The Simple Beginners Keto Diet for Weight Loss, Bodybuilding, Mental Clarity and Boost Mood

1. Eat 1.5 to 3 lbs of fatty meat a day with a couple servings of leafy vegetables on the side, eat until full. Drink water.
2. Eventually move to 2 meals a day, skipping breakfast. Replace breakfast with black coffee or tea (optional).
3. Stop eating junk food and a little exercise, repeat 1-3 until at goal weight
4. Notice the better body composition, energy levels, mental clarity and mood.
5. You have reached your goal and have learnt a lot about yourself, now customize this to fit your lifestyle.

The Keto diet is a popular diet most used for its weight loss potential. The diet puts your body into a state of ketosis, where your liver metabolizes fat into ketones for your body to use for fuel. In order to achieve the state of ketosis, you lower your intake of sugar and carbohydrates that digest into sugars in the body to less than 5% of your daily caloric intake. This generally averages to about from 0 to 25g of carbohydrates per day. How it works is that your body regulates fat oxidation via your blood glucose levels using insulin. When you intake excessive carbohydrates, your body increases insulin production which then prevents fat oxidation, instead storing them into your fat cells. When you keep your carbohydrate intake low, this reverses this process allowing your body to use the fat stored in your body instead for energy.

This diet has been proven to be very effective for weight loss since it optimizes your body to maximize fat burning. Other benefits that have been found in studies and reported in anecdotes include mental clarity, reduce inflammation, helps depression and even has anti-aging properties. This diet was originally developed to treat epilepsy.

Many people use the keto diet to eliminate brain fog, improve mental clarity and cognitive performance. The ketogenic diet is effective in this aspect due to helping your body maintain a stable blood glucose level. A high intake of carbohydrates causes a spike in insulin in your blood which tells your body’s cells to rapidly remove glucose from the bloodstream. This is why a lot of people feel tired and sleepy after eating. This stops happening while on a ketogenic diet. Also, ketones produced by your liver is a very stable and good energy source that is preferred by the brain and will help prevent brain fog.

The main definition of a ketogenic diet is eating a carbohydrate level that produces sufficient ketosis which is less than 25 grams of net carbs. Net carbs are calculated by subtracting the amount of fiber from the total carbohydrates.

You often see the term low carbohydrate diet used interchangeably with ketogenic diet. A low carbohydrate is a less strict version of the ketogenic diet where carbohydrate intake is usually less than 100 grams. This amount also may not put you into a state of ketosis.

A higher protein ketogenic diet has the advantages of providing your body with the adequate building blocks to not only to feel satiated, but also to help your body heal and thrive. Remember, not only are we trying to lose weight, but we want to feel great as well doing so. This approach also has the added advantage of improving your body composition, provided that you do some exercise. People that want to do some bodybuilding on this diet will see some great results.

The following is the breakdown of the macronutrients of your keto meals when first starting:

1. Less than 25g carbohydrates
2. 1g / lb of ideal body weight or more
3. Protein to fat ratio between 2:1 and 1:1. Find out which one makes you feel the most satiated.

Definition vs Reality

You can actually eat everything on a ketogenic diet, the only real limiting factor is the amount of carbohydrates contained in the food. As long as the amount of carbohydrates you eat is kept under 25g per day, everything is okay. However, realistically speaking, many foods that are high in carbohydrates are hard to eat in small quantities, as eating makes you crave more of it.

Meat with a side of Vegetables

Your meals should be simple, but also be able to be able to maintain variety and flavor which makes this way of eating sustainable. Your main course should be meat. Feel free to cook with any style and use your favorite spices (except sugar) to marinate. Add a small portion of one or two vegetables on the side. Most carbohydrate sources are found in vegetables so keeping the portions small for enhancing the flavor of the meat help you keep it simple and avoids having to track the carbohydrates. The protein and fats from the meat will bring you to satiety while the vegetables enhance the flavors of the dish bringing more joy and variety to your meals.

The first step to doing the keto diet is to stop eating or lower your daily carbohydrate intake, Your body usually will take 6-8 weeks to fully adapt to this way of eating and you may, for the first week you may feel flu-like symptoms. This is a good sign that you are doing it right. When you reduce your carbohydrate intake, your body will initially flush out a lot of water together with minerals and so it is important to stay hydrated and during this time, it is a good idea to eat mineral rich foods, salt your food to taste and/or take a mineral supplement to help you replenish and feel better.

When you first start preparing keto meals, Your will want to do some rough counting of carbohydrates, fats and protein. It does not have to be exact and the important part is to learn to eyeball your meals and eventually be able to estimate the correct macronutrient ratio.

Many people start the ketogenic diet and experience mental clarity and improved mood as a side effect which makes it easy for people to stay on the ketogenic diet and incorporate it as a lifestyle instead of just a short term diet.

Adequate protein improves focus, boosts mood and reduces anxiety

Firstly, eating adequate protein provides satiety to hunger and this is usually more effective when paired with adequate amounts of fat. Not always thinking about food will definitely help improve your focus. Consuming sufficient protein also provides the body with enough amino acids to produce neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine which will reduce anxiety, improve mood and motivation.

Sufficient mineral intake reduces cravings

Those strong cravings for snacking or sometimes hunger when you already ate come from your body signalling that it is missing some minerals. Making sure that you eat foods that provide these minerals will remove these distracting cravings.

Low carbohydrate diets keeps your blood sugar stable

When you eat a high amount of carbohydrates or sugar, your body must release a high amount of insulin to remove the incoming blood sugar. Usually, your body will overcompensate causing too much blood sugar to be removed. You will experience this when you feel “food coma” or drowsiness after eating a meal high in carbohydrates.

When you eat low amount or even no carbohydrates, your blood sugar remains stable. This allows your liver through gluconeogenesis to produce all the glucose needed by your body and thus preventing the accompanying blood sugar roller coaster and drowsiness that comes with it. Ketones produced by your body will provide your body with stable energy levels all day without the brain fog.

Avoid carbohydrates in liquid form

Carbohydrates in liquid form absorb into the bloodstream very rapidly and even smaller amounts will have a drastic effect on your blood sugar levels which tends to keep it elevated your for longer and will make you feel hungry very quickly due to the compensating insulin spike to deal with the rapidly rising blood sugar. Many condiments such as ketchup are high in sugar, oatmeal and beer are examples of this.

How the body becomes able to sustainably use fat for fuel is keeping it in a state of metabolic flexibility. This is the goal of the ketogenic diet and it allows the body, at all times, to not only use glucose for fuel, but also convert fats to ketones for use as fuel and even allows your muscle to directly metabolise fatty acids to use as energy.

The key to a successful ketogenic diet for weight loss is making sure you feel satiated. Feeling hungry long term is not sustainable and a sure way for your body to increase your hunger and decrease your metabolism in order to save energy. Long term hunger ensures that you will have to overeat to compensate.

Focus on getting adequate amounts of human essential nutrients, protein, fats, vitamins and minerals. It is hard to overeat essential nutrients and your body will signal satiation when you get enough. This process takes time to adapt to and you will naturally start feeling less hungry as you allow your body to get its required nutrients.

The easiest way to approach this is to eat meals with the main course of a meat with a side of vegetables for flavor as your go to meals. Meat is naturally packaged with adequate protein and fats with essential nutrients providing the nutrition that will make you body feel satiated for long periods of time.

Keep eating right and the weight will fall come off soon enough.

You can keep it simple and not count your calories, just eat no carbohydrates and eat until you are full. The goal is to consume enough protein. The easiest way to achieve this is to primarily eat meats such as steak which have protein and fat in the correct proportions for this diet.

If you want to eat carbohydrates, eat them at the end of the day. That is when your body’s insulin sensitivity is the highest, reducing the insulin release from the carbohydrate intake. The goal is to keep insulin low and stable.

Everyone is different and depending on lifestyle and context trying out different ways to execute a ketogenic diet for weight loss will be beneficial when experiencing a weight stall. For example, there are many cases where increasing fat intake will actually help break a stall. Some cases of weight loss stalls are attributed to lectins found in certain vegetables. The best way is to experiment with different protein to fat ratios for periods of a few weeks and see what works for you. Removing vegetables which are high in lectins from your diet can also help simplify and remove confounders to break your plateau.

On a Keto diet, expect to lose around 1-2 pounds of weight per week. Losing any more than that probably means you will also be losing lean muscle mass which is not what you want.

Contrary to popular belief fiber is not an essential nutrient and the body does not need it. Many gastrointestinal issues are actually caused by the ingestion of certain types of fiber such as FODMAPS.