What is KETO?

We’ve all heard about it: the low carb diets. The biggest star of all right now - the Ketogenic diet. But what’s the catch?

The ketogenic diet is a low-carb/high-fat diet, meaning you can eat fatty foods and lose weight. Wait, what? Yes, let me put it simpler to you: our body uses three forms of macronutrients in order to survive, which we take from food: fats, carbs, and proteins. Each one of them is important and have a great impact on our body.

The Standard American Diet (SAD) uses almost 50% carbs, 35% fats, and 15% proteins, but as the results state, it’s not the luckiest combination ever.

A properly formulated ketogenic diet should have high fat, a moderate amount of protein, and low carbohydrate intake. -> 75% healthy fats, 20% proteins and 5% carbs.

Keto Pie Chart

There is a very complex medical explanation on how this works, but in short, it’s called KETOSIS. Your body takes its energy from carbs. As long as you don’t feed the body carbs, it will begin to burn the stored fats on your body by transforming the stored triglycerides into ketones, therefore into energy! In the absence of glucose, the body starts to burn fat and produces ketones instead. The ketosis state is installed into the body in about 1 to 3 weeks, during which state you may experience the “keto flu” syndrome because your body is deprived of its carbohydrates and craves carbohydrates and he keeps on reminding you this over and over again!

In the Keto diet, you pay attention to your macros (that 75/20/5 percent), but micronutrients are also important — the minerals and vitamins derived from plants and other living things. That’s why is important to pay attention to the quality of food first and eat as clean as you can - just because it fits the macronutrients doesn’t mean you should do it. For example, a single Big Mac sandwich packs up 20 g of carbs, meaning the maximum amount of carbs allowed on a single day. And you’ll be hungry, really fast, trust us. But if you clean up the menu and add some good fats - butter, eggs, meat, fish and seafood, avocados & other green vegetables you’ll not only have a variety of foods, but you’ll please the brain and, why not, your tummy too. Oh, and bacon. You cannot forget the bacon.

But keto does not mean it’s only about losing weight - there is a sum of therapeutic uses for this diet, as it’s being used as a complementary diet in the treatment of diabetes, epilepsy, or high cardiovascular risks.

It’s important to know that what matters in the Ketogenic diet it’s not only about macronutrients, counting calories or eating fatty foods, it’s more about being consistent and eating a clean. You can’t eat mountains of saturated fats and thousands of calories and expect to lose weight. The key to any diet today is calorie deficiency.

Having said all that, it is important to consult either a nutritionist or a doctor before starting the ketogenic diet and get a blood test done prior too, to check whether your lipid levels allow you to consume high contents of fat. If you want more detailed info about this diet, check our website! Till then, live it deliciously! 😋