Dr Monique Hope-Ross and Dr Paul Chell
Whether you’re looking to lose weight, reverse disease, or improve your overall wellness, this guide will help you understand what the keto diet is, how it works, and how you can start it today.
What is the Keto Diet?
The keto diet is a low-carb, high-fat diet with an adequate amount of protein.
Fasting has been used to treat epilepsy since at least 500 BC.
How Does the Keto Diet Work?
The ketogenic (keto) diet is a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet that shifts your body’s primary fuel source from carbohydrates to fats. Normally, your body uses carbohydrates from foods like bread, pasta, and fruit to produce glucose. Glucose is a universal energy source used by all tissues in your body. The carbohydrate energy pathways that utilise glucose are typically highly developed and efficient. However, when you eat very few carbs, your body needs to find another source of energy. And that energy source is—FAT.
In a keto diet, your body switches to using fat as the primary fuel source. This causes your body to enter a metabolic state called ketosis. During ketosis, your liver converts fats into ketone bodies, which become the new primary energy source for your body and brain. These ketone bodies, including acetoacetate, beta-hydroxybutyrate, and acetone, can be used by almost all your tissues. The smell of acetone on your breath is a common sign of ketosis.
Ketosis has several benefits for your cells, metabolism, and overall health. Insulin levels decrease due to the reduced carbohydrate intake, which leads to improved insulin sensitivity. Better insulin sensitivity means improved blood sugar control, which explains the positive effects of a keto diet on pre-diabetes, diabetes, and overall health. Additionally, ketone bodies can benefit your brain function, improving mental clarity and reducing seizure frequency in people with epilepsy. Additionally, because fat is very satisfying, you might feel less hungry, and this can help with weight loss.
Overall, the keto diet encourages your body to burn fat for fuel instead of carbohydrates, resulting in ketosis, and offers various health benefits.
Health Benefits of Keto
There are several key health benefits to the ketogenic diet:
- Weight Loss:Since your body uses fat for fuel, it’s no surprise that a keto diet leads to significant weight loss. A keto diet is particularly effective at targeting stubborn belly fat, which is not only difficult to lose but also harmful. By reducing this “bad” fat, which contributes to metabolic problems and disease, you can improve your overall health. Eliminating belly fat enhances your metabolism, which is crucial for preventing or reversing disease.
A keto diet helps your body learn to adapt to burning fat and reactivates pathways that may have become dormant during weight gain. Once you are fat-adapted, other weight loss strategies, such as intermittent fasting, become more accessible.
- Disease Reversal and Prevention: Beyond weight loss, ketogenic diets help to manage and reverse metabolic conditions.Ketosis is associated with reduced insulin resistance and lowers blood sugar. Conditions such as high triglycerides, high blood pressure, metabolic syndrome, prediabetes, and diabetes can all be helped and reversed by a keto diet.Keto diets are showing promise in a raft of other metabolic diseases; diseases such as dementia, polycystic ovarian syndrome and even cancer.Children with refractory epilepsy are still successfully treated with ketogenic diets, over a hundred years since this was first described.
- Improved Mental Clarity and Focus:Many people report enhanced cognitive function when they’re in ketosis. They feel brighter, more alert, and have a better mood.7 Ketone bodies protect neural tissue, and the positive effects of circulating ketone bodies is therefore not surprising.
- Increased Energy Levels:Fat is a more stable energy source, leading to more consistent energy levels throughout the day. The highs and lows of blood sugar with the accompanying changes in energy levels, particularly in those with large swings of blood sugar, are no more, when on a keto diet. So, you don’t have those mid-afternoon crashes.
How to Start the Keto Diet
Starting the ketogenic diet can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Here are some practical steps to get you started:
- Prepare Yourself: Understand that the first few days can be challenging as your body adjusts.
- Stock Up on Keto-Friendly Foods: Focus on high-fat, low-carb foods like avocados, nuts, fatty fish, green salads, green vegetables. and some cheeses.
- Plan Your Meals: A sample keto meal plan can be very helpful. For example, breakfast might be scrambled eggs and smoked salmon, lunch could be a salad with grilled chicken, and dinner might be a steak with green vegetables.
- Stay Hydrated: Drink plenty of water to help your body through the transition between fuelling with carbohydrate to fuelling with fat. Aim for 2.5-3 litres per day.
- Monitor Your Progress:Keep track of how you feel, your weight, and any other metrics that matter to you. You may find that a journal is helpful or design your own. Recording, tracking your progress, and making goals is a surefire way of increasing your success.
The Nitty Gritty
While there is no standard keto diet, they all rely on varying proportions of the three main macronutrients: carbohydrates, fats, and protein. A reasonable macronutrient proportion for a keto diet is 5% carbs, 70% fat, and 25% protein. These percentages refer to the proportion of energy contributed by each macronutrient food group. You will use the weight of each macronutrient to determine how much food to eat.
Method 1:
Most people enter ketosis if they reduce their carbs to between 20 and 50 grams a day. Follow these steps:
- Record all the food and drink you consume throughout the day.
- Calculate the macronutrient content of your food and drink by weight. Use our table of common keto foods to assist you. We will need this on the HB website
- Total the amount of carbs you consume each day.
- Keep your carbohydrate intake between 20 and 50 grams per day.
This approach will result in ketosis for most people after a few days.
Method 2:
This more complicated method may be necessary depending on your progress. It involves counting and calculating all macronutrients to maintain the ratio of 5% carbohydrates, 70% fats, and 25% protein. This method is personalized, using your metabolism to determine how much to eat.
To create your plan, follow these steps:
- You will need your weight and height.
- Go to our calculator page.
- Enter your data and refer to the HB Macronutrient Plans. Choose the Weight Loss, Stable, or Stable Active tab, depending on your needs.
- You will find specific values, e.g., 21g of carbs, 132g of fats, and 106g of protein. These refer to the weight of each macronutrient group in your daily allowance.
- Use our table to record the macronutrients in each meal and keep a daily record, either electronically or manually.
- Stick to this daily allowance, adjusting your food and drink intake as necessary.
Which Foods Can I Eat?
Your meals will be composed of real food—green vegetables, mushrooms, salads, nuts, seeds, eggs, low-carb cheeses, olive oil, dairy, fish, chicken, meat, and good fats. You can add any number of herbs and most spices to enhance your food.
Most fruit has too much sugar for a keto diet, but raspberries, strawberries, and blackberries have the lowest carb count, and you may find that your carb allowance permits you to eat them intermittently.
Which Foods Can’t I Eat?
- Sugar and sugary foods: Sugar is entirely composed of carbs, and confectionery such as a Kit Kat contain 65g of carbs. Consuming sugar will prevent ketosis, prevent fat burning, and prevent weight loss.
- Staples: The big five staples—bread, rice, potatoes, whole grains, and pasta—have such a high carb content, that they are not part of a keto diet.
- Most fruits: These have too much sugar to be part of a keto diet, except for some berries.
- Ultra-processed foods, including fizzy drinks: Almost all packaged foods contain added sugar, often hidden under over 50 different names. This added sugar increases the carb content and prevents ketosis. Just one can of Coke contains 39g of carbs, more than most people’s daily carb allowance for a keto diet.
- Food from fast food outlets: These often have additional sugar, even in foods that might surprise you. The High Court of Ireland determined that Subway bread has so much sugar, it can be classified as cake. This meant entering a different tax bracket, bringing additional funds to the Irish exchequer. So, you have been warned! Bread may be cake!
- Trans fats: These are banned in many areas of the world, such as Switzerland and some states in the USA, and there is a voluntary ban in the UK. Trans fats may be found in some oils, in fast food outlets, where food has been deep fried and the oil reused. Be afraid, as trans fats are lethal.
- Excellent foods such as legumes, lentils, beans, and root vegetables: The carb content of these foods is high and eating them will make ketosis difficult. Once you have reached your goals, these are the foods to reintroduce to your diet.
The Potential Challenges and How to Overcome Them
Here are some common challenges and tips to overcome them:
- Fat Adaptation: When starting the keto diet, your body needs time to adjust to using fat as its primary fuel source. This process, known as fat adaptation, involves your body switching on genes and producing new proteins and enzymes to efficiently burn fat. It can take some time, which varies from person to person, depending on your overall health and carb dependency. Be patient—once you are fat adapted, you will feel more energetic and less hungry between meals.
- Keto Flu: This is a common side effect as your body adjusts. It includes symptoms like headaches and fatigue. Be patient; as you become fat adapted, keto flu will lessen. It may last between one day and 30 days.
- Staying Motivated: Remember why you started and keep your goals in mind. Joining a community or finding a keto buddi or using your weight loss journal can provide support.
- Adjusting Your Diet: Everyone’s body is different, so it might take some tweaking to find what works best for you.
- Keto Cycling: A keto diet is very useful in the short term but may have consequences in the long term, which keto cycling may help. These are periods where you eat a keto diet and you alternate with adding in good carbs, such as legumes, beans, root vegetables and fruits, in addition to sparing amounts of the 5 staples (bread, pasta, rice, wholegrains, potatoes).
Conclusion
The keto diet can be a powerful tool for weight loss, improving both your health and wellness. By understanding how it works and how to get started, you’re setting yourself up for success. Remember, it’s not just about losing weight; it’s about feeling better and taking control of your health. Ready to start your keto journey? We have courses for weight loss, for disease reversal and wellness and check out our courses for more personalized guidance and support.
