The ketogenic diet has taken over the diet world. In fact, according to Google Trends data, it was the most Googled diet for the past two years! The benefits associated with keto are extensive: weight loss, better sleep, mental clarity, reduced inflammation. But as with all diets, it’s not necessarily a straight path to success.
If you’ve been contemplating switching to a ketogenic diet, here are 7 major things to know before jumping in, to ensure your transition is smooth and successful. Let’s get started.
1. Explore keto recipes
One commonly touted complaint when starting keto is feeling restricted. You’ve grocery shopped for a week’s worth of eggs, avocados, salmon, cheese, spinach and butter. But after a few days of cycling the same ingredients three times a day, you’ve got a little bored.
Prior to starting a ketogenic diet, we recommend researching tasty keto recipes, keto desserts and easy keto meals to give you some inspiration to switch up the monotony of eating the same food items day in, day out. Check out this blog post that includes the recipes for 10 easy keto desserts.
2. Prepare for keto breath
A week or so into keto you may notice that your breath doesn’t smell too great. Introducing: keto breath. One of the three ketone bodies produced in ketosis is acetone, which is excreted through your breath.
It may seem like a small price to pay for the extensive benefits, but for some, it can be unappealing enough to quit keto. We believe that preparation is key to keep you committed! Here are a few tips to avoid keto breath:
- Drink more water
- Practice top notch oral hygiene
- Get yourself some gum
- Cut your protein intake slightly
Luckily, keto breath only affects some. Even so, it is temporary, lasting up to a week until your body adjusts.
3.You can actually eat vegetables
Many who start keto really believe it’s the ‘no carb diet’, and to some extent, it is. But you are actually allowed to eat a small amount of carbs each day whilst managing to be in ketosis. The macronutrient breakdown of the Keto diet is recommended as: 70% fats, 25% protein and 5% carbs. This equates to roughly 15g of carbohydrates a day, which means you can bulk out meals with low carb veggies like zucchini.
Does that mean you should eat spaghetti bolognese? No. But it does mean you can make zucchini bolognese with some low carb veggies added.
4. Monitor your ketone level
Tracking your ketone levels is the most accurate indicator that you are making the right diet choices. The benefits of a keto diet come from being in ketosis, so it’s vital to know that you’re actually achieving that. For the people who fail to see results on keto, it’s typically because they’re not in ketosis, but they aren’t aware of this because they’re not monitoring their ketone levels.
Using a ketone analyser like Ketoscan will give you a precise ketone reading to know if you’re successfully in ketosis – and at the moment there’s a special offer for WellBeing readers, saving a massive £30 off the normal price, so well worth a look?
5.Boosted mental clarity
You often hear that someone lost weight on keto, but what’s talked about less are the profound cognitive benefits. Within a week of starting a ketogenic diet, your brain will feel clear and revitalized.
When you eat keto, you reduce your insulin levels because you’re not spiking your blood sugar. Frequent spikes of insulin are followed by dramatic lulls in energy as your blood sugar attempts to stabilize.
This is responsible for a feeling of brain fog or cognitive dysfunction. The high fat low carb ketogenic diet stabilizes your insulin levels and the associated symptoms. So if you’re consistently reaching for coffee to be able to think straight, prepare to enjoy some mental clarity.
6.You won’t be hungry
Are you used to being the type of person that thinks about lunch during breakfast? We’ve been there. But newsflash: it’s actually not normal to be constantly hungry. Typically, the reason you’re always hungry is because of blood sugar spikes and the taxing metabolism of junk food.
As the keto diet is high in fat, you will feel satiated for long periods of time. When fat enters the small intestine it slows digestion, increases fullness and as a result decreases appetite. A 2005 study in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that a high fat and high protein diet increased satiety and decreased appetite and calorie intake, compared to a diet lower in fat and protein.
7.You’ll get obsessed with the keto diet
When you start getting results, you start getting obsessed. If you’ve tried every diet under the sun and never got results, within a few weeks of trying keto you’re guaranteed to become a keto junkie. Not only will you feel better than ever, you’ll start to look younger, healthier, fitter and more energized.
It’s why everyone with a Ketoscan is constantly checking their ketone levels and tracking, recording and annotating their progress on the Ketoscan app. They just can’t get enough of the data-driven results of the keto diet!
