Keto Diet

Maybe it’s just me but in 2014 people seem just too scared to use the word diet. I guess you’re just instantly a cooler person if you describe yourself as being on a calorie-controlled regime. The way I see it is that it just takes longer to say and less people know what you are talking about.

Let’s remember as well that the word diet can just mean the kind of food you eat, somewhere in the mid-90s the word gathered all this unwanted press that instantly makes people think of cardboard cut-outs of successful Weight Watchers transformations.

You’ve probably heard about the ketogenic diet or maybe keto foods, and this isn’t a diet like Atkins or Slimming World, it’s just a way of describing the kind of foods that you eat.

2 things to remember when we’re talking about a keto diet – high fat, low carbs. You see, years ago the idea of burning fat was based on eating less and moving more, but it’s not that simple anymore.

In fact it is, again it just seems like the cool thing to do at the moment is to eat certain foods that help to trick your body into doing the things you want. The idea of just hitting the gym and ditching the chocolate just doesn’t cut it.

Still, the theory is sound. Generally carbs are broken down by our body into glucose and then that supplies energy for us. What a keto diet does is reduce the intake of carbs so that our livers breaks down fat into fatty acids, and then get energy that way.

Generally the ratio of fat to carbs and protein is around 3 or 4:1, so it really is quite high. Eating more fat to lose more fat, astounding really.

The good thing about a keto diet is that you aren’t really looking at wholesale changes and you don’t really need to eat a lot of stuff that you weren’t eating already. Now we are talking low carbs, so the first thing to do eliminate bread, pasta, grains and all those sorts of foods.

I never thought I’d write a blog telling people to eat more butter and cream to burn fat, but it’s the keto way, apparently. Really with any dairy products you want to be getting the full fat versions, and no, this isn’t a wind-up.

Just remember, you’re trying to fool your body. Think of it this way, if you just switched to lettuce 24/7 your body would know straight away what you were thinking!

As always, high fat doesn’t mean you invest heavily in Cadburys, you need to be eating the right sort of fats. Fish is always a good place to start and you won’t go far wrong with salmon or tuna. Other good fat sources include avocado, olive oil, peanut butter and many more.

In terms of protein you don’t really need to up it or lower it for a keto diet, just keeping it as recommended is fine.

Now what kind of a diet would it be, especially in the 21st century, if it didn’t get you to eat spinach and kale? Well luckily for us the veg that you want to be eating should be leafy green and grown above ground – pretty much an exact description of both spinach and kale!

Other than that there really isn’t a lot to going keto. As long as you remember high fat and low carbs you’re pretty much spot on. What I would say though is that this type of diet does lead to dehydration so it’s especially important to drink lots of water!

So I humbly apologise to those of you who are offended by the term diet, but ‘ketogenic calorie-controlled regime’ takes a lot longer than keto diet does to type.