Tag Archive for: Ketogenic Diet Results Weight Loss

Ketogenic Diets and Weight Loss and Bodybuilding

August 3, 2018/in Blog, Ketogenic Diet, Nutritional Consultant

I get asked about ketogenic diets for bodybuilding or weight loss goals a lot. People always wants to know what the best diet is or what they can do to lose fat faster. Truthfully, most people have no clue what they are getting themselves into.

While a ketogenic diet may work better then a low carb diet, I don’t know if people are ready for them.

First off, a ketogenic diet is one where there are no carbs. Without carbohydrates the body turn to burn fat as the primary fuel source. Since this is happening the body can tap into stored bodyfat for energy and we can end up leaner. Well while that is possible we need to look at what may happen.

For starters your energy will be drained. Without carbohydrates your body won’t know what energy source to turn to for a few days so you may experience feelings of weakness while you train or until your body becomes adapted at using fat. While this isn’t a bad thing you must understand that you have to change your training intensity. There’s no way that you can keep training with super high volume while you use one of these diets.

The next thing that you have to understand about using a ketogenic diet for weight loss or bodybuilding is that you need to eat more protein then normal. Since you don’t have carbs, and carbs are protein sparing, you need to consume more protein so you don’t lose muscle tissue. So make sure that you are eating at least 6 meals per day with a servings of protein coming every meal.

Then you have to make sure that you are getting enough fiber. Look to consume fiber from various sources such as green vegetables and fiber powder or pills like physillum husk. Now you need to add some healthily nutritional supplements since you want to make sure that you do your best to burn fat on these keto diets for weight loss and bodybuilding. First, make sure you consume healthy fats like omega-3 fish oils, cla, and gla. These fats will help to burn more body fat. Then you want to purchase a good branch chain amino acid powder as bcaa’s help to retain muscle mass and prevent muscle breakdown.

So in conclusion, a ketogenic diet may be the best for weight loss or bodybuilding but you need to make sure you are eating enough and taking in the right nutrients or you’ll lose too much muscle mass.

What is a Ketogenic Diet and How Does it Relate to the Atkins Diet?

August 1, 2018/in Blog, Ketogenic Diet, Nutritional Consultant

You’ve probably heard plenty about the Atkins Diet over the years. You know, that incredibly popular and controversial diet that involves cutting right down on your carbohydrate intake. You may have also heard of “ketogenic diets” – it’s a more scientific term so you may not recognise it.

Did you realise that the Atkins Diet is a type of ketogenic diet? In this article we’ll have a brief look at what the term means and my experience of this type of diet.

The Atkins Diet

The original Atkins Diet book, Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution, was released in 1972. Dr Robert Atkins was interested, among other things, in getting his own weight under control. Primarily using self-experimentation techniques he found that eating a diet very low in carbohydrates tended to make him lose weight quickly. His experimentation was based upon other research papers and, as a result of his own studies, he became confident that the science behind the diet was sound. The resulting book was a resounding success and, over the next 30 years up to his death in 2003, Robert Atkins continued to produce popular diet books based upon the low-carbohydrate principle.

Ketogenic Diets

Some would argue that only the first “phase” of the Atkins Diet is “ketogenic” but it’s very clear that this element is central to the whole diet. There are many other diets of this type with different names and claims but, if they talk about severely restricting the intake of carbohydrates, then they’re probably forms of ketogenic diet. The process of “ketosis” is quite complicated and would take some time to describe but, in essence, it works because cutting down on carbs restricts the amount of blood glucose available to trigger the “insulin response”. Without a triggering of the glucose-insulin response some hormonal changes take place which cause the body to start burning its stores of fat as energy. This also has the interesting effect of causing your brain to be fuelled by what are known as “ketone bodies” (hence “ketogenic”) rather than the usual glucose. The whole process is really quite fascinating and I recommend that you read up on it.

Controversy

All forms of ketogenic diet are controversial. Most of the debate surrounds the issue of cholesterol and whether ketogenic diets increase or decrease the levels HDL “good” cholesterol and/or increase or decrease LDL “bad” cholesterol. The number of scientific studies is increasing year on year and it is certainly possible to point to strong cases on both sides of the argument. My conclusion (and this is only my opinion) is that one could equally make the case that a carbohydrate-laden diet has negative effects on cholesterol and I think that, on balance, a ketogenic-type diet is more healthy than a carbohydrate-heavy one. Interestingly, there isn’t so much controversy about whether ketogenic diets work or not (it’s widely accepted that they do); it’s mostly about how they work and whether that is good/bad/indifferent from a health perspective.

My Experience

I too am a bit of a self-experimenter. I know this approach isn’t for everyone and it does carry an element of risk. I’ve experimented with a ketogenic diet for around eight years now. I sometimes lapse, mostly during holidays, but I always return to the diet as part of my day-to-day routine. I find that I can easily lose the several extra pounds that I put on during the holidays within around two weeks of starting up the keto diet again. I suppose it helps that I really enjoy the type of food I get to eat by following this regimen. Many of the foods I like are quite high in protein and fat. I do miss carbohydrate-rich foods such as pizza and pasta but I think that loss is outweighed (sic) by the benefit of being able to each rich food and still keep my weight under control. It goes without saying that I have to avoid sugary foods but I don’t have much of a sweet tooth and I can still enjoy things like good dark chocolate, in moderation.

Conclusion

It’s difficult, if you are just starting out looking for a diet that works for you, to know where the truth lies in this debate; if the scientists can’t sort it out then how are you going to? The plain truth is that you’ll need to educate yourself, weigh up the arguments, then follow your own best judgement. My experience has been largely positive but you will, no doubt, have heard of friends having problems on low carbohydrate diets for one reason or another. There is no such thing as a miracle diet and most of them are just variations on a theme but all ketogenic-type diets are based upon a very specific principle and that principle has been demonstrated to induce weight loss in many people. Perhaps you should try to base your opinion on the available evidence and not on anecdotes. It’s your body and your health, after all.

Ketogenic Diets and Their Rapid Weight Loss Effects

July 31, 2018/in Blog, Ketogenic Diet, Nutritional Consultant

Virtually all weight loss diets to varying degrees focus on either calorie reduction or the manipulation of the intake of one of the three essential macronutrients (proteins, fats, or carbohydrates) to achieve their weight loss effects.

Ketogenic diets are a group of “high-fat, moderate protein” or “high-protein moderate fat” but very low-carbohydrate diets. The term ketogenic basically refers to the increased production of ketone bodies occasioned by the elevated rate of lipolysis (fat break down). Ketones are the acidic by-products formed during the intermediate break down of “fat” into “fatty acids” by the liver.

The first sets of ketogenic diets were actually developed as far back as the early 1920s by the Johns Hopkins Pediatric Epilepsy Center and also by Dr. R.M. Wilder of the Mayo Clinic to treat children with hard to control seizures. The diets were designed to mimic the biochemical changes that occurred during periods of fasting, namely ketosis, acidosis, and dehydration. The diets involved the consumption of about 10-15 grams of carbohydrates per day, 1 gram of protein per kilogram bodyweight of the patient and the remaining calories derived from fats.

Today, the promoters of ketogenic diets are strongly of the view that carbohydrates especially the high glycemic index ones are the major reasons why people gain weight. Carbohydrate foods are generally metabolized to produce glucose, a form of simple sugar that is generally regarded as the preferred energy source for the body as it is a faster burning energy. Although the body can break down muscle glycogen (a mixture of glucose and water) and fat to produce energy, it however prefers to get it from high glycemic index carbohydrates from diets.

Of the macronutrients, carbohydrates are therefore argued to be the major cause of weight gain. This is more so because the increased intake of high glycemic index carbohydrate foods generally causes fluctuating blood sugar levels due to their fast absorption into the bloodstream and which more often than not leads to the overproduction of insulin. This is where the problem actually starts.

Insulin is a hormone that regulates blood glucose levels and therefore maintenance of the energy in/energy out equation of the body which rules body weight. Excess amounts of glucose in the bloodstream causes the excessive secretion of insulin which leads to the storage of the excess glucose in the body as either glycogen in liver and muscle cells or fat in fat cells.

One aim of ketogenic diets is therefore to reduce insulin production to its barest minimum by drastically reducing carbohydrate consumption while using fats and proteins to supplement the body’s energy requirement.

Despite the ability of ketogenic diets to reduce insulin production, their main objective is ultimately aimed at inducing the state of ketosis. Ketosis can be regarded as a condition or state in which the rate of formation of ketones produced by the break down of “fat” into “fatty acids” by the liver is greater than the ability of tissues to oxidize them. Ketosis is actually a secondary state of the process of lipolysis (fat break down) and is a general side effect of low-carbohydrate diets. Ketogenic diets are therefore favorably disposed to the encouragement and promotion of ketosis.

Prolonged periods of starvation can easily induce ketosis but it can also be deliberately induced by making use of a low-calorie or low-carbohydrate diet through the ingestion of large amounts of either fats or proteins and drastically reduced carbohydrates. Therefore, high-fat and high-protein diets are the weight loss diets used to deliberately induce ketosis.

Essentially, ketosis is a very efficient form of energy production which does not involve the production of insulin as the body rather burns its fat deposits for energy. Consequently, the idea of reducing carbohydrate consumption does not only reduce insulin production but also practically forces the body to burn its fat deposit for energy, thereby making the use of ketogenic diets a very powerful way to achieve rapid weight loss.

Ketogenic diets are designed in such a way that they initially force the body to exhaust its glucose supply and then finally switch to burning its fat deposits for energy. Subsequent food intakes after inducing the state of ketosis are meant to keep the ketosis process running by appropriately adjusting further carbohydrate consumption to provide just the basic amount of calories needed by the body.

For example, the Atkins Diet which is obviously the most popular ketogenic diet aims to help dieters achieve what the diet calls the individual’s Critical Carbohydrate Level for Maintenance (CCLM) – a carbohydrate consumption level where the dieter neither gains nor loses weight anymore.

In 2003, the Johns Hopkins treatment center came up with a modified version of the Atkins Diet protocol to treat a group of 20 children with epilepsy. After the treatment, it was observed that two-thirds experienced a significant reduction in their seizures while 9 were able to reduce their medication dosages and none developed kidney stones.

Furthermore, there are ongoing scientific studies by the National Institute of Health (NIH) concerning the effectiveness of the classic ketogenic diet and the modified versions of the Atkins Diet in helping people to lose weight and also in the treatment of epilepsy. It is equally interesting to note that the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) is carrying out studies on the effect of ketogenic diets and also formulating medications that will be able to produce the same effect on weight reduction.