5 More Keto Diet Benefits In Addition To Weight Loss
There’s a lot of buzz around the keto diet benefits, and that’s for a good reason. It doesn’t just help you achieve your weight loss goal, but it also improves your overall health, as you’ll see below.
Did you know that you don’t need carbs to have a great workout? In fact, you don’t need carbs at all. In fact, eating carbs may be detrimental to your health.
Nutritional science is always developing, and new findings show that what we should be focusing on in our diets are good sources of fat.
The Keto Diet
The ketogenic diet is a specialized high fat, moderate protein, no-carb diet strategy.
The effects of no-carb diets first emerged in the mainstream media in the nineties with ‘the Atkins diet.’ Researchers analyzed the principles of the diet, and ‘the ketogenic diet’ was the official diet theory that came out of the research.
The ketogenic diet used a macronutrient ratio of 65% fat and 35% protein, with no carbs. After the implementation of the diet in test subjects, the research showed that the test subjects were not eating enough fat to induce ketosis in a stably effective manner.
Therefore, researchers changed the macronutrient ratios to ‘the modified ketogenic diet’ which relied on total fat consumption is more than 80% of total calories consumed.
Implementing The Ketogenic Diet
Executing the ketogenic diet will take you through a period of the glycogen depletion that lasts anywhere between three and five days, depending on the person.
Glycogen is the body’s fuel source, and by eating less than 25 grams of carbs a day, you are not able to replenish these stores to sustainable levels that will fuel metabolism.
During this phase, it is common for people to feel more tired during the day. The body also loses water weight because every gram of glycogen holds four grams of water that the body releases as the glycogen depletes.
Eventually, your body will run out of glycogen and the survival state will signal the liver to produce ketones to replace glycogen for metabolic fuel.
Ketones come from dietary fat sources and adipose body fat stores. They will continue to provide metabolic fuel until glycogen returns to the system.
The Keto Diet Benefits
Here are 5 keto diet benefits, besides weight loss, that will convince you to follow this no-carb diet:
1. Reduce Inflammation
Inflammation of the GI tract is responsible for many health disorders and diseases.
The intestinal wall becomes inflamed when consuming refined carbohydrates like sugar. In this inflamed state, your gut biomes cannot absorb the vitamins and nutrients from your food.
This diminished ability to assimilate food creates symptoms of leaky gut and exposure to disorders like IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome).
When carbs are removed and replaced with healthy fats, the level of GI tract inflammation drops considerably. This reduction in inflammation allows your biomes to get the most out of your food, improving metabolism and immune function.
2. Improve Your Cholesterol Profile
Diets that are high in processed foods and refined carbohydrates have links to bad cholesterol profiles. By removing carbs and replacing them with healthy fats and quality protein, you increase HDL production and drop total triglyceride counts in the blood.
3. Increase Metabolic Rate
As the body optimizes and reduces inflammation, your metabolic rate will increase, burning body fat stores.
However, the rate of fat loss determines the total amount of calories you consume every day. Find a calculator to discover how many calories to lose weight in your diet plan and then adjust your fat loss as the diet progresses.
4. Improve Immune Function
If you find that you get sick a lot, then this may be a result of a poor diet and high levels of inflammation in your system.
When you switch to a ketogenic diet and lose the inflammation, you can expect to increase immune function and not get sick as often, if at all.
5. Reduce Fasted Blood Sugar Levels
No carbs mean no insulin response and better insulin sensitivity. Studies have shown that ketogenic diets can help people with type 2 diabetes completely reverse the effects of the disease and eventually eliminate it from their system.
50 Keto Diet Snacks
Check out this list with 50 snack ideas that are low in carbohydrates and super easy to prepare:
Low Carb Snacks For The Ketogenic Diet
The ketogenic diet does not work for everyone. Some people just need carbs to achieve a feeling of well-being and mental sanity.
However, you won’t feel the keto diet benefits until you try this diet. So give it a shot and log your experience for four weeks before you decide if its suits your lifestyle or not.
