The Keto Diet Explained in a low-carb Nutshell
Simply put, a ketogenic diet is a low-carbohydrate, high-fat, moderate protein diet. It’s often abbreviated on the internet as “LCHF”. It was given a name in the 50’s when doctors found that restricting carbohydrates greatly reduced the symptoms of epilepsy in children.
The first question everyone asks is how is it possible you can you lose weight eating high-fat foods?
How Does Our Body Use Sugar?
Excessive consumption of fructose can cause diabetes, obesity, and high cholesterol among other things.
Without getting into a long scientific discussion the human body is powered by glucose (basically sugar). When you eat foods with sugar your body can very easily convert the sugar to glucose, excess sugar is essentially stored for later use. Worse yet, sugar in the form of fructose (like high-fructose corn-syrup) found in soda and added to foods is almost entirely stored essentially as fat. Excessive consumption of fructose can cause diabetes, obesity, and high cholesterol among other things.
Why a high-fat diet?
In the absence of sugar in your diet, your body will then work to break down complex carbohydrates and convert them to glucose. These can be your sugar free foods like pasta for example. In the absence of carbohydrates the body will work to break down proteins into glucose. In the absence of protein the body will take alcohol from the blood, if present, and convert it to glucose (this sounds odd but you will learn more about this later). Lastly, and most difficultly, in the absence of everything mentioned our liver will use fat stores and break down fat into something called ketones. These ketones can then be used to power our brain and body. Remember this part about ketones, it’s a foundation of this plan.
The Power of Ketones
“The presence of ketones is an indicator your diet is ‘working’ and burning fat.”
Ketones can be measured in the blood during a routine blood-test. Ketones can also be measured in urine using Ketone strips, available here. The presence of ketones is an indicator your diet is ‘working’ and burning fat. It’s no coincidence that “ketogenic” sounds like ketones. Weight loss is achieved when your body starts rapidly converting fat into sugar to power the body.
How Low-Carb is Low-Carb?
“20g of carbohydrates a day is a good target.”
Generally speaking, your carb intake needs to be as low as necessary for your body to create ketones. The actual number in which this occurs vary person to person, but less than 20g of carbohydrates a day is a good target. Once you are in ketosis (burning fat as fuel) you can adjust this up slightly and test for the presence of ketones. It’s safe to say more than 40g of carbs and it’s not going to happen. 20g of carbs a day can be considered a very low-carb diet.
Why not a moderately low-carb diet?
There are great health benefits outside of weight loss for low-carb diets. However, if your goal is weight loss a moderately low-carb intake, for example 50g a day, is unlikely to assist in achieving any success. 50g of carbs a day is enough for your body to use its preferred method of fuel, carbohydrates, vs. using fat for energy. To get into ketosis, a start seriously burning off fat-stores a very low-carb intake is necessary.
Is this the Atkin’s diet?
“The Atkin’s diet permits higher protein and higher carbohydrate intake in the long-term, but it essentially a ketogenic diet”
After explaining a very low-carb high-fat diet to people they typically ask “This is essentially the Atkin’s diet?”. The Atkin’s diet permits higher protein and higher carbohydrate intake in the long-term, but it essentially a ketogenic diet (the goal is to produce ketones as a fuel source). It essentially leads to the scenario above, which is a moderate low-carb, caloric restricted diet. There are other variations of a ketogenic diet, but in all honesty my wife and I lost our weight on a ketogenic diet – and that’s what we have stuck to for years now!
