Does Keto for Weight Loss Really Work? The Answer Might Surprise You

keto for weight loss

Celebrities from the Kardashians to Lebron James have attributed their bodies to the keto diet.

If you’re asking “Does keto for weight loss work?” The simple answer is yes, but only when you do it right. A ketogenic diet requires more than just counting calories. It requires planning, diligence, and patience. It’s a lifestyle!

Adopting a ketogenic lifestyle can be one of the best choices if you’re looking to drop a few pounds and keep it off for good.

Keto for Weight Loss

A ketogenic lifestyle is a high fat, low carb way of eating. Fats should make up 60%-75% of our intake whereas carbs should only be 5%-10%. Protein should make up the rest, about 20%.

Essentially, you’d be limiting carbohydrate intake to no more than 50 grams of carbs a day. The ideal carb intake is 20 grams, however, you can get into ketosis eating 50 grams daily.

The ketogenic diet put your body into ketosis. Ketosis is when the body uses the fat you eat and the fat stored on your body for fuel.

When the body uses fat for fuel, the fat stores are reduced which leads to not only weight loss, but fat loss. Ketosis uses both subcutaneous fat and visceral fat, which means even if you’re skinny fat, you can drop the unhealthy fat and get healthier.

For the keto diet to work, you’ll have to monitor your carb and fat intake. High-fat foods are preferable. Lean chicken and low-fat foods are not your friends on keto.

This lifestyle requires a mind shift and re-evaluation of what the diet industry has been feeding the world for more than 30 years.

Benefits of Ketogenic Weight Loss

You’ll notice gradual changes as your body adapts to the keto lifestyle. For instance, you experience fewer cravings for sweets and other things.

Hunger will decrease and as a result, so will your caloric intake. And, when your body adapts to eating fat rather than carbs, you’ll notice your energy has increased and the number on the scale has fallen.

As your body becomes a fat burning machine, it’s not uncommon to drop double digits in the first month after transitioning to a keto lifestyle.

Once your body begins to burn fat you’ll wonder why you didn’t try it sooner.

Keto Food List

When you become ketogenic you can eat everything but refined carbohydrates like sugar and white starches, root vegetables, beans, and legumes.

If you need to satisfy a sweet tooth, berries are keto-friendly, and you can flavor your full-fat, unsweetened yogurt with them. Additionally, if you like your coffee sweet, stevia is one of the best sugar substitutes with the least negative side effects.

  • Beef – preferably fatty cuts.
  • Fish – fatty types like salmon and tuna.
  • Full-fat cheeses.
  • Healthy Fats – Butter, avocado, olives, olive oil, avocado oil and other nut and seed oils except avoid vegetable and canola oils
  • Green, leafy veggies and those that grow above ground.
  • Nuts and seeds – Almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews and sesame, flax and chia seeds.
  • Avoid low-fat and nonfat dairy. Opt for heavy cream and half-and-half for coffee drinks.

Keto-Friendly Snacks

Snack on beef sticks, pork rinds, beef jerky. Just pay attention to serving sizes and carbs amounts. Beef jerky is often sweetened and can have extra carbs.

Keto supplements can ease the keto flu and help during the first week of a ketogenic lifestyle. Keto for weight loss is a lifestyle change that can optimize your performance.

No matter if you’re highly active or sedentary keto supplements can make your keto lifestyle easier.

If you’re an athlete who’s new to keto, something like Keto Collagen With MCT and Cacao can help your body recover from workouts faster without kicking you out of ketosis.

Making the Keto Connection

Ketogenic weight loss has come into popularity over the last couple of years. Combined with exercise, it can supercharge your weight loss and help you power through plateaus that used to make you want to give up.

For your diet and nutrition questions, visit us any time.