calories from fat.

After finding your protein and carbohydrate daily targets, the rest of your calories will come from fat.

After you figured out your protein, and you have decided on a target amount of carbohydrates, fill the rest of your day’s calories with healthy fats.

Optional Ways To Achieve Ketosis

Here are 3 other ways you are able to tap into the benefits of ketosis without having to do a keto diet:

1. Fasting has been shown to take you there.
2. Extended exercise does too after you’ve burned through glycogen stores from the carbs you ate before.
3. Exogenous ketones – The newest way is with ketone supplements. BHB salts and even MCT oils and MCT oil powders can help shortcut ketosis. Exogenous ketones work and are readily available. Here’s a review of the 5 best exogenous ketones you can buy online.

Nutritional ketosis is the most natural way to receive the health benefits of ketosis. Some experts aren’t the biggest fan of exogenous ketones. In contrast, with nutritional ketosis, you produce the ketones endogenously. MCT oil and MCT oil powders actually make you produce it, but since they give you the same result as BHB salts, they’re often lumped together with exogenous keto supplements as well.

An easy and healthy way to kickstart your ketogenic diet benefits is to fast. Bone broth fasts are very doable. In case a fast sounds daunting to you, you can still enjoy a hot cup of coffee or tea as well. Dr. Pompa is a health expert full of good information on fasting. In this blog post, he explains how bone broth fasting works and includes a recipe for bone broth stock.

We also have a bone broth recipe here.

The Keto Mindset:

There are other ways to achieve ketosis, but if you’re going for sustainable short and long-term benefits, you need to reframe how you think of food and start moving towards a lower carb, a higher fat overall way of thinking.

A food mindset shift is one of the best keto diet benefits.

And if you’re looking to achieve keto diet weight loss, a mindset shift is necessary as well. One that includes forgetting about our trusty food pyramid. It helps when you realize that we as a society eat far too many carbs, too much protein, and not enough good fats. Low-fat diets preached down from above, might have been done in good faith, but the facts are misconstrued. Low-fat diets are not as healthy as we once thought.

And even worse, the processed oils suggested as “healthy” like canola oil, are worse for us than sugar. Vegetable oil and canola oil are best to avoid completely.

Once underway on your ketogenic diet, there are a few easy ways to test and make sure you’re in ketosis. From there you can continue to fine-tune your diet and find what works best for you for the long run.

More Keto Diet Related Articles From Nutrition Adventures:

• 9 Keto Supplements You Might Want To Have Around
• How To Find Your Keto Macros
• Keto Weight Loss Tips
• Chronic Disease, Mental Energy and The Ketogenic Diet
• 8 Benefits Of A Ketogenic Diet
• 9 Reasons For Keto Hair Loss