Ketogenic diet is one of the more popular weight loss and fitness diets in circulation today. It is essentially, a diet that is low in carbohydrates and emphasizes eating protein and healthy fats. The diet works by shifting your metabolic state so that your body’s main energy source turns from glucose to ketones. Ketones come from metabolizing fatty acids. This means that your body stops burning carbohydrates for energy and begins to burn fats.
Although ketogenic diet emphasizes eating proteins in addition to healthy fats, it doesn’t allow you to eat protein with abandon like Atkin’s diet. Instead, it restricts the amount of protein you can eat (although it allows well above the recommended daily amount, so there is no need to worry about protein deficiencies). Keto diet requires this limitation on protein because excess protein in the bloodstream that is not unitized for cellular growth and repair can be converted into glucose.
Nutritional ketosis can only take place when the amount of glucose in the body is kept to a minimum. The body will only be forced to breakdown fat into ketones to utilize as an energy source if glucose is not easily available.
If done correctly, ketogenic diet can absolutely be used to treat obesity, especially if the diet is accompanied with an active lifestyle. Strength training is especially great for enhancing the effectiveness of the ketogenic diet. Muscle enhancement requires breaking down muscles and repairing them which uses up the protein ingested by the body. This helps to prevent the buildup of excess protein which can trigger the production of glucose through the process of gluconeogenesis. Before starting any new diet, make sure to consult with your doctor to be sure that you are being safe.
