The idea of the ketone diet is to get your body into a process called Ketosis where you stop burning carbohydrates as fuel... Learn more about how it works, variations, etc.
Along with the Atkins diet and the South Beach diet, individuals who are interested in low carbohydrate approaches to dieting will likely want to look into the Keto Diet. Popular among many who are trying to maintain blood sugar levels and lose body fat, the main premise of this diet is, 'eat fat to lose fat'.
So How Does It Work?
The idea of the ketone diet is to get your body into a process called Ketosis where you stop burning carbohydrates as fuel and instead turn to the burning of what are known as ketones. This will occur when you bring your carbohydrate levels to around 50 grams per day or lower.
Many keto activists advise that number to be 30 grams of carbohydrates but most individuals can still maintain ketosis while consuming the 50 grams and this allows for a little more leeway in the diet since you can increase the consumption of vegetables and a variety of flavoring's that contain a few grams of carbohydrates.
A TKD is one where you will eat carbohydrates right before and right after your workouts.
TKD Or CKD
Usually people who are involved with exercise will follow either a TKD (targeted keto diet) or a CKD (cyclical keto diet).
TKD
A TKD is one where you will eat carbohydrates right before and right after your workouts. This is the best bet for those who are involved in more intense activities and require some carbohydrates to fuel them and who are not as interested in doing carb loads and depletion workouts.
CKD
A CKD on the other hand is a diet where you will eat a minimum amount of carbohydrates per day (that 30-50 gram number) and then on the weekend (or at a time that is appropriate for you) do a large 'carb-up' phase where you will eat a large amount of carbohydrates in an effort to refill your muscle glycogen stores so you can continue to workout the coming week.
Normally right before the carb-up phase you will do a depletion workout where you try and get your muscles to completely eliminate their glycogen supply. Then when you do the 'carb-up' phase, you cut almost all the fat out of the diet so you are now just consuming protein and carbohydrates.
Setting Up The Diet
To set the diet up, first you take your lean body weight and multiply it by one. This will be the total number of grams of protein you are required to eat per day. After you get this number, multiple it by 4 (how many calories are in one gram of protein) to get your total calories coming from protein.
Now the rest of your daily requirement will come from fat calories. You don't really need to calculate carbohydrate grams specifically because by default you will likely reach your 30-50 grams per day simply by including green vegetables and the incidental carbs that come from your fat and protein sources.
To figure out how many fat grams specifically you want, you would take the total number of calories it takes to maintain your body weight (normally around 14-16 calories per pound of body weight). Subtract your protein calories from that number and then divide by 9 (number of calories per gram of fat). This should give you how many total fat grams you need to eat per day.
Divide these numbers by however many meals you wish to eat per day to get the basic layout for your diet. Be sure to consume plenty of green leafy vegetables for antioxidant and vitamin protection and you are good to go.
Weekend Carb Load
Now this brings us to the weekend carb load period and usually the 'fun' part for most individuals. You are now able to eat large quantities of carbohydrate containing foods, cereal, bagels, rice chips, candy, pasta and so on are all good options here.
Since you won't be eating very much fat at all, there is less likely of a chance that these carbohydrates will get turned into body fat as they will be going towards filling up your muscle glycogen stores once again.
Most people will choose to begin their carb-up on Friday night and end it before bed on Saturday. This is usually most convenient as it's when you are off of work and can relax and enjoy the process. If you aren't overly concerned with fat loss and are just using this diet as a way to maintain blood sugar levels, you can likely eat whatever carbohydrate foods you like during this period. If you are worried about fat gain though, then you need the math.
Try and aim to keep your protein the same at one gram per pound of body weight and then take in 10-12 grams of carbohydrates for every kilogram of body weight. Start taking these carbohydrates (usually the first bit in liquid form) right after your last workout on Friday night. This is when your body is primed and ready to uptake the carbohydrates and it will be most beneficial for you.
During weekend carb loading, you are able to eat large quantities of carbohydrate containing foods, cereal, bagels, rice chips, candy, pasta and so on.
Note that you can have some fat here, since it will be hard to consume many of the foods you really want to eat without being allowed any (pizza for instance) but do your best to keep your fat grams around your body weight in kilograms (so if you weigh 80 kg's, eat no more than 80 grams of fat).
On a second note, some individuals find they like to eat a little fruit along with protein before their final workout on Friday night as this will help restore their liver glycogen levels and give them the energy they need to push through that workout. Plus, by refilling the liver glycogen you will help put your body into a slightly more anabolic state so you don't see as much energy breakdown.
Pros & Cons
Overall this seems to be a very good diet for most people as far as fat loss is concerned. Some do deal with negative side effects while in ketosis but most people will find that although it's really hard the first two weeks, after that period their body begins to adapt and it gets much easier. Furthermore, one of the biggest benefits of being in ketosis is appetite blunting therefore it can actually be an ideal program for someone on a diet.
The only draw back you will see is for those who do have high activities or are involved in lots of sprinting type exercise. Although a few will find they feel fine, even have more energy on a high fat/moderate protein diet, most of the time carbohydrates are the best source of fuel for these activities. That isn't that big of a problem though, it just means that that person should instead look into doing a TKD instead of a CKD.
Conclusion
To sum up, for fat loss, this diet would rate 4 out of 5.
For muscle gain though, it is slightly harder to put on muscle since usually a large amount of insulin is needed to put the body in an anabolic state, so it would be more along the lines of 2 out of 5 (TKD though could bump that higher).
The Paleo Diet is an effort to eat like we used to back in the day…WAY back in the day. If a caveman couldn’t eat it, neither can you.
This means anything we could hunt or find – meats, fish, nuts, leafy greens, regional veggies, and seeds. Sorry, the pasta, cereal, and candy will have to go! Instead, you’ll be making things like chicken stir fry and paleo spaghetti.
You see, I hate counting calories.
I don’t like keeping track of how much I’ve eaten or obsessing over how many grams of a particular nutrient I’ve had. Not only do I hate counting calories, but I know that calories are really only half of the battle, as they’re not all created equal – 400 calories of Doritos do NOT affect your body in the same way as 400 calories of high-quality vegetables and protein.
Fortunately, if you can expand your horizons and remove certain types of food from your diet, you can stop worrying about counting calories FOREVER . I’d love to suggest a particular type of eating that doesn’t require counting a single calorie AND allows you to eat until you’re no longer hungry. Oh, and it can help you lose weight, build muscle, and get in the best shape of your life.
I know, that sounds like an ad for some really shady supplement or diet book that you’d see on TV at 4 AM. It’s not, it actually works. It’s helped many people achieve jaw-dropping transformations
So how does the Paleo Diet work?
Pin it
Oh lord, another “diet.”I know, it sounds like a fad/marketing ploy, but it’s actually quite legit. You see, tens of thousands of years ago, before Nike, Cap’n Crunch, and Healthy Choice meals, our ancient ancestors thrived as hunter-gatherers. Although it’s been a really long time, our genetics haven’t changed that much since then.
The average Homo Sapien back then: tall, muscular, agile, athletic, and incredibly versatile.
The average Homo Sapien now: overweight, out of shape, stressed out, unhappy, sleep deprived and dying from a myriad of preventable diseases.
So what the hell happened? Agriculture! A few thousand years ago humans discovered farming, the agricultural revolution took off, and we advanced from hunter-gatherers to farmers. We settled down, formed societies, and the human race progressed to what we are today.
The problem is, our bodies never adjusted properly to eating all the grains that we we’re now farming. As Robb Wolf puts it, think of a 100-yard football field. The first 99.5 yards are how long Homo-Sapiens spent as hunter-gatherers. As they became REALLY good at hunting and gathering our bodies adapted to that lifestyle over thousands of years. That last half-yard represents our species after the agricultural revolution, where our diet has shifted (but our genetics haven’t).
So, instead of loading up on meat, vegetables and seasonal fruits, we’ve become a species “dependent” upon grains – bread, pasta, rice, corn, and so on. The government continues to recommend 6-11 servings of grains a day, and people continue to get fatter and fatter by the day.
66% of us are overweight, 33% are considered obese, and those numbers are only getting worse.
Clearly something’s not right. The Paleo Diet is an effort to go back to eating how we’re biologically designed to eat, allowing us to tap into our genetic potential and start living healthier immediately.
As Mark from Mark’s Daily Apple points out in his “definitive guide to grains” article: grains cause kind of a funky response in our system. Grains are composed of carbohydrates, and those carbs are turned into glucose (a type of sugar) in our system to be used for energy and various other tasks to help our body function – any glucose that isn’t used as energy is stored as fat.
Rather than me explain that part with thousands of words, just watch this three-minute video – “Why You Got Fat“
Next, most grains contain gluten and lectins. What are they and what’s wrong with them? I’m so glad you asked:
Gluten is a protein found in things like rye, wheat, and barley. It’s now being said that much of our population may be gluten-intolerant (hence all the new “gluten-free!” items popping up everywhere). Over time, those who are gluten intolerant can develop a dismal array of medical conditions from consuming gluten: dermatitis, joint pain, reproductive problems, acid reflux, and more.
Lectins are natural toxins exist within grains to defend against consumption! Yup. Grains have evolved to keep themselves from being eaten by us. These lectins are not a fan of our gastrointestinal tract, prevent the tract from repairing itself from normal wear and tear. This can cause all kinds of damage.
As Mark so eloquently puts it in his article: grains are unhealthy at best, or flat-out dangerous at worst.
The Paleo Diet also almost completely eradicates sugar. Unless you’re getting your sugar from a fruit, forget it. Sugar causes an energy spike and crash in your system, turns to fat unless it’s used immediately, and wreaks all kind of havoc on our bodies.
So, no grains, no sugar, no processed foods. Many studies have shown that an incredible number of diseases and lifestyle issues can be reversed with these three simple changes. Take a look at this time magazine article on cancer patients who switched to a zero-sugar diet and saw positive results.
But where’s my energy?
So, if we’re not eating 300 grams of carbs every day, where are we supposed to get our energy from?
Our bodies are designed to operate on a lower amount of carbohydrates than what we’re used to eating, so less carbs isn’t an issue. When there is an absence of carbs (which is how we’re USED to operating), our body will take stored fat and burn THAT for energy in a process called ketogenesis.
What I’m trying to tell you is that our bodies are pretty effin’ efficient.
So, less carbs = less glucose in your system, which means your body will have to start burning fat as your fuel source. Win!
Nope. Carbs still serve a purpose in our diets, but they’re not essential (check out the Inuit Paradox for a great read on societies that exist without almost any carbohydrates). I prefer to get my carbs from vegetables, sweet potatoes, and fruit. Why is that? These foods are naturally occurring in the wild and don’t need to be processed in any way (unlike grains) in order to be consumed.
The other great thing about vegetables is that you can eat as many of them as you like and you’ll never get fat. They’re incredibly nutrient dense and calorie light – six servings of broccoli (and who would eat 6 servings at once?) has 180 calories and only 36 grams of carbs. A single serving of pasta (and NOBODY eats just one serving of pasta) has 200 calories and 42 grams of carbs.
What about dairy?
Dairy’s a tough one, as most Paleo folks tend to stay away from it – a portion of the world is lactose intolerant, and those that aren’t usually have at least some type of an aversion to it. Why is that? Because no other animal in the entire kingdom drinks milk beyond infancy. Hunter-gatherers didn’t lug cows around with them while traveling – milk was consumed as a baby, and that was it. As with grains, our bodies weren’t designed for massive dairy consumption.
Personally, I’m split on dairy, as I can drink whole milk without any sort of issue and I consider adding it back into my diet when I need to get enough calories to bulk up.
So no grains, no dairy: what DO I get to eat on this diet?
Fruits – Have natural sugar, and can be higher in calories, so limit if you’re trying to lose weight.
Nuts – High in calories, so they’re good for a snack, but don’t eat bags and bags of them.
Tubers – Sweet potatoes and yams. Higher in calories and carbs, so these are good for right after a workout to replenish your glycogen levels.
Steak with asparagus and sweet potato fries, grilled chicken salad, massive omelets that will fill you up for the whole morning, apples dipped in almond butter (my favorite snack ever), and so on. Pick any of the things from that list, and eat as much as you want of them (with the noted exceptions). You’ll feel better and be healthier.
How come I won’t get fat?
Because these foods are so nutritious and filling, it’s almost impossible to overeat.
To get the equal number of calories from a bag of Doritos or bread (which, as you know, you can eat all day long and never really feel full), you’d have to eat 2-3 Mack trucks full of broccoli and spinach. Okay, that’s clearly an over-exaggeration, but you get the point. A GIANT plate of vegetables and a reasonable portion of meat can keep you full for hours, while eating carb-heavy foods can result in being hungry again soon after.
Whenever I need to lose weight for vacation, I go 100% Paleo and I can drop a few body fat percentage points in a few weeks (while combining it with strength training and interval running).
But I can’t give up my muffin, pasta, bagel, pizza, and bread!
Okay then, don’t try the Paleo Diet! Simple as that.
If you’re happy with how you look, your energy levels are good all day, and you don’t see any room for improvement, then keep doing what you’re doing – I won’t force you to eat like this. However, if you’ve been struggling with weight loss, have no energy throughout the day, need eight cups of coffee, hate counting calories, and want to start turning your life around today, why not give it a shot for 30 days?
TRY IT: If after 30 days you haven’t noticed a marked improvement in your quest for a better life, then go back to the donuts. It’s important to give yourself a full 30 days before passing judgment. Your body has to adjust from fueling itself on carbs and sugar to burning your stored fat for energy, which can take a few weeks.
If you’re not willing to cut out grains from your diet completely, just work on MINIMIZING those foods gradually and see how your body adjusts. Slow transitions are often much easier to handle over the long-term; the more you can shift your diet closer to Paleo principles, the faster you’ll start to see results.
How much should I eat of each nutrient?
Keep it simple: Try to get a really good protein source with each meal (eggs, steak, chicken, fish, pork) with each meal along with some vegetables or fruit. That’s it. If you’re having trouble getting enough calories daily, add some healthy fats to the equation: avocado, a handful of almonds or walnuts, almond butter, olive oil, etc.
Now, fruit does have quite a bit of sugar in it, and nuts have quite a few calories…so if you are following the Paleo Diet but not losing weight, check your fruit and nut consumption and see if you are loading up on those at the expense of vegetables and healthy protein.
What I’m trying to say is this: fat should make up a big percentage of your diet.
Pooooooor fat. It’s gotten a bad rap over the past number of decades, so companies have been doing everything possible to make everything low fat and “healthy!” (while adding all sorts of preservatives, chemicals, and sugar). Yup…cut out the fat, increase the carbs….and look where THAT has gotten us.
Why has fat been vilified? Rather than get into the politics of it myself, I’ll let Gary Taubes, author of the incredibly thorough and well-researched Good Calories, Bad Calories take over. Here’s an article he wrote for the New York Times a decade ago: What if its all Been a Big Fat Lie? Take the 15 minutes to read that article – it could radically redefine your thinking on fat and carbohydrates.
So, feel free to eat healthy fats, and stop buying ‘low fat’ garbage.
Do I need to eat every 3 hours?
Nope. Eat when you’re hungry, don’t eat when you’re not. Going again back to our evolutionary history, we didn’t always have the luxury of going to a vending machine or drive-through window to pick up food. Sometimes we’d go all day long, or even days at a time, without finding any food. Luckily, we’re designed to use our excess fat stores as energy in these situations.
Don’t worry about eating every three hours.
Sometimes, it’s even okay to skip a meal or two, as long as you don’t go berserk and eat 7 pizzas because you’re so hungry afterward.
This type of eating is generally referred to as Intermittent Fasting.
What are the criticisms of this diet?
The main criticism that I continue to come across is that it’s “fear mongering” and vilifying grains in the same way that fats have been vilified.
If you really want to drive yourself mad, go spend 30 minutes reading the comments on Tim Ferriss and Robb Wolf’s highly entertaining article about the Paleo Diet – it’s a bunch of dietitians yelling back and forth at each other citing different studies and sources and then calling each other wackjobs.
If you’re not careful, this type of diet can get expensive. But as we know, with a little research, we can make eating healthy incredibly affordable. Admittedly, while I recommend eating organic fruits and veggies, free range chicken, and grass-fed beef, these products can be a bit more expensive in conventional stores due to the processes needed to get them there.
However, farmers’ markets often have well-priced meats, eggs, fruits, and vegetables that are locally grown and incredibly healthy. Even if you’re spending a little more money than before, when you factor in your overall health, spending a few extra bucks on healthier food now is a wiser investment than thousands later on costly medical expenses.
It’s tough to eat Paleo in today’s society! A normal breakfast in the US consists of bagels, muffins, toast, cereal, or donuts. NONE of those things have any nutritional value, they’re loaded with tons of carbs and calories, and are composed of processed grains that can jack up your stomach. Eating out at restaurants can get tough, and “paleo-approved” is not something you’ll usually find on a menu. Eating in this manner requires careful planning and tons of willpower, but it can be done if you’re dedicated.
“But cavemen had short lifespans! We live way longer now” – I agree with you here, but only because you don’t have to deal with the dangers of living back then. Give those hunter-gatherers access to modern technology and medicine and I bet their lifespan would easily surpass ours.
But this is just a meat diet, and eating all meat is bad! First of all, consider your sources and do your research before jumping to the conclusions. Next, this is not an all meat diet or uber-low carb diet like Atkins. The biggest component of the Paleo Diet? Vegetables! Every meal in a true Paleo diet has a moderate amount of healthy (properly raised chicken, grass-fed beef, hormone free, etc.) meat combined with nutritious veggies or a moderate amount of fruit.
Meh, I’m still not convinced.
The human body is so incredibly complex that I doubt we’ll ever have a definitive answer on the best possible diet. This one might sound like a fad to you, or it’s too restrictive, complicated, etc.
All I ask is that you try it for 30 days before passing judgment.
I could cite sources about how the Paleo Diet has changed people’s lives , but instead I just ask you to try it and then judge for yourself.
Take 30 days and give it a shot – cut out the grains and dairy, start eating more vegetables and fruits, eat more humanely raised and non-grain fed meat, cut out the liquid calories and sugar, and see how you feel after the month is up. If you’re analytical and want numbers to use in your final verdict, get your blood work done at the beginning and end of the month.
Take a picture of yourself now, and then another 30 days from now. I bet you’ll be surprised.
Easing Into It
Maybe you’re ready to try out this Paleo lifestyle, but you can’t commit fully – there are certain foods you refuse to give up, or you can’t afford to buy grass-fed beef at the moment. That’s okay! If you can even make a few small changes here and there (cut out liquid calories, switch out your rice for steamed vegetables, cut back on bread, etc.) you’ll start to see some changes. Remember, 20% healthier is better than 0% healthier – as you get more comfortable with the changes you can increase that percentage.
One method (the one I like) is the 80% method – eat really well during the week (all paleo), and then give yourself a day on the weekend to eat whatever you want – pizza, ice cream, cheeseburgers, bagels, etc. Get it out of your system on that one day, and then get back on track the next day. For some people this helps them stay on track, when for others it can be derailing. That will be up to you.
Get rid of the temptation – if you’re gonna go at this thing with a full head of steam, remove all the junk food from your house. It’s going to take a few weeks for your body to adjust to burning fat instead of glucose, and you might want to eat poorly here and there. If there’s no food in your house to tempt you, it will be much easier to stay on target.
Summary: According to a new study, probiotics may help to improve cognitive function in Alzheimer’s patients.
Source: Frontiers.
For the first time, scientists have shown that probiotics — beneficial live bacteria and yeasts taken as dietary supplements — can improve cognitive function in humans. In a new clinical trial, scientists show that a daily dose of probiotic Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium bacteria taken over a period of just 12 weeks is enough to yield a moderate but significant improvement in the score of elderly Alzheimer’s patients on the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scale, a standard measure of cognitive impairment.
Probiotics are known to give partial protection against certain infectious diarrheas, irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, eczema, allergies, colds, tooth decay, and periodontal disease. But scientists have long hypothesized that probiotics might also boost cognition, as there is continuous two-way communication between the intestinal microflora, the gastrointestinal tract, and the brain through the nervous system, the immune system, and hormones (along the so-called “microbiota-gut-brain axis”). In mice, probiotics have indeed been shown to improve learning and memory, and reduce anxiety and depression- and OCD-like symptoms. But prior to the present study there was very limited evidence of any cognitive benefits in humans.
Here, the researchers, from Kashan University of Medical Sciences, Kashan, and Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran, present results from a randomized, double-blind, controlled clinical trial on a total of 52 women and men with Alzheimer’s between 60 and 95 years of age. Half of the patients daily received 200 ml milk enriched with four probiotic bacteriaLactobacillus acidophilus, L. casei, L. fermentum, and Bifidobacterium bifidum (approximately 400 billion bacteria per species), while the other half received untreated milk.
At the beginning and the end of the 12-week experimental period, the scientists took blood samples for biochemical analyses and tested the cognitive function of the subjects with the MMSE questionnaire, which includes tasks like giving the current date, counting backwards from 100 by sevens, naming objects, repeating a phrase, and copying a picture.
Over the course of the study, the average score on the MMSE questionnaire significantly increased (from 8.7 to 10.6, out of a maximum of 30) in the group receiving probiotics, but not in the control group (from 8.5 to 8.0). Even though this increase is moderate, and all patients remained severely cognitively impaired, these results are important because they are the first to show that probiotics can improve human cognition. Future research, on more patients and over longer time-scales, is necessary to test if the beneficial effects of probiotics become stronger after longer treatment.
“In a previous study, we showed that probiotic treatment improves the impaired spatial learning and memory in diabetic rats, but this is the first time that probiotic supplementation has been shown to benefit cognition in cognitively impaired humans,” says Professor Mahmoud Salami from Kashan University, the senior author of the study.
Treatment with probiotics also resulted in lower levels of triglycerides, Very Low Density Lipoprotein (VLDL), high-sensitivity C-Reactive Protein (hs-CRP) in the blood of the Alzheimer patients, and likewise a reduction in two common measures (called “Homeostatic Model Assessment”, HOMA-IR and HOMA-B) of insulin resistance and the activity of the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas.
“These findings indicate that change in the metabolic adjustments might be a mechanism by which probiotics affect Alzheimer’s and possibly other neurological disorders,” says Salami. “We plan to look at these mechanisms in greater detail in our next study.”
Walter Lukiw, Professor of Neurology, Neuroscience and Ophthalmology and Bollinger Professor of Alzheimer’s disease at Louisiana State University, who reviewed the study but was not involved in the research, said: “This early study is interesting and important because it provides evidence for gastrointestinal (GI) tract microbiome components playing a role in neurological function, and indicates that probiotics can in principle improve human cognition.
This is in line with some of our recent studies which indicate that the GI tract microbiome in Alzheimer’s is significantly altered in composition when compared to age-matched controls, and that both the GI tract and blood-brain barriersbecome significantly more leaky with aging, thus allowing GI tract microbial exudates (e.g. amyloids, lipopolysaccharides, endotoxins and small non-coding RNAs) to access Central Nervous System compartments.”
Source: Mischa Dijkstra – Frontiers
Original Research: Abstract for “Effect of probiotic supplementation on cognitive function and metabolic status in Alzheimer’s disease: a randomized, double-blind and controlled trial” by Elmira Akbari, Zatollah Asemi, Reza Daneshvar Kakhaki, Fereshteh Bahmani, Ebrahim Kouchaki, Omid Reza Tamtaji, Gholam Ali Hamidi and Mahmoud Salami in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience.
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