Lose Fat Diet 911: Ketosis for Dummies Learn the right way to lose fat fast with a no-carb 'keto' diet. Lose weight and feel great with these healthy keto tips, recipes, and products. When on a keto diet you need to make a daily effort to replenish your electrolytes. I have always led a healthy life style in terms of activity/exercise.The Ketogenic Diet - An overview - - Health & Wellness - Ketosis is an often misunderstood subject. Its presence is equated with starvation or a warning sign of something going wrong in your metabolism. But nothing could be farther from the truth, except if you are an ill- treated type 1 diabetic person. Our bodies will produce ketones if we eat a diet devoid of carbs or a low- carb diet (less than 6. It took several decades before we heard again about this diet, thanks in part to a parent who demanded it for his 2. The boy's father had to find out about the ketogenic diet in a library as it was never mentioned as an option by his neurologist. The keto diet is gaining in popularity, but it's also 'a dietitian's nightmare,' Lisa Eberly said. We chatted with the registered dietitian to get. Your 3 Day Keto Kickstart and Menu Plan. Diet programs The 'Eat This Not That' Guide to the Keto Diet No carbs, no sugars, no fruits. And all proteins aren. After only 4 days on the diet, his seizures stopped and never returned. If you ever had a chance to see a heart working in real time, you might have noticed the thick fatty tissue that surrounds it. In fact, heart surgeons get to see this every day. A happy beating heart is one that is surrounded by layers of healthy fat. Both the heart and the brain run at least 2. Ketones are non- glycating, which is to say, they don't have a caramelizing, aging effect on your body. A healthy ketosis also helps starve cancer cells as they are unable to use ketones for fuel, relying on glucose alone for their growth. Not only that, a ketogenic diet induces epigenetic changes . GABA has an essential relaxing influence and its favored production by ketosis also reduces the toxic effects of excitatory pathways in our brains. Furthermore, recent data suggests that ketosis alleviates pain other than having an overall anti- inflammatory effect. This is because mitochondria is specifically designed to use fat for energy. When our mitochondria uses fat as an energetic source, its toxic load is decreased, expression of energy producing genes are increased, its energetic output is increased, and the load of inflammatory energetic- end- products is decreased. The status of our mitochondria is the ultimate key for optimal health and while it is true that some of us might need extra support in the form of nutritional supplementation to heal these much needed energy factories, the diet still remains the ultimate key for a proper balance. Energy sources from fat don't require this processing; it goes directly into the mitochondria for energetic uses. That is, it is more complicated to create energy out of sugar than out of fat. Allan, Ph. D and Wolfgang Lutz, MD said in their book Life Without Bread. Carbohydrates are not required to obtain energy. Fat supplies more energy than a comparable amount of carbohydrate, and low- carbohydrate diets tend to make your system of producing energy more efficient. Furthermore, many organs prefer fat for energy. How many chronic and autoimmune diseases have an energy deficit component? How about chronic fatigue? Back to Allan and Lutz. Mitochondria are the power plants of the cell. Because they produce most of the energy in the body, the amount of energy available is based on how well the mitochondria are working. Whenever you think of energy, think of all those mitochondria churning out ATP to make the entire body function correctly. The amount of mitochondria in each cell varies, but up to 5. When you get tired, don't just assume you need more carbohydrates; instead, think in terms of how you can maximize your mitochondrial energy production.. If you could shrink to a small enough size to get inside the mitochondria, what would you discover? The first thing you'd learn is that the mitochondria are primarily designed to use fat for energy! Mainstream nutritionists recommend carbohydrates AKA sugar as the main staple of our diets. The problem with this (and there are several of them) is that in the presence of a high carb diet we are unable to produce ketones from the metabolism of fats, thus, depriving ours bodies from much healing ketone production. The fact that we live in a world which uses glucose as a primary fuel means that we eat a very non healing food in more ways than one. The first few days my head hurt, I felt lethargic, and my legs felt so heavy. But after I got past that, I have so much energy. I don't get tired anymore around 3pm. The best part is, I am not constantly thinking and obsessing about food. I feel a real sense of inner calm. My skin looks better, my hair looks better too. I have been having bacon and eggs for breakfast, a pork chop or other piece of meat for lunch, and usually some pork and sometimes some green beans for dinner. I have also lost some weight! It was the lifestyle in which our brains got nurtured and evolved. But not anymore, unless we all make an effort to reclaim this lost wisdom. Nowadays the human brain is not only shrinking, but brain atrophy is the norm as we age and get plagued with diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, senile dementia and so forth. In the complicated and highly choreographed events surrounding cell- cycle progression, mitochondria are not simple bystanders merely producing energy but instead are full- fledged participants. This long ignored and overlooked connection between the mitochondria and the cell cycle is something that is worthy of considerable more attention as we understand the role of diet in our bodies. We'll have to take a closer look to this subject of ketosis, as it really holds the key to unlock our transformational pathways that will lead us to an outstanding healthy living. But they also lead the genetic orchestra which regulates how every cell ages, divides, and dies. They help dictate which genes are switched on or off in every single cell of our organism. They also provide the fuel needed to make new brain connections, repair and regenerate our bodies. Our well being, behavior and ability to perform the tasks in front of us to do is our individual measure of energy. But how we derive energy from the foods that we eat? Mainstream science says that carbohydrates are what mitochondria use as fuel for energy production. This process is called oxidative metabolism because oxygen is consumed in the process. The energy produced by mitochondria is stored in a chemical . Energy- packed ATP can then be transported throughout the cell, releasing energy on demand of specific enzymes. In addition to the fuel they produce, mitochondria also create a by- product related to oxygen called reactive oxygen species (ROS), commonly known as free radicals. But what we are not told is that mitochondria were specifically designed to use fat for energy, not carbohydrate. Allan, Ph. D and Wolfgang Lutz, MD, Life Without Bread. Don't get focused on specific names, just try to see the whole picture. Fuel can come from carbs or it can come from fats. Fatty acids are the chemical name for fat, and medium and large sized fatty acids get into the mitochondria completely intact with the help of L- carnitine. Think of L- carnitine as a subway train that transports fatty acids into the mitochondria. L- carnitine (from the Greek word carnis means meat or flesh) is chiefly found in animal products. Some molecules are proteins, others are cofactors molecules. One of these cofactors is an important substance found mainly in animal foods and it is called coenzyme Q- 1. Without it, mitochondrial energy production would be minimal. This is the same coenzyme Q1. Step 4 is also where water is produced when oxygen accepts the electrons. These chemical gradients are the driving forces that produce ATP in what is called oxidative phosphorylation. Then the ATP is transported outside the mitochondria for the cell to use as energy for any of its thousands of biochemical reactions. But nature provided us during our evolution with mitochondria that specifically uses fat for energy. Fat is the fueled that animals use to travel great distances, hunt, work, and play since fat gives more packed- energy ATPs than carbs. Biochemically, it makes sense that if we are higher mammals who have mitochondria, then we need to eat fat. Whereas carb metabolism yields 3. ATP molecules from a glucose molecule, a fat metabolism yields 4. ATP molecules from a fatty acid molecule inside the mitochondria. Fat supplies more energy for the same amount of food compared to carbs. But not only that, the burning of fat by the mitochondria - beta oxidation - produces ketone bodies that stabilizes overexcitation and oxidative stress in the brain related to all its diseases, it also causes epigenetic changes that produce healthy and energetic mitochondria and decreasing the overproduction of damaging and inflammatory free radicals among many other things! But when mitochondria function becomes impaired and send signals that tell normal cells to die, things go wrong. For instance, the destruction of brain cells leads to every single neurodegenerative condition known including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and so forth. Mitochondrial dysfunction has wide- ranging implications, as the health of the mitochondria intimately affects every single cell, tissue and organ within your body. This damage, called oxidative stress, is at the basis of oxidized cholesterol, stiff arteries (rusty pipes) and brain damage. Oxidative stress is a key player in dementia as well as autism. For instance, they have their own DNA (referred as mt. DNA) which is separate from the widely known DNA in the nucleus (referred as n- DNA). Mitochondrial DNA comes for the most part from the mother line, which is why mitochondria is also considered as your feminine life force. This mt. DNA is arranged in a ring configuration and it lacks a protective protein surrounding, leaving its genetic code vulnerable to free radical damage. If you don't eat enough animal fats, you can't build a functional mitochondrial membrane which will keep it healthy and prevent them from dying. The loss of function or death of mitochondria is present in pretty much every disease. Dietary and environmental factors lead to oxidative stress and thus to mitochondrial injury as the final common pathway of diseases or illnesses. My six- week keto diet experimentby Roslyn Lawrence. When Ros Lawrence first heard of a diet that allowed her to eat foods she normally denied herself, especially peanut butter, she immediately decided to give it a go. What would you say if I told you there's a diet where you can eat all the food you normally deny yourself, stop counting tedious calories, shift some weight, gain extra muscle and get an energy boost too? If you're anything like me you'd be asking 'where do I sign up?'! So when I heard about the ketogenic diet from a colleague I was immediately intrigued. This simply sounded too good to be true. Could I really eat fat and get lean? Enjoy peanut butter treats and squeeze into my skinny jeans? Never one to shy away from a challenge, I decided to see for myself, and so began my six- week experiment with the ketogenic diet. It's based on the principle that by lowering your carb intake your body is pushed into a metabolic state known as ketosis (pronounced key - tow - sis), where it switches from burning carbs as its primary energy source to burning fat. To be more precise, it uses ketone bodies or ketones from the breakdown of fatty acids in the liver – hence the name, ketosis. Now that fatty fuel can come from a meal you've just eaten or from the stores of fat on your body (aka, the evil muffin top). Ketosis is a metabolic process that the body initiates to help us survive when our food intake is low. Typically our bodies run on glucose derived from the breakdown of carbs – this is because glucose is the easiest molecule for the body to convert and use as energy, so it will be chosen over any other energy source. But when your body doesn't have enough carbs for your energy needs it will switch to ketosis to keep you pepped. The ketogenic diet is basically tricking your body into thinking your food intake is low, while actually allowing you to eat your fill. So what do you eat on a ketogenic diet? First and foremost, the term 'diet' – with its connotations of limits or restriction – was a bit of a misnomer from my perspective. This eating plan allowed me to tuck into all sorts of healthy foods, including good fats such as coconut cream, salmon, avocado and (my personal kryptonite) all natural peanut butter, as well as energy- giving eggs and a limited range of green veggies, including kale, spinach and cucumber. The first stage; however, was brutal. There's no way round this. To get into ketosis all major carb sources in your diet have to be eliminated, so it's goodbye to all grains, as well as bread, pasta, sugary treats and fruit, but hello to high- quality fats. The more restrictive you can be with your carbs at this stage, the quicker your body will enter the ketosis. Between 2. 0 to 3. I lowered my intake to the recommended amounts. The second challenge was to work out what I could actually eat – as I had no intention of putting butter into my coffee (a keto technique) – and as always Google delivered the answers. A wealth of meal ideas are available online, and after a few weeks of sticking to these I began to tweak and devise my own – including my keto green smoothie, tuna quiche, and chermoula. Ketogenic smoothie. Ros shows you how to make a ketogenic green smoothie. The food on the keto plan is, in one word, yummy. A big change from my usual low- fat fare, and once I got over my initial fruit withdrawals, I genuinely began to enjoy it. The trick came less in changing what I ate, but changing my mindset. For this experiment to work I had to switch both my metabolism and my ingrained attitude towards fat. I'm a subscriber to the 'fat makes you fat' and 'calories in: calories out' dogma, so the notion that I should be shoving extra fatty kilojoules in to shift kilograms seemed crazy at first. With every cheese plate eaten that little demon on my shoulder sang 'you shouldn't be eating this. Then I got brain fog, you know that hazy state where you walk into a room and can't remember why you were going in there? But the most notable side effect was an incident of what I believe to be reactive hypoglycemia. After hitting the gym for a normal workout my hands began to shake and my heart felt like it was banging on the wall of my chest. I was then overcome with waves of severe nausea. Apparently reactive hypoglycemia happens when your body is in the process of transitioning from burning carbs to burning fat. Your pancreas hasn't quite cottoned on to your new diet and continues secreting insulin for your old higher level of carb consumption. Eventually more insulin gets secreted than is needed and a blood sugar crash results. Your body then snaps into action to get you some sugar and fast! Adrenalin is released to tell the liver to break down some protein into glucose causing the symptoms. Did I say the first step was brutal? Ketogenic diet – an nutritionist's perspective. Associate Professor in Nutrition at Deakin University Tim Crowe says there's nothing new about the ketogenic diet. But for most people that's not going to be the case. But you can also take the message that I'm going to start my day with bacon and cream and cheese and eggs and mostly animals foods – and that's a very different dietary pattern. Energy levels begin to rise and the keto flu is but a distant memory. I'm not going to lie, the keto plan takes a lot of prepping, planning and maths, so for the newby it is actually quite labour intensive. With all the food weighing and rigorous carb counting I approached my first ketosis test at the two- week mark with both excitement and trepidation. Was I a fat burning machine? A quick trip to the pharmacy to buy some ketosis test strips followed (the strips measure the ketones in your urine), followed by a bathroom pit stop and voila success! My reading was 4 mmol/L a very high level indeed. With levels of 1. L the recommended level for weight loss. Excitedly I jumped on the scales. My weight had stayed eerily stable at 6. But why? It turned out I had made a few rookie mistakes. I was eating too much protein. On this diet you should get 7. I was only counting carbs and alas my protein and fat intakes were nearly equal. To help me stay on top of the tricky calculations, and keep track of the food I was eating, I devised a spread sheet. Also it turns out some people do in fact need to count calories on this diet and I'm one of them. When I added it up I was eating a whopping 2,5. That is double the 1,5. I would usually consume. But by this stage I was at week 4 of the diet and so I decided to stick with it. The results. So, what happens to when you overeat on at ketogenic diet? Well, as my results show, not very much. Day 1. Day 4. 2Difference. Weight (kg)6. 5. 8. Body Fat %3. 2. 2. Lean Muscle Mass. Hips (cm)9. 39. 0- 3. Waist (cm)6. 9. 5. Right arm (cm)2. 4. Left Arm (cm)2. 4. Right thigh (cm)4. Left thigh (cm)4. Overall I gained a mere 5. I lost 3. 5 kilograms of fat because I gained 4 kilogramsof muscle (yay!). And this was while I was doing less exercise than I normally would have done. I was actually shocked that I hadn't piled on the pounds. I definitely feel stronger and I have bulked up especially in my arms and shoulders – places I'd always found it hard to build muscle previously. Compliments have been pouring in as people comment on how . A welcome side effect for a change! So with the experiment drawing to a close and the obvious positive changes to my outward appearance, I began to wonder might be happening on the inside. So I headed to my GP for a check up. Tests revealed my overall cholesterol level increased from 4. L to 5. 7 mmol/L. Which is still in the healthy range. While an increase in cholesterol sounds negative it may not be. The majority of the increase was in my HDL (the . My doctor seemed very happy with my 2. HDL result, and if she is happy I'm happy. My liver and kidney were both healthy and functioning in normal ranges. It has taken me the full six weeks to really settle into low carb living. But now that I've got the hang of it I'm hooked. My next challenge is to lower my calories to somewhere near what they were before I went keto. I'm keen to see what changes this will bring about in my body. Stay tuned for part 2.
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