In this article we talk about all the benefits that the ketogenic diet gives you, and which not only concern physical fitness but also health. We’ll also look at adding intermittent fasting to further enhance results.
The ketogenic diet was originated almost a hundred years ago, so these benefits have been studied and analyzed in depth over the past decades by the international scientific community that has dedicated itself to the topic.
A Closer Look at Ketogenic Diet Benefits
The ketogenic diet is a diet that emphasizes foods that are high in healthy fats, moderate in protein, and low in carbohydrates. The objective is to consume more fat calories than carbohydrates.
The body’s sugar levels are drained with this sort of diet. As a result, it will begin to rely on fat as a source of energy. This causes the body to produce so-called ketones, which it uses as fuel. The body can even lose weight as it burns fat.
The conventional ketogenic diet and the cyclical ketogenic diet are two different forms of ketogenic diets.
Decreased Appetite
The first of the benefits of the ketogenic diet is the reduction of hunger. The feeling of hunger is the most felt side effect when on a diet.
Fats have a high and lasting satiating power. As a result, even if you are on a low-calorie diet, you will not be hungry, which will make it easier for you to cope with the calorie restriction.
Dietary lipids and ketone bodies increase the more by delivering a signal to the hypothalamus, a part of the brain that regulates appetite and satiety. When you start the ketogenic diet, you’ll notice a decrease in your hunger.
Through avoiding junk food and most carbohydrates, you’ll be able to keep hunger at away because these items, by generating insulin surges, enhance the feeling of hunger.
WEIGHT LOSS: Carbohydrate reduction is one of the simplest and most effective ways to lose weight. Low carbohydrate diets actually rid the body of excess water, lowering insulin levels and leading to rapid weight loss. In studies comparing low-carbohydrate to low-fat diets, people who restrict their carbohydrate sometimes lose 2-3 times more weight, without feeling hungry.
Waist Reduction
Not all fat in your body is the same. Depending on where the fat is stored, it can more or less affect your health and disease risk. The two main types are subcutaneous fat, more common in women and found under the skin, and visceral fat, which accumulates on the abdomen and is typical of most overweight men.
Visceral fat tends to accumulate around the organs. Excess visceral fat is associated with inflammation and insulin resistance and can lead to metabolic syndrome, so common today in Western countries.
Among the benefits of ketogenic nutrition is its effectiveness in reducing this abdominal fat so harmful to health.
Increased Energy
When your body starts burning fat, thanks to the ketogenic diet and the ketosis it creates, you will no longer feel lack of energy. This is one of the main benefits you will experience during the ketogenic diet: increased energy, less body fatigue and better focus.
Improvement in Brain Function
Ketones have been shown to be one of the best sources of fuel for your brain, being neuroprotective antioxidants.
As proof of this, the ketogenic diet is the dietary protocol used for the treatment of epilepsy, even in children.
Regulation of Blood Sugar Levels
The ketogenic diet has the power to lower blood glucose levels.
This means that as soon as you enter the state of ketosis, the blood sugar level will drop and become more stable, causing a sudden decrease in food cravings.
Reduction of Hypertension
When adapting to the ketogenic diet, a direct benefit of excess weight loss is that blood pressure is lowered. Increased blood pressure is not something that you may worry about or can sense, but, in fact, it is a condition that, if left untreated, could cause many health problems.
Adding Intermittent Fasting for Increased Fat Loss
When we totally deprive ourselves of food, we fast. In the past of humanity, populations have known periods of fasting, when food was lacking. However, they survived and the explanation is known and simple.
When fasting, the cells of the body are at risk of running out of fuel, glucose, when they aren’t getting the carbohydrates they need from the diet. Ketones are unique chemicals produced by the human body from the body’s fat stores. These ketones, which come from fatty acids in the body, are converted into glucose by the cells through a complicated procedure that we shall uncover. This is where weight reduction begins.
However, intermittent fasting is a very popular form of weight loss these days. But it shouldn’t be too surprising. Practices involving abstinence from food have been found in every culture since very ancient times.
Fasting can in fact be seen as an expression of a high degree of self-control: manifesting itself in the ability that a person has to keep hunger under control, it represents the measure of his willpower on one of the most primordial instincts of man. In short, it is about eating less but better, trying to enrich our food intake with important nutrients.
Follow the 16/8 Fasting and Feeding Rule
The 16/8 technique is the most popular and also the easiest to implement: it may be utilized by eating dinner and missing breakfast the next day, for example.
A weekly plan may involve missing dinner to allow for the necessary time to pass during the night while sleeping. As a result, the time window for eating breakfast and lunch has been decreased to 8 hours.
For instance, breakfast at 7:00 a.m. and lunch at 3:00 p.m. Then just drinks with no calories (i.e., no added sugar, preferably merely water) until 7 a.m. the next day. 16 hours would have passed in this instance. You may change the window from 8 to 16 and start again at 8:00 the next morning.
Stay Consistent with Daily Fasting
It is critical to retain some level of consistency. It’s important to remember that this diet, also known as mima-fasting, cannot be resisted by eating too much and in a poor way. The 16/8 pattern allows you to combine midday physical activity with a sixteen-hour fast.
The other strategies, including those not mentioned, are more difficult to follow due to the need for strict programming of both nutrition and sports activities, and I believe I would advise against them, particularly for those who are not being followed by a professional (for example, format 18 / 6 is more complicated, requiring two meals in six hours).
Conclusion about Super-Charging Fat Loss
In conclusion, intermittent fasting is a hormmetic stimulus, which means that when dosed correctly, it causes the body to respond in a reparative and encouraging way, similar to how physical exercise does.
