Understanding Ketosis and the Ketogenic Diet

In layman’s terms, the ketogenic diet involves dramatically reducing the amount of carbs you consume while replacing those missing calories with those you get from fats. This reduction in carbs puts your body into a metabolic state called “Ketosis” (Healthline).

Ketosis is a natural metabolic state where fat provides most of the fuel for the body. Fat is used as fuel when there is limited available glucose, which the body prefers to use for energy. To properly achieve ketosis, you need to consume less than 50 grams of carbs per day. In some cases, certain individuals need to consume even fewer carbs than that throughout the day to reach that state of ketosis.

Let’s put this in perspective with some popular foods. A Grande Starbucks Latte, for instance, has roughly 19 carbs. One serving of Chex Mix has 21 carbs. And just two slices of Sarah Lee’s 45-calorie wheat bread has 18 carbs in total. Hopefully, these examples give you an idea of the kinds of foods that are not consistent with the ketogenic diet. To successfully follow this diet, you need to limit or even remove grains, candies, sugary drinks, legumes, potatoes, and fruits from your daily meals.

Ketosis has proven to be effective in weight loss efforts because the low-carb dieting style causes your insulin levels to decrease, which releases fatty acids from body fat stores in large amounts. These fatty acids are then oxidized by the liver and transformed into molecules that can be used as energy for the body.

How To Successfully Follow The Keto Diet

There are a couple of different versions of a ketogenic diet that can help you achieve ketosis (Everyday Health). The include:

• Standard Keto Diet - This strategy typically restricts your daily caloric intake to 75% fat, 20% protein, and 5% carbs.

• Cyclical Keto Diet - This diet includes refeed days where an increased amount of carbs are consumed. With this strategy, you might have five ketogenic days and two refeed days in a week.

• Targeted Keto Diet - This version emphasizes an increase in carbs around your workouts.

• High-Protein Keto Diet - As the name implies, this strategy increases the amount of protein you consume. This adjusts your caloric intake to roughly 60% fat, 35% protein, and 5% carbs.

If you are familiar with looking at your macronutrient intake, this information may be easier to understand than if you have only looked at calories.

Macros 101

Your body mainly gets energy from three key macronutrients - fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. Each gram of these macronutrients has a caloric value. For instance, 1 gram of fat is roughly equivalent to 9 calories, while 1 gram of carbohydrates or proteins is equivalent to roughly 4 calories each. So, if you follow the recommended 2,000-calorie standard ketogenic diet, each day you’d need 1,500 calories from fat (167 grams), 400 calories from protein (100 grams of protein), and 100 calories from carbohydrates (25 grams).

Applying The Ketogenic Diet

Obviously the keto diet is a high-fat diet. As such, it can help to break-down the nutrition of some of the most common high fat foods that we tend to consume when dieting.

One Serving of Peanut Butter

• 16g of fat, 7g of protein, and 8g of carbs

• 9.5% daily calories

• 9.5% daily fat

• 7% daily protein

• 32% daily carbs

One medium avocado

• 21g of fat, 3g of protein, and 12g of carbs

• 11% daily calories

• 12.5% daily fat

• 3% daily protein

• 48% daily carbs

1 Container of Full-Fat Yogurt

• 11g of fat, 20g of protein, and 9g of carbs

• 11% of daily calories

• 6.5% daily fat

• 20% daily protein

• 36% daily carbs

What you will see with these common, high-fat foods is that, between the three, you’ll have gained only about 30% of your daily recommended caloric intake, a mere 28.5% of your daily fat, and you’ll have gone over your daily-allotted amount of carbohydrates by about 16%!

So, what does that all mean? It’s simple: Adhering to the ketogenic diet can be very challenging. That statement is especially in today’s society, where the majority of our foods are processed with added sugars.

Enter The Perfect Keto Shake – Keto Collagen Powder

Sometimes it will be incredibly hard to meet your daily caloric goals while on the keto diet. That’s why you should consider leveraging the power of a keto shake. And there’s nothing quite like Perfect Keto – Keto Collagen Powder Shake.

This ketogenic shake offers a convenient way to increase your fat and protein intake while maintaining the low-carb requirements of your keto diet. Each serving is loaded with 3.5 grams of fat, 10 grams of protein, and only 2 grams of carbohydrates, which makes it a terrific shake to pair with any physical activities. The shake also contains 5 grams of medium-chain triglycerides (MCT) to boost your weight loss efforts. You can also blend additional fat sources, like nut butters, chia seeds, or coconut into this shake to increase the percentage of fat you are consuming, which will help make sticking to your ketogenic diet easier AND more delicious.

Try Perfect Keto’s Keto Collagen Powder today to give yourself the ideal support for your dieting strategy! You can order your first batch in either chocolate or vanilla flavors.