David Ortner - The Ketogenic Diet for Weight Loss: Why the Ketogenic Diet is the Ultimate Plan to Lose Weight Naturally, Plus the Best Recipes to Maximize Results

1. The Ketogenic Diet Unwrapped

W OULD YOU LIKE TO LEARN how to lose weight and dramatically increase your health without ever feeling hungry or deprived? Its easier than you think. The secret: a high-fat, low-carb diet known as the ketogenic diet. The ketogenic diet is quickly becoming a top nutrition and weight loss program with health and fitness experts, and for good reason. Its been studied extensively and has been determined to be an effective treatment and preventative measure for a variety of conditions, including heart disease, diabetes, some types of cancer, neurological disorders, and even acne. And its a painless, satisfying way to lose weight quickly and naturally.

The principle behind the ketogenic diet is actually very simple. When we eat carbohydrates, our bodies release insulin in reaction to the elevated blood glucose levels caused by the carb intake. Insulin is a hormone that signals the cells to store as much available energy as possible, first as glycogen, then as fat. Because the ketogenic diet limits carbs in the diet, it keeps the bodys carbohydrate supply nearly empty at all times. This prevents high levels of insulin from being released and causes the body to turn instead to fat stores for its energy supply. This state is known as ketosis. Ketones are molecules that are generated during the bodys metabolism of its fat stores. Ketones can be used for energy and, importantly, can be used instead of glucose for most of the brains energy needs (fatty acids, on the other hand, cannot).

So what, precisely, does a person eat on the ketogenic diet? Well, that depends on a number of factors. Generally speaking, any diet that consists of less than 60 grams of net carbohydrate per day is considered ketogenic. However, athletes and people with high metabolisms may be able to take in 100 or more grams of net carbs per day and still maintain ketosis. Likewise, an older person who is sedentary may need to take in fewer than 30 net grams to reach the state of ketosis.

The ketogenic diet is high in protein, but most of the calories come from fat, which is used by the body for energy. The amount of fat a person must consume will depend on that persons protein and carb intake, their daily energy expenditure, and whether they seek to lose weight. Across the board, a ketogenic diet will get forty to eighty percent of its calories from fat, twenty to thirty percent of its calories from protein, and thirty percent or less of its calories from carbohydrates. Because few people tend overeat on diets this high in fat, calorie counting is usually not necessary. Well discuss in more detail the process of determining your ideal proportions in a later chapter.

Of course, the type of fat consumed is vitally important. I recommend staying away from polyunsaturated omega-6 fats (for example, soy, corn, cottonseed, safflower oils). Fats high in medium-chain triglycerides, like coconut oil, are encouraged because they are easily turned into ketones.

The ketogenic diet is a high fat diet, but it wont raise your cholesterol or increase your risk for heart disease. Quite the opposite. Heart disease is caused by inflammation, which in turn is caused mostly by trans fat and sugar intake rather than the consumption of heart-healthy fats.

2. Proven Benefits of the Keto Diet

O VER TWENTY HUMAN STUDIES have been conducted on the effects of low-carb diets in the past ten years or so. In nearly every one of the studies, low-carb diets have brought about more weight loss than other diet programs and, moreover, have led to other very important improvements in health risk factors. Lets take a closer look at some of the research-backed benefits of the ketogenic diet.

H UNGER IS ONE OF THE most miserable, yet unavoidable side effects of nearly every diet program. In fact, hunger is a primary reason most people eventually abandon their diets. One of the most important advantages of the ketogenic diet is that participants naturally end up feeling fuller while still eating fewer calories, since their diet is made up largely of ultra-satisfying protein and fat. This leads to truly painless and hunger-free weight loss. Compare this to a low-fat diet, where participants must actively restrict calories, and therefore feel deprived, in order to reach comparable results.

L OWERING CARB INTAKE is one of absolute easiest and most effective ways to lose weight. Research indicates that people who follow low-carb diets lose more weight and experience faster weight loss that do people on low-fat diets. In fact, low-carb diets sometimes lead to two or three times the weight loss in the first weeks of the diet (although, admittedly, some of this weight loss is due to shedding water weight)

N OT ALL BODY FAT IS created equal. The area of the body in which the fat is stored has a huge impact on how the fats presence affects our overall health and risk for disease.

The human body contains two main types of fat: subcutaneous fat, which is stored under the skin, and visceral fat, which tends to lodge around our organs. It is primarily visceral fat that leads to inflammation, insulin resistance, metabolic dysfunction, and disease. The ketogenic diet causes more general fat loss than low-fat diets but, importantly, it leads to an even larger proportion of loss of visceral fat, which in turn reduces the risk of heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.

H IGH DENSITY LIPOPROTEIN (HDL) is thought of as the good cholesterol, since, unlike bad cholesterol, it carries cholesterol away from the body and to the liver, where it can be either utilized by the body or excreted. Higher levels of HDL are associated with lower risks of heart disease. Eating fat increases HDL levels. Unsurprisingly, HDL levels increase significantly on the ketogenic diet, to a much larger extent than they do on low-fat diets.