Are you making plans to improve your health and to lose weight? Great! But with so many dieting trends out there, you might have a hard time picking the ones that would actually help you achieve your goals. So to make things a bit easier, here are two things to try: ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting.
What is Ketogenic Diet?
The ketogenic diet is a high-fat, low-carb, diet designed to help you improve your health and lose weight. It works like this: You adjust your diet by reducing your carbohydrate intake and replacing it with fat. This will put your body in a metabolic state called ketosis, which lets you convert fat to energy more efficiently.
The ketogenic diet offers an extremely effective way to lose weight. Some researches even observe that the keto diet is a far better weight loss program than many of the famous and recommended diet plans available today. Take our Ketofast program, for instance. By combining the keto diet with intermittent fasting, we can train your body to burn fat instead of carbs as its primary fuel. This will enable you to lose weight, reduce your risk of diseases, and make you more energetic.
But the ketogenic diet offers many other health benefits aside from helping you shed your extra pounds. Most notably, it can help you battle diabetes and prediabetes. Characterizations of diabetes include changes in metabolism, impaired insulin functions, and high blood sugar. By going on a keto diet, you’ll be able to minimize these symptoms, with one study even claiming that it can improve insulin sensitivity by a whopping 75%.
Aside from diabetes, the ketogenic diet can also help you deal with other various health conditions. These include heart diseases, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, Polycystic ovary syndrome, brain injuries, and even acne problems. Take note, however, that research undertaken in this area is still far from conclusive.
What is Intermittent Fasting?
Alongside ketogenic diets, intermittent fasting (IF) is quickly becoming a phenomenal health trend across the globe. IF basically involves you cycling between periods of eating and fasting. That is, your time when you eat and when you don’t. Intermittent fasting is an easy and very effective way to lose weight and become healthier, with scientific research backing it up.
The best thing about intermittent fasting is its simplicity and straightforwardness. For one thing, it focuses on when you need to eat rather than what you should eat. And since humans are generally well-adapted to fasting every once in a while (We’ve been fasting for millennia for various reasons, and we’re technically fasting when we’re asleep.), we can start or stop our IF regime anytime we want.
Moreover, due to intermittent fasting becoming trendy in recent years, there are now various types of IF to choose from. Below are a few popular ones:
- The 16/8 Method. This method involves fasting for 16 hours every day; you can only eat during the 8-hour period you set.
- The Eat-Stop-Eat Method. This method involves you not eating anything for 24 hours once or twice a week.
- The 5:2 Diet. This method involves eating only 500 calories’ worth of food twice a week.
Losing weight aside, intermittent fasting can also help you improve your metabolic health. The only thing you need to worry about is making sure you stick to your schedule, as well as watch what you eat (You need to focus on healthy foods, obviously!). By forming the right habits and disciplining yourself, you can easily accomplish that.
How Can Both Benefit You?
Depending on your situation, you can choose to go either on a ketogenic diet or intermittent fasting. But in case you can’t pick between the two, you can always do them together. As Tony Stark deftly put it, “Is it too much to ask for both?”
There are many reasons why keto diet and IF make a lethal combination in helping you lose weight and become healthier. One such reason is that they complement each other. Keto diets focus on high-fat and low-carb foods, while IF doesn’t care what you eat (its focus is on the timing). These characteristics make it relatively easy to fuse the two together.
Another thing that makes IF and keto diet so compatible is that they can both reduce your risk of having metabolic, neurological, and insulin-related health issues. Can going on a ketogenic diet help you fight diabetes? Yes, and so can intermittent fasting! Does intermittent fasting help protect you from conditions like cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and heart diseases? Keto diets can do that, too!
Aside from helping you shed your extra pounds and keep diseases at bay, combining both can help you become more energetic. Limiting your carb intake forces your body in a state of nutritional ketosis. In other words, your body starts creating ketones, chemicals that can provide you with enough energy to sustain you regularly.
Both keto dieting and intermittent fasting can also promote good mental health. Other than providing you with a consistent source of energy, the ketones your body will produce due to keto diet and IF will power up your brain as well. It does not only make sure that you have ample mental energy and focus to get you through your days; it will also help reduce your chances of suffering from mental fogginess.
In Summary
As you can see, going on a ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting can do wonders for your well-being. By creating a dieting program that involves both, you’ll be able to enjoy a fitter and healthier body in no time.
But Wait! There’s More!
But in case you don’t have time to create and customize your own dieting regime, why not try our Ketofast program? Combining menus from the ketogenic diet and the scheduling from intermittent fasting, it’s definitely something you need to check out if you’re looking for a program that will help you lose weight and get healthier. Visit our website for more details and to enjoy a free trial of our program.