Healthy Keto Diet For Beginners

What is a ketogenic Diet?

A ketogenic diet is simply a diet, which causes your body to run on what are called ketones
instead of sugar from carbohydrates like pasta, grains or sugary foods. Ketones are a type
of acid formed when your body begins burning stored or dietary fat for fuel instead of
carbs. They’re actually a very efficient fuel for your body. The most abundant, and
beneficial, ketone is called beta-hydroxybutyrate or BHB.

On a typical American diet, your body is constantly converting sugar from carbs into energy.
However, when you change to a high-fat diet and limit your net carbs, your body starts
producing ketones for energy. As a result, on a low carb diet, your body automatically
begins burning fat
⁽¹⁾.

In a keto diet, the goal is to switch your body from burning sugar fuel to fat fuel.

Do You Really Need Carbs?

The dictionary defines carbohydrates as “substances such as sugar or starch that provide the
body with energy.”

Simple carbohydrate made of refined flour and added sugar rapidly converts to blood sugar
(glucose) when you eat them. Complex carbohydrates, such as grains and beans, convert more
slowly. Regardless, all carbohydrates convert to sugar in the body – and when your net carb
intake is high you’ll gain weight.

All your life you’ve been told that you need carbohydrates for energy or that your brain can
only run on glucose made from carbs, a type of sugar. Those are myths, as evidenced by the
countless healthy, happy individuals on low-sugar or low-carbohydrate diets⁽²⁾. Instead, you can run your body on other fuel sources such as fatty acids and ketones
produced by fat burning. While your body does need a very tiny amount of glucose (sugar) to
function, it has the capability to produce all the glucose it needs internally from fat or
protein, not carbs.

The carbs you do need are vegetables—but only for the vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and
fiber they supply. Otherwise, your body does not require carbohydrates for good health. In
fact, the opposite is true. Carbohydrates, particularly refined carbohydrates, deplete your
nutrients and negatively affect your health. Carbs also turn to fat in your body, and they
impede fat burning. (That’s why you haven’t been able to lose weight on a high-carb diet⁽³⁾.)

Ketosis Simplified

“Ketosis” is the state your body is in when it is converting fat into energy. When a diet is
referred to as “ketogenic,” it only uses a particular combination of foods that puts your
body into ketosis using a process called ketogenesis. This food combination is:

The goal of the ketogenic diet is to get your body into ketosis and keep it there. When
you’re in ketosis, your body creates better fuel for itself and for your brain.

As you can guess, the foods that throw you out of ketosis are excessive carbs and sugar and
high protein. So too will frequent eating.

Getting your body into ketosis is like flipping a switch from using energy from carbs to
using energy from fat. The result is that you start burning fat automatically as you go
through your day.

Traditional Keto Diet Plan Vs. Healthy Ketosis

Although the common denominator of all keto diets is low net carbs to induce ketosis, not
all keto diets are created equal. In fact, traditional ketogenic diets do not differentiate
the type of food. Many times they include processed, genetically modified foods, gluten
products, unhealthy trans fats, and synthetic vitamins. This gives keto a bad rap. A healthy keto diet food list is very important to understand. Traditional low-carb, high-fat keto’s primary goal is usually
rapid weight loss or a reduction of epilepsy symptoms, and not necessarily good nutrition. As
a result, you could lose weight or reduce certain symptoms but become less healthy overall.

Any type of ketogenic diet, by limiting net carbs, also reduces your fat storing hormone⁽⁴⁾
– but why limit yourself when there are an impressive
variety of long-term health benefits, which await you?

To distinguish my keto program from others, I coined the term “Healthy Ketosis.” It’s based
on a guiding principle of mine:

It’s not “Lose weight to get healthy,” its “Get healthy to lose weight!”

Healthy Keto is groundbreaking because it emphasizes obtaining your required nutrients from
high-quality foods such as organic vegetables, full-fat organic dairy, and wild-caught,
grass fed, pasture-raised meat, fish, fowl, and eggs —all with the goal of getting you
healthy to lose weight rather than losing weight to get healthy.

No Counting Calories On The Keto Diet

As you know, typical diets are centered on calorie counting. You’re told you need to simply
consume fewer calories than you burn and you’ll lose weight, regardless of where those
calories come from. This is not only wrong but it’s unhealthy.

When you look at the definition of food in the dictionary, you’ll see why:

Food: (n)
That which is eaten to sustain life, provide energy and promote the growth and repair of
tissues; nourishment. The word “food” comes from an old English word “foda” which meant
nourishment.

Eating is not simply a matter of getting calories; it’s about getting nutrients from those
calories⁽⁵⁾ . And that is what
Healthy Keto® is all about: getting the nutrition you need from the foods you eat.

Another vital point is that not all calories are created equal when it comes to your
hormones. Carb calories trigger fat-making and fat-storing hormones the most, while calories
from fat trigger those same hormones the least⁽⁶⁾.

In other words, you need to eat keto-approved fat to lose fat.

Healthy Keto® Diet Guidelines

When you keep in mind that food is intended to provide nourishment not only calories, there
are two principles that form the foundation of a healthy ketogenic diet:

Don’t Eat Sugar at All

To get into ketosis and stay there, stay away from any type of sugar or anything that turns
quickly into sugar such as wheat, corn, rice, cereal, most fruits, and the like.

When you consume sugar, your body will burn it as fuel, and you won’t experience the
healthy, weight-loss benefits of fat burning.

You’ll need to be alert to the ingredients of all foods and beverages you consume. Be sure
to check nutrition labels for sugars or sugar-creating ingredients.

What to Eat Overview

On the Healthy Ketogenic plan, I recommend the following breakdown of the types of calories
you eat:

Although this plan is not based on calorie counting, I’m giving you these percentages in
terms of calories since they are a common measurement guideline in the food industry.

The Truth About Fat

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, widespread media stories about the alleged virtues of
low-fat diets resulted in hundreds of unhealthy low-fat foods on our grocery shelves. These
low-fat processed foods were (and still are) loaded with sweeteners and chemicals to make
them more palatable because they lacked delicious fats like butter or coconut oil.

Rest assured that healthy dietary fat is a vital component of any diet. Your body needs it!
Fat assists in cell growth, the production of hormones, the absorption of nutrients, and
more⁽⁷⁾. MCT oil is particularly
healthy for you and can assist the body getting into ketosis and staying in it. Our bodies use
the ketones as fuel without having to process the ketones through the liver. MCT oil can be taken
while intermittent fasting and when taken in moderation MCT oil will not break a fast.

Although 70 percent of your diet as fat seems like an excessive amount, remember we are
talking about 70 percent of the total calories. Because fat is more than double the calories
per gram than protein or carbs, the amount of fat in weight size is a lot smaller. Instead
of focusing on the 70 percent, let’s look at it in the volume of food on your plate.

I recommend you gradually work your way up to your daily amount of fat. If you add too much
fat too quickly, you’ll overwhelm your gallbladder, which can cause shoulder pain and
bloating. Keto involves eating more fats, and your body will adapt to this by producing more
bile. This is a gradual process and may take time, so if you react to an increase in dietary
fat cut back a little and introduce it more slowly.

On my Healthy Keto Plan, you’ll be eating foods like beef, large salads, butter, and eggs.
If you want to know the gram amounts of fat you’ll be consuming, it would range between 20
to 50 grams in each meal.

I recommend everyone start off on a higher amount of fat in the beginning to help satisfy
you between meals. As your body adapts to ketosis over time, you can reduce your fat if you
need to lose more weight. Since either your ketones are generated from your own body fat or
the dietary fat you eat, eating too much fat may keep you from losing your own fat,
particularly if your metabolism is slow despite still being in ketosis.

Healthy dietary fats include:

Moderate Protein

Organic, grass-fed unprocessed meats, pasture-raised eggs, and wild-caught fish are perfect
for this diet. The fattier types of fish and meat are recommended to help you stay in
ketosis. An important note is that the leaner the protein is, the more it will elevate your
fat storing hormone thus preventing ketosis⁽⁸⁾.

And remember, this is a moderate-protein diet. While you may have heard stories of people
going crazy eating all the bunless cheeseburgers they want while on a low carb diet, eating
too much protein will result in some of the protein being converted to glucose and booting
you out of ketosis.

You’ll only need three to six ounces of protein per meal, and maybe a bit more if your
metabolism is fast, you’re exercising, or are a large person. Don’t worry about counting
grams here, as this can be a little complicated when it comes to protein—just stick with
three to six ounces per meal while you’re on the keto diet.

Here’s an example of three (3) ounce protein versus six (6) ounce protein.

Low Carbohydrates

Limit your net carbs
to keep your body in ketosis. Choose healthier types of carbs ideally suited to a ketogenic
diet such as green and leafy vegetables. You will be able to consume a small amount of berries
too.

Stay away from carbs like these:

If you feel like you might miss your favorite high-carbohydrate foods, there are plenty of
ketogenic substitutes that I will share with you later in this article. One of the beauties
of the keto diet is once you adapt to fat burning, your hunger and cravings will greatly
subside, and you may not even miss your favorites⁽⁹⁾/

Vegetables

Consuming enough keto-friendly vegetables is a vital part of this healthy keto diet plan.
These veggies will provide your body with plenty of nutrients and help you stay in ketosis.
Your main choices will be green leafy vegetables along with cruciferous ones.

The more raw vegetables you can eat, the better. However, if you bloat when you eat
vegetables, you will need to start with a smaller amount of raw ones. Steaming them will
help.

A big salad at lunch or dinner could provide several cups of greens. For dinner, steam
vegetables then top them generously with butter. For an abundance of ideas, you can check
out my free keto recipes.

Though avocados are fruits, their high level of healthy fats means you can eat them freely
on a keto diet. A typical avocado also contains fiber and only two grams of carbohydrates.
Plus, it includes minerals such as potassium, which is an essential ingredient of the
Healthy Ketogenic diet. Avocados also help improve triglyceride and cholesterol levels⁽¹⁰⁾.

Steer clear of corn and soy; they are usually genetically modified organism (GMO) foods that
are problematic on a keto diet.

Choosing Your Carbs

To keep your body in ketosis, your consumption of carbohydrates should be between 20 and 50
grams per day. You can still eat some health protein rich snacks foods occasionally like the
satisfying keto chicken nuggets which we have a recipe for. These images show you a typical serving size of carbohydrates on
the keto diet:

What does 20-50 grams of carbohydrates look like?

In choosing carbs, avoid unhealthy carbs like grains, potatoes, or concentrated carbs like
juice. They’re not part of a low carb diet; they’ll boot you out of ketosis, spike your fat
storing hormone, and bring your weight loss to a screeching halt.

I’ve mentioned net carbs several times. Net carbs in food are calculated like so: total
carbs minus fiber = net carbs.

It’s worth calculating the amount of net carbs
in many of the foods that you eat. Doing so will help you stick to your keto diet with greater
ease, as well as increase your awareness of the nutritional value of the food you’re putting
into your body.

You should also avoid foods with unhealthy artificial sweeteners like aspartame, NutraSweet,
Equal, sucralose, or saccharine. And there is one more to avoid; it’s called maltitol.
Despite being so called sugar free, it can spike your blood sugar similar to how sugar does⁽¹¹⁾.

Healthy Keto® Combined With Intermittent

Now that you have a feel for keto diets and my Healthy keto® plan, it’s time to
introduce you to intermittent fasting (IF).

When you hear the word “fasting,” you might think you have to starve yourself through hours
of food deprivation. That’s not what I’m talking about! Intermittent fasting is not a
starvation plan but another powerful strategy to boost the health and weight-loss benefits
of Healthy Keto®.

Intermittent Fasting Explained

Intermittent fasting isn’t a diet; it’s a pattern of eating and not eating. It’s not about
cutting calories; it’s about changing when you eat and when you don’t eat.

Intermittent fasting triggers one of the most powerful hormones in your body. It’s called
growth hormone (GH). GH has anti-aging properties and is the most powerful fat-burning
hormone you have. As well, it protects your muscles and builds lean body mass ⁽¹⁸⁾. A healthy keto diet will help you avoid hormone imbalance and ensure you are getting proper nutrition for optimal health.

There’s another substantial benefit from fasting: your fat storing hormone will be reduced ⁽¹⁹⁾.

Fat storing hormone is a hormone produced by the pancreas and is the body’s defense against
glucose (sugar). When there is glucose in your bloodstream, your pancreas produces fat
storing hormone to quickly remove the sugar and feed it to cells plus store it as fat. This
explains why you get a quick burst of energy after eating sugary treats. Of course, it lasts
only for a second before fat storing hormone comes along to remove the sugar, leaving you
with low blood sugar fatigue (otherwise known as a sugar crash).

Why should you care about your fat storing hormone levels? Because in the presence of fat
storing hormone, you cannot lose weight; fat storing hormone prevents the burning of fat. In
fact, fat storing hormone is so dominant; it will actually block the beneficial growth
hormone I mentioned.

Eating triggers fat storing hormone – even when you’re on the keto diet, you’ll trigger some
fat storing hormone. Thus, the less often you eat, the less fat storing hormone you’ll
produce.

What’s interesting about this is if you consumed 2000 calories in a given day but ate them
spread out over six meals as compared to two meals, you would gain more weight because of
this fat storing hormone factor.

Thus, intermittent fasting enables you to influence the action of fat storing hormone and
growth hormone for your benefit.

How Intermittent Fasting Accelerates Fat Burning

Your body needs very little sugar to function. In fact, it requires just 1 teaspoon of sugar
per day, which could easily be converted from the protein or fat you eat. You don’t need any
dietary sugar. However, the average American consumes 31 teaspoons of sugar every single
day—over 30 times the amount of sugar required by your body!

Sugar is highly toxic to the body. It causes damage to the nerves, affects vision, increases
the risk of heart disease and stroke, and contributes to Alzheimer’s and other diseases ⁽²⁰⁾. Keeping an eye on your stool and understanding what
toxic poop is can help prevent serious health problems.

When sugar is detected in your body, fat storing hormone will use it as the primary fuel
source. Not because it is a high-quality fuel, but because it is so damaging your body tries
to get rid of it as quickly as possible. People mistakenly take this body response to mean
that sugar is the primary preferred fuel of the body. But as you can see, it’s not.

However, carbs aren’t the only thing, which causes the body to produce fat storing hormone.
Fat storing hormone production is triggered when you eat any type of food. As a result,
every time you eat—even healthy fat storing hormone levels in your body spike and block fat
burning. Bodies weren’t designed to eat and graze all day long. Which means snacking is a
very bad habit!

A Healthy Keto® diet combined with intermittent fasting maximizes fat burning by:

1. Greatly reducing the volume of carbohydrates (sugar), and thus fat storing hormone, in
the body.

2. Providing a lengthy time period in which growth hormone can burn fat without interruption
from fat storing hormone.

You may be thinking, how on earth do people stay with keto without feeling deprived, hungry,
and cranky? The reason people – like you – can sustain this eating plan and easily stick to
it is because cravings and hunger disappear, you’ll maintain stable energy levels, and feel
more positive.

You May Be In Fat Storing Hormone Resistance

When your body has chronically high sugar and fat storing hormone levels, it tries to
protect itself by blocking fat storing hormone from delivering sugar to the cells. This
causes sugar levels to stay in the bloodstream rather than being absorbed by the cells.

The body then detects the excess sugar in the blood. The pancreas responds by producing even
more fat storing hormone to reduce the excess blood sugar—even though the cells continue to
resist it. This is called “fat storing hormone resistance ⁽²¹⁾.”

Fat storing hormone resistance is a damaging cycle to the body. It results in elevated
levels of both fat storing hormone and sugar and definitely inhibits weight loss. As if
these issues weren’t bad enough, fat storing hormone also has more serious effects.

Chronically elevated sugar and fat storing hormone can have extremely toxic effects on the
body. Take type 2 diabetes, for instance—a disease caused by fat storing hormone resistance.
Individuals with type 2 diabetes suffer from blindness, kidney failure, nerve damage,
increased risk of stroke and heart attack, and other grave health issues. In some cases
taking natural beta blockers can
help reduce some of the risks associated with heart issues.

Consuming low-carb foods on a keto diet, and eating less frequently as you do with
intermittent fasting, helps reverse fat storing hormone resistance⁽²²⁾.

How to Transition to Intermittent Fasting (H3)

There are different levels of intermittent fasting. I recommend a gradual transition with
these steps:

Level 1. Three Meals a Day

A lot of people eat many times a day with snacks in between and also a snack after
dinner. They don’t realize that they are actually spiking their fat storing hormone all
day long.

So, the first level of IF would be for you to eat three meals per day with no snacks at
all.

Your ability to go from one meal to the next without being hungry involves eating more
fat, which will keep you satisfied longer.

Level 2. Three Meals a Day in an Eight-Hour Window

When you are comfortable with three meals a day, you can take your fat burning to the
next level by implementing an IF pattern of fasting for 16 hours while eating all three
meals within an eight-hour window.

Ideally, you’d wait four hours before having your first meal. If you wake up at 6 a.m.,
you’d have breakfast at 10 a.m., lunch at 2 p.m., then you’d have your last meal of the
day eight hours later at 6 p.m. (or earlier).

You’ll burn more fat with this 16:8 pattern because you are giving your body more
uninterrupted fasting time.

Level 3. Two Meals a Day

Moving from three meals a day down to two will really step up the fat burning. But to
get maximum results, you should transition to two meals a day within a six-hour window.
That will give you 18 hours of fasting and six hours for eating.

Eat your first meal at 12 noon and your last meal at 6 pm.

The real power of IF is at night, while you’re sleeping, and in the morning when you
refrain from eating until noon. That’s when you have some serious uninterrupted time for
fat burning.

At this point, work on closing the eating window to four hours, giving you 20 hours of
fasting.

On the 20:4 schedule, you’ll notice even more health benefits, especially decreasing inflammation
⁽²³⁾.

Level 4. One Meal a Day (OMAD)

Many people eventually eat only once a day, but I recommend letting your body tell you
when to eat.

The rule of thumb is “only eat when you are hungry” and DO NOT EAT IF YOU’RE NOT HUNGRY.

So many people snack at night and between meals when they are not hungry at all: either
they’re at a social occasion with food, or it’s a bad habit, or eating gives you
something to do when you are bored.

Most people eat their one meal at dinner. You have to make sure that it is nutrient
dense and supply all your nutrients. You don’t have to eat the same calories as you did
at three meals a day because it would be too much food. Eat what you can and realize
that your body will lower its nutrient requirements when you fast.

Give It Time

It can take some time to move from three meals a day to two meals a day in a four-hour
window, to one meal per day. If you have some metabolism issues from years of dieting or
other stressful events, it can take longer up to three weeks or longer.

And you don’t have to do this on your own! I offer a free mini-course on how to do
intermittent fasting. You can sign up for it here.

The Life-Changing Benefits of Low Carb

We’ve covered a lot of ground on the ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting. But it’s
important to keep in mind why I’m giving you all this information. These aren’t just “good
diet tips,” but a road map many people have followed to completely change their life, as you
can see from our keto before and after success stories.

The life-changing benefits of Healthy Keto® and intermittent fasting include: