The Ketogenic Lifestyle
To be successful with the ketogenic diet lifestyle you only need to remember one thing… your carbohydrate intake needs to be less than 20 grams per day.
It is not complex. Here are a few tips to help you achieve keto as a lifestyle.
All 3 Macronutrients are Related to Each Other
As you lower your carbs, the other two macronutrients need to be addressed- fat and protein.
It is important to have as much protein as needed to maintain the structure of your body. Target for your ideal weight in grams. This is a very loose rule but easy to work with. For example, if you weight 180 and your ideal weight is 150 then try to get 150 grams of protein per day. Not 150 grams of meat but 150 grams of protein. Use cronometer.com to track these numbers.
Cycle In and Out of Ketosis
Getting into ketosis for the first time may take a few weeks. Once you are in it, you then may choose to come out by raising the carbs up. Then you go back into ketosis. Cycling in and out is where you get the greatest benefit although this is debatable but you need to figure this out for yourself. When you go into ketosis you lower your insulin, sugar and mtor (insulin for protein) and other things that help decrease inflammation and reverse disease. Then you come out of ketosis to raise sugar, insulin, etc. You raise and lower these hormones and other factors on a regular basis.
This is BALANCE. It’s like setting your thermostat to 70 in your house. The heat goes up and down from 71 to 69. Up and down is balance.
Another value to cycling in and out of ketosis is your cells adapt to using one fuel, sugar, then the other, ketones. It’s like a hybrid car that seamlessly goes from gas to electric then back to gas. Healthy cells get stronger when you cycle from sugar to ketones whereas unhealthy, sick cells cannot so they die.
Depending on your health goals you may want to get into ketosis all the time, a few times a year, or half the month.
Be Cautious with Exogenous Ketones
Exogenous ketones are a powder ketone supplement. Going into ketosis naturally with your diet is optimal. Your ketones naturally go up and your glucose and insulin naturally decrease. If you consume powdered ketones, your glucose and insulin remain high while ketones go up and that is a potentially dangerous state for your body to be in. This is especially harmful to people trying to heal from chronic illnesses.
Measure
You’ve been measuring your ketogenicity in your food with Cronometer, now it’s time to measure it in your body. Measuring your glucose and ketones takes all the mystery out of whether you are in ketosis or not. I’ve had many people that were in ketosis or ate ketogenically but when we test their blood, it’s as though they had done nothing at all even though they had lost weight!
The best, most accurate way to measure it is through blood testing with a device we recommend, called Keto-Mojo. There are plenty of videos on youtube about how to use it. You can also test your urine or breath for ketones. These are cheaper and less accurate but still valuable.
Yours in health,
Dr. Darren Schmidt
