A ketogenic diet is a simple and the most effective way to lose weight and reduces the risk factors for chronic diseases. The ketogenic diet is low in carbohydrate and high in fats. The diet involves drastically reducing the carbohydrate intake and replacing it with healthy fats. Low carbohydrate intake puts your body into a metabolic state which is called ketosis. When this happens, your body becomes incredibly efficient at burning fat for energy, thereby aiding in weight loss. It also turns fat into ketones in the liver, which can supply energy to the brain. Ketogenic diets can help you shed those extra kilos and cause even massive reductions in the blood sugar and insulin levels.
The symptoms of keto flu are headaches, body aches, cravings, brain fog and fatigue. Well, just think about what you’re trying to do. You’re converting your ENTIRE cellular machinery to fat burning. What you need to do to avoid and heal the keto flu is get more electrolytes and more B vitamins. These are the cofactors that help in developing the machinery to burn fat effectively without draining your body. For the B vitamins, try nutritional yeast. However, nutritional yeast does not have B5—so you may have to take a B5 supplement. I recommend my electrolyte powder. It has 1,000 mgs of potassium and will help you get to that 4,700 mgs you need to create this machinery to burn fat faster and get into ketosis!
Actually, YES—ketchup, BBQ sauce, Asian sauces like duck sauce and sweet and sour sauce are LOADED with sugar and eating sugar with protein greatly spikes INSULIN—exactly what you don’t want to do. Mustard doesn’t. So choose fattier salad dressings like ranch. I like Paul Newman’s line of salad dressings as they contain almost no sugar. Start looking at sugar grams on EVERYTHING. Try to stick around one or less. Two max and only once a day.
Drink lots of water. This is especially crucial on a low carb or keto diet. Why? When you eat carbohydrates, your body stores the extra as glycogen in the liver, where they are bound to water molecules. Eating low carb depletes this glycogen, which allows you to burn fat – but it also means you are storing less water, making it easier to get dehydrated. Instead of the traditional recommendation of 8 cups of water per day, aim for 16 cups when following a low carb lifestyle.
There are so many tricks, shortcuts, and gimmicks out there on achieving optimal ketosis – I’d suggest you don’t bother with any of that. Optimal ketosis can be accomplished through dietary nutrition alone (aka just eating food). You shouldn’t need a magic pill to do it. Just stay strict, remain vigilant, and be focused on recording what you eat (to make sure your carb and protein intake are correct).
