What Does Ketogenic Mean and How Does it Help You to Lose Weight?
Ketosis is the metabolic state that your body goes into when it’s deprived of its typical energy source, which is carbohydrates. When in this state and in the absence of carbohydrates, your liver begins producing ketones to use as an alternate fuel source of energy. To simplify things, the ketogenic diet requires that 75% of daily calorie intake come from fat. The rest of your caloric intake for the day would be 20% protein and 5% carbohydrates.
With the average person consuming 2,500 calories per day, if they were following the ketogenic diet they would ingest about 30g of carbs.
This state of ketogenesis, or fat-as-fuel for your body to run on, can be compared to the same “starvation” mode your body goes into when you have deprived yourself of necessary food-for-fuel in a timely fashion– although it’s not exactly the same. In that state, because there are no food based calories for your body to use up as energy, your body takes its needed energy from fat cells. Once the fat has been depleted, energy is obtained from lean tissue and muscle – hence, starvation in effect. Again, this is not quite the same as being in ketosis, but the concept should help make things clearer.
While in a state of ketosis, your body also takes its energy from fat cells, hence it is literally burning fat, rather than running on carbohydrate energy which is what it does on the typical American, carb-loaded diet.
According to this article published in the US Library of Medicine, “a ketogenic diet maintains the body in a state of ketosis, which is characterized by an elevation of D-b-hydroxybutyrate and acetoacetate.”
Another metabolic side effect of being in a state of ketosis is that your insulin levels drop dramatically because your body is no longer processing glucose or sugar. This is a desired state for diabetic people in particular. With the ketogenic diet, you’re giving your pancreas a needed rest, and this could be life-changing for many people as they re-learn what constitutes a reasonable serving size of carbohydrates.
Is There Medical Legitimacy to the Ketogenic Diet?
Some doctors recommend the ketogenic diet for people with certain conditions such as diabetes and obesity. This diet works for these health conditions because it cuts out the pancreas’s daily workload of having to produce insulin to help the body digest carbohydrates.
Curiously enough, seizure disorders such as epilepsy can often be controlled as a result of the body remaining in a permanent state of ketosis. Many people who experience brain seizures have been able to prevent their seizures from happening while following a strict ketogenic diet.
If you need help getting started, try this 30 Day Keto Meal Plan for Weight Loss
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