Keeping Keto is one of the six diets that Healthi formerly iTrackBites has to help you succeed at losing weight. Keeping Keto is high fat and extremely low carb way of eating.
“Healthi formerly iTrackbites is an alternative to Weight Watchers. “
When trying to lose weight it is important to know that everyone’s journey is unique. Our bodies are different. Our goals are different. We each have our own struggles. We each require different nutritional objectives.
Healthi formerly iTrackBites recognizes this and has designed personalized plans to help you understand and achieve your weight loss goals.
What is the Keeping Keto plan?
The popular Keto diet is a *(healthy fat) high-fat, very-low-carb diet that focuses on drastically reducing carbs. Replacing carbs with fat lowers blood sugar and shifts your metabolism away from carbs and towards fat and ketones. This means your body learns to use fat as energy instead of carbs. Unlike other plans on this one, you really do “Burn Fat”.
The Keeping Keto way of eating has been shown to have many benefits as well as a few drawbacks. If you have tried everything else give Keeping Keto a try. You can combine Keto and myWW or other weight loss plans to give your body a boost.
Who is Keeping Keto for?
- Keeping Keto is for those who feel deprived on other plans.
- For those who prefer protein rich foods as opposed to carbs.
- For those who have had little success on other diets
- For people who want to improve their insulin levels
What is Keto?
Keto is short for ketosis. The body’s preferred fuel source is carbs, but when it is low, your body will use fat as its fuel source. Changing to fat as a source of energy will change the way food is metabolized and ultimately, how the body stores fat. In this state, the body will become more efficient at burning fat for energy, otherwise known as ketosis.
How do I get my body into ketosis?
There are a few ways you can jumpstart your success with keto. One proven method is to begin with, a fast. Kick this plan off with a 12-72 hour fast. Children with epilepsy are told to fast before starting a ketogenic diet to help relieve their symptoms faster.
Why start with a fast? Fasting has been shown to help children get into ketosis faster and that means it helps to manage their epilepsy faster. The take away here is that fasting helps them to achieve ketosis sooner. If it helps them it will help you too. The faster you start burning fat the faster you achieve your weight loss goals.
What are the benefits of ketosis?
A Keto diet plan can be extremely beneficial. Recent studies have uncovered a host of benefits for choosing the Keeping Keto over other plans.
- Keto supports weight loss. The keeping Keto diet achieves this by increasing your metabolism and reducing your appetite. In the short term, high-protein, low-carbohydrate ketogenic diets reduce hunger and lower food intake significantly more than do high-protein, medium-carbohydrate nonketogenic diets.
- Improves Acne. Eating a diet high in processed and refined carbohydrates may alter the balance of gut bacteria and cause blood sugar to rise and fall significantly, both of which can adversely affect skin health.
- May reduce cancer risks. They are conducting studies that may use the keto diet in conjunction with medicine to help cure some cancers. They are using a keto diet along with radiation therapy to treat cancer patients. Keto diets may cause stress on cancer cells causing them to die. The research is ongoing, and studies are limited.
- May improve heart health. When following a ketogenic diet, you have to be mindful of eating healthy fats such as avocados and shy away from bacon or pork rinds. When you may get the added effect of lowering your cholesterol, lower LDL levels and higher HDL levels can reduce your risk of heart attacks.
- May protect brain function. Like the cancer risks bullet point, this area needs more study to be conclusive. Still, some studies, such as this 2019 review, suggest the ketones that generate during the keto diet provide neuroprotective benefits, which means they can strengthen and protect the brain and nerve cells.
- Reduce seizures. I think this is why the keto diet exists. As far back as 1921, doctors at the Mayo Clinic started forming hypotheses about how a ketogenic diet affected humans. It has been shown to reduce episodes of seizures in patients with focal seizures. They are still studying its effects today.
- Improves PCOS. This is a big one for those women who suffer from this horrible condition. PCOS is known as polycystic ovary syndrome. I am not going to get into the specifics here as to what it is, but know a keto diet greatly improves the lives of women who suffer from it. More studies are needed on this one as well since there are not many to date.
One pilot study from 2005 examined five women over 24 weeks. The researchers found that a ketogenic diet improved several markers of PCOS, including:
- weight loss
- hormone balance
- ratios of luteinizing hormone (LH) and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH)
- levels of fasting insulin
Risks of starting a Keto Diet
There are some drawbacks to the keto diet as there are with any other eating plan. We are not doctors and would always advise you to check with your doctor first, before starting a different diet or exercise regime. Some of the risk factors are usually a result of staying on the keto diet long-term.
Some of the risk factors include an increased risk of kidney stones. My wife has had these and believe me when I tell you you don't want one. She had three at one time and all were bigger than what she could pass naturally. Crazy I know and painful to boot. She survived but I don't know how.
Excess protein in the blood is another risk of this diet. This is one of the effects you want to avoid because you started this to lose weight and having too much protein in your blood can actually cause you to gain weight. This is why this is considered a short term diet for most people.
Bad Breath is a common side effect a diet that increases your protein intake and reduces your carbs at the same time. This is due to your body going into the metabolic state called ketosis.
Constipation is a result because diets low in carbs tend to be low in fiber also. You can combat this one by making sure you ingest more fiber or consuming a fiber substitute.
Diarrhea great if it isn't one it's the other. Too many dairy products or processed foods and a lack of fiber can cause your body to react violently 🙂 joking here but it can cause diarrhea, monitor your fiber intake closely if you are on this diet to help avoid some of these side effects.
Kidneys damage can result if you have an underlying condition. No major studies have linked kidney damage in healthy people to an increase in protein consumption.
Conversely, a 2012 study found that in healthy obese adults, a low-carbohydrate, high-protein weight-loss diet over two years was not associated with noticeably harmful effects on renal filtration, albuminuria, or fluid and electrolyte balance compared with a low-fat diet.
Increased Cancer Risk can happen when you consume red meat as your main protein source. Eating an abundance of red and/or processed meat is associated with colorectal, breast, and prostate cancer. Obtain your protein from different sources like fish and beans. These have been known to decrease your risk of cancer as well as increase your resilience to heart attacks. There are many other sources of protein you can choose to make sure you are getting the maximum benefits of this diet.
Heart Disease can be a result of eating lots of red meat and full-fat dairy foods as part of a high-protein diet. Eating these in abundance may lead to heart disease. This could be related to higher intakes of saturated fat and cholesterol.
Is Keeping Keto right for me?
Weigh your options and consult your doctor, once you have done that, you are ready to jump in and give it a go. Make sure you track your fiber and water intake to avoid some of the inherent side effects.
I personally tried the keto diet and I did not have a lot of success. Mostly due to being a self-proclaimed carboholic. My wife lost weight but it changed her mood so drastically we had to stop. So for us, it was not the best choice but that does not mean you should not try it.
There are thousands who have had success on this diet and you can too.