The keto diet consists mainly of foods rich in fat, as the fat percentage may reach approximately 90% of the calories consumed during the day. The keto diet is not one of the diets that can be tried, as it forces the body to use Ketone, one of the types of energy that is produced from stored fat in the liver, instead of relying on the natural source of energy, glucose.
Because this system is very high in fats, it allows eating healthy unsaturated fats, such as nuts, seeds, and olive oil, alongside saturated fats, found in palm oil, lard, butter, and cocoa butter. This diet requires avoiding eating foods rich in carbohydrates and their sources, such as starchy vegetables and fruits, and including protein sources, whether low or high in fat.
The ketogenic diet has gained a high rate of popularity recently, especially after the good results it has been able to achieve among those wishing to lose weight.
The keto diet can be defined as a diet that relies on reducing the amount of carbohydrates and relying primarily on fats to direct the body to use them as a primary energy source, which stimulates burning fats with significantly greater efficiency.
It should be noted that the keto diet was initially designed to treat people who suffer from epileptic seizures in 1921. It helps the body produce ketones and beta-hydroxybutyrate, which can reduce seizures. However, people who underwent the keto diet also lost weight within a short time, drawing attention to this type of diet.
Some argue that the keto diet is similar to the Atkins and low-carb diets. One of the basics of this diet is significantly reducing carbohydrates and replacing them with fats, which puts the body in a metabolic state known as ketosis. In such cases, the body becomes significantly efficient at burning fat for energy. It also converts fats into ketones in the liver, which can provide the brain with energy.
The keto diet is usually followed with the aim of losing weight or for some diseases. Still, it should be noted that this diet should be followed for a short period only. It is not preferable to adopt it for life, especially since it is one of the most restrictive diets that prevents obtaining carbohydrate sources necessary for the human body.
It should be noted that some side effects, such as constipation, low blood sugar, and indigestion, may accompany it. It is not suitable for everyone, so it is recommended to consult a doctor or a nutritionist before following it.
In this metabolic state, fat is the body’s primary energy source instead of carbs. This occurs when you dramatically cut back on carbohydrates, which restricts your body’s ability to produce glucose, the primary fuel for cells.
The best method to enter ketosis is to follow a ketogenic diet. In general, this entails reducing daily carbohydrate intake to 20 to 50 grammes and consuming fats from foods like meat, fish, eggs, nuts, and healthy oils.
You should moderate your protein consumption as well. This is due to the fact that eating a lot of protein can cause it to be turned into glucose, which can delay entering ketosis.
Blood, urine, and breath tests help determine if you have entered ketosis by measuring the amount of ketones your body is producing. Some symptoms also indicate entering this condition, such as increased thirst, dry mouth, frequent urination, and decreased hunger or appetite.
The ketogenic diet consists of several types, but the most common system is the model one, and most of the systems are similar in several principles. The most important types of the ketogenic diet are:
| Keto Diet | Intermittent Fasting |
| Based on determining the type of food consumed | Based on determining the permissible period of eating |
| Helps lose weight by training the body to burn fat, not glucose, to obtain energy | Helps lose weight by reducing the percentage of calories consumed daily and training the body to burn stored fat |
Specialists indicate that both of these diets help in significant weight loss. Choosing the best diet varies according to each person. It is determined according to the body’s ability to tolerate the basic rule of the diet, whether it is fasting for a long time or abstaining from eating carbohydrates. Therefore, it is vital to consult a nutritionist or a doctor before resorting to the keto diet or intermittent fasting.
Studies have found that combining the two diets together contributes to effective and rapid weight loss. This is done by intermittent fasting from food while eating foods based only on fats and proteins for the remaining time. However, you must consider that all bodies cannot tolerate this method and may carry many risks for a specific category of people. Hence, you must also consult a specialist before resorting to it.
The keto diet is the required method to help control body weight. If you are on the ketogenic diet to lose weight, realising that this process takes time is essential. No matter how you look, to reduce body fat, results will only happen after a while. Whether you’re on keto or another diet that puts you in a calorie deficit, it can take one to several weeks to start seeing results.
In general, you’ll need to stick to a calorie deficit of about 450–500 calories per day. At this rate, you should start noticing significant weight loss after 10 to 21 days. Some may achieve their weight loss goals sooner, while others may take a little longer. Remember that water weight is often the first thing the body excretes in the first week when carbohydrate grammes are restricted, as 3 grammes of water are stored for every 1 gramme of carbohydrate.
This is why the scale may give you an inaccurate perception of how much weight is lost. It also means that when carbohydrates are introduced into the diet again, the water weight will return with it, which is entirely normal and healthy.
This can be a variation from one person to another, but generally speaking, here is a time frame:
As mentioned previously, the keto diet is deficient in carbohydrates; it contains only about 50 grammes of carbohydrates, and thus, it often leads to good weight loss in the first weeks because of the absence of carbohydrates in the body, leading it to resort to consuming carbohydrates stored in the body, which are in the form of glycogen, as glycogen is always linked with water.
Thus, its consumption leads to the release of water and its exit from the body, which theoretically reflects a significant weight loss in the first weeks. Although there may be a slight loss of fat at this stage, the most significant percentage is water.
This decline may encourage continued weight loss, but you must consider that it only occurs at the beginning. Weight loss during the first two weeks following this diet ranges from 0.9 to 4.5 kilograms and varies from person to person, depending on the initial body weight.
After the first week or two, weight loss becomes slower. It is often 0.25 to 1 kilogram per week, which is the healthy rate of weight loss. This may be surprising to dieters, although studies indicate that this diet helps in losing weight faster. Compared to traditional weight loss diets, they help reduce appetite; however, over time, the results become similar to the results of other weight loss diets.
This diet may be safe in the short term, but over time, symptoms and side effects may appear following it, as well as long-term health damage, so you should note that you can use some tips to make this diet healthier and reduce its harm, among these tips are the following:
This diet has several benefits when used for certain conditions, although following it may entail several health risks. The most important benefits of the ketogenic diet are as follows:
As for the risks of following the ketogenic diet, we mention the following:
Despite the widespread use of keto diets that are high in fat and low in carbohydrates, they are actually harmful to the body. It leads to a person losing muscle mass even if he or she continues to practice strength sports because protein alone is less effective in building muscle than protein in the presence of carbohydrates when eating them together after exercise.
In addition, it was noted in one study that people who followed other diets lost weight and the same amount of fat as people who followed this diet within three months, but those who followed this diet lost more muscle mass in their legs. You should note that the loss of muscle mass has negative and serious effects in the long term as the person ages.
Keto diets significantly reduce the amount of carbohydrates consumed, thus enhancing fat-burning processes that cause excessive ketosis in the body, forcing cells to take their energy from ketones instead of glucose. When the levels of ketones in the body rise, they cause an increase in the acidity of the blood as an acidic substance, which causes a condition called Ketoacidosis, a serious condition and may be fatal.
Although following the keto diet causes rapid weight loss, the weight that a person loses is likely to come back quickly as well. You should also note that the large weight that a person loses at the beginning of this diet is often due to the loss of water mass only. It also makes the person feel extremely tired as a result of their loss of muscle mass and threatens the heart as a muscle as well.
In addition, it puts the person in a state of constant hunger, which makes things more difficult, especially after they finish the diet and then return to their previous weight. For these reasons, you should only use it under the supervision of specialists.
The formation of kidney stones is one of the most visible symptoms of the keto diet, as a large amount of meat and proteins increases the acidity levels in the urine and raises the levels of calcium and uric acid in it, and their presence together may increase the risk of developing kidney stones. In addition, uric acid is a major cause of gout.
Meals on the keto diet should be based on:
You should limit the intake of any food that contains a high percentage of carbohydrates. Like:
Finally, sustaining a healthy lifestyle is a more important factor than short-term weight loss results. Although it comes with some risk factors for those who may be sensitive to fat, the keto diet is the preferred option for many who feel it offers a more accessible approach to eating.
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