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Ketogenic diet: FAQs and Carbohydrate Cheat Days

The ketogenic diet can make a big difference, but it can also lead to a crash or be counterproductive if not executed properly. The ketogenic diet is becoming increasingly popular, but that doesn’t mean everyone is fully aware of it; in fact, many newcomers to the ketogenic diet still have little understanding of some of the terminology. The research on the ketogenic diet is now relatively mature, and it is perfect for those who want to lose fat or need to stay healthy. As research progresses, new knowledge continues to be discovered, and the following is a summary of those findings to address some common questions about the ketogenic diet.

Entering Ketosis and Adapting to Ketosis

If the carbohydrate intake in the diet is low enough that carbohydrates cannot be converted to glucose in the body for energy, then the body will enter ketosis. Upon entering ketosis, the body enters a special metabolic situation where the body begins to metabolize fat to produce ketone bodies and your brain, organs, and muscles begin to use it for energy.

In people on a low-carb diet, the ketone bodies in the blood will drop to between 0.1 and 0.2 millimoles. Once you start a ketogenic diet (75% fat, 20% protein, and 5% carbohydrates), the ketone bodies in the blood will drop to between 0.5 and 5.0 millimoles, a range we call “nutritional ketosis”.

When we enter ketosis, the body is now primarily fed by glucose, but now it is fed by ketone bodies, so the body needs a period of adjustment. During this time, you may feel weak, confused, or lethargic, which is normal and is known as the “ketosis adjustment period”. This can take anywhere from 2 to 6 weeks as the body begins to regain strength, power, and brain sharpness as it adjusts to ketogenic.

The Most Common Problems When Starting Ketogenic

Most people are most likely to have the following problems when starting ketogenic.

  • Treating a low-carb diet as a ketogenic diet.
  • Eating too much protein.
  • Giving up before the adjustment period is over

Ketone levels in the blood are what distinguish a low-carb diet from a ketogenic diet, and too much protein can also lower ketone levels in the blood.

Excess protein may not sound like a bad thing, but a ketogenic diet is a high-fat (70-75%), ultra-low-carb (5%) diet with a moderate amount of protein (20-25%). Some bodybuilders will increase their protein intake to 40%, fat to 50%, and carbohydrates to 10%. However, when protein intake reaches 1.5 to 1.8 grams per kilogram of body weight, it tends to cause gluconeogenesis, which converts to glucose, a condition that can make it difficult for the body to enter ketosis.

Having a Carb Cheat Day Affect the Ketogenic Diet

Another key point is to allow yourself enough time to adapt to the effects of ketogenesis. Most people give up before they are fully acclimated. During the pre-ketogenic period, exercise performance can be super poor and you should give yourself a little more time to adapt. Once you are acclimated to ketosis, your body’s ability to utilize ketogenic function is greatly enhanced.

Some people may start to question the ketogenic diet as an unhealthy diet. Well, let’s start with what makes us obese. We can find in a bunch of literature that high-fat diets cause insulin resistance, and obesity, increase bad cholesterol and cause cardiovascular disease. However, I want to emphasize that what this literature points to as a high-fat diet should mean a high-fat plus high-carbohydrate diet. It is the high-carbohydrate, high-fat diet that we are talking about that is the root cause of health hazards.

Bob Wolfe’s lab did an experiment where they injected ketone bodies into the bloodstream. If the ketone bodies were injected alone, they were used as energy, but if they were injected with glucose, the ketone bodies were no longer used as energy and insulin resistance began to develop. As you can see from the results of the experiment, it is the high carbohydrates and high fats that can cause health problems.

Why does this happen? The main reason is that fat requires the specific enzyme CPT1 to transport it to the granular glands. High levels of insulin inhibit this transport, so fat burning stops. For this reason, in a ketogenic diet, carbohydrates must be reduced to a sufficient level to not prevent fat from being used as energy. Studies have also confirmed that a ketogenic diet can have several beneficial effects on the body, such as lowering triglycerides and cholesterol in the blood and increasing insulin activity.

Does Having a Carb Cheat Day Affect the Ketogenic Diet?

Carb cheat days, also known as “cycling ketogenic”, are primarily used to break through plateaus and give yourself a “break” from the ketogenic diet so that it is easier to stick to the ketogenic diet. In normal “cycling ketogenic”, 5 ketogenic days are accompanied by 2 carbohydrate days, and so on. However, there is no strong research data to support this approach.

There is also some data showing that restarting a high carbohydrate intake after 10 weeks on a ketogenic diet leads to a significant increase in body fat after just one week, but if we set our daily carbohydrate intake at body weight (kg) x 1 gram, this does not lead to fat gain. There is another situation where we can also increase our carbohydrate intake appropriately, and that is before performing high-intensity exercise. After all, glucose is still more efficiently utilized than ketone bodies.

A Better Way to Cycle Through a Ketogenic Diet

It is somewhat unlikely that a person will be able to stick to a ketogenic diet for a long period without blowing up carbohydrates altogether. So it’s important to adjust the number of carbohydrate supplement days on a cycling ketogenic setup to a small period in a year or six months, such as one month out of three on a low-carb diet.

This approach was developed by scientist Pauli and her colleagues in 2013. These scientists put experimenters on a 20-day ketogenic diet and then switched to a 20-day low-carb diet (20-25% carbohydrates) combined with a high-protein diet. The two approaches were switched to each other and adhered to for 6 months, then switched to a Mediterranean-style diet (in which a balance of carbohydrates, protein, and fat was found).

The study found that experimenters lost fat while on the ketogenic diet and subsequently maintained muscle on the Mediterranean diet. Of the 89 experimenters who participated, only eight dropped out of the experiment, and the others who carried on for a year had excellent results. This is a resilient diet!

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