Thanks for joining me again this week on It’s Jess Keto! Last time I talked about the “False Start” many experience when they start the Keto Diet. Today, let’s review the basics and talk about preparing your body for Keto so that you don’t experience a “False Start” of your own.
Keto Defined
According to the almighty Google, Ketosis is defined as “a metabolic state characterized by raised levels of ketone bodies in the body tissues.” In lament terms, your body reaches Ketosis when your body does not have enough glucose to create energy. When this happens your body starts to burn stored fats instead of carbs or sugar, which results in a build up of acids called Ketones. Even more basically, if your body has no sugar or carbs to burn in order to produce energy it will start burning stored fat. That’s right! While you sleep, while you sit at your desk, even while you’re sitting on the couch watching TV…your body is burning fat non-stop!
Awesome, right? I thought so too! Keep in mind, there’s a lot more science behind how Keto works, this is just a very digestible explanation. See Book Recommendations for a great book with more information on the science behind Keto.
The All Important Macro-Nutrients
Depending on how strictly you’d like to do Keto there are few different macro (or Macro-nutrient) combination options. For those of you (like me) that did not what macro-nutrients were before this, they are the three main parts of our diets: fats, carbohydrates and proteins.
Generally, you should range 60-75% of calories from fat, 15-30% of calories from protein, and 5-10% of calories from carbs; this equates to about 20 net carbs or less on a strict Keto low carb diet. More on net carbs below!
If you’re wondering how you’ll ever keep track of your intake — I suggest a food tracker. I use MyFitnessPal as it has a great library of foods (including restaurant menus) and it also has a barcode scanner. You can’t always track everything down the gram but the closer you get the better. Getting in the habit of tracking everything you eat will make Keto a breeze.
Prepping for the Switch
The key to a good start with Keto is easing into it. You should slowly start to transition from a sugar/carb burning vessel into a fat burning vessel. This means start with lowering you sugar intake the first week, then move to lower carbs the next week and on that third week you can begin to fully transition to no sugar and low net carbs. Here’s how to do that:
Step 1 – Let’s Cut the Sh…I Mean Sugar!
Low sugar intake is a big part of keeping your body in Ketosis. Too much sugar will knock your body out of Ketosis and you’ll start to burn sugar instead of fat. Everyone’s body varies so your recovery time to get back into Keto will differ from others. We’ve noticed that my body gets into ketosis faster than Andy’s but his recovers faster after a cheat meal. Just be careful and diligent with your intake and you’ll be fine!
So what does cutting the sugar really mean? It means no soda, juices or high sugar smoothies (sorry Smoothie King I really do miss you, I’ll see you again soon). This was harder for me as I have a very public addiction to Coca-Cola. In the first week of preparations I lowered myself from a coke at lunch everyday at lunch to just one every other day . The second week I was one every 3 days, and by the time we were ready for week 3 I wasn’t feeling as much of the caffeine withdrawals that I had during our first try at Keto. Also, as a Coke lover I tried Coke Zero and at first I HATED it — but, recently they reformulated Coke Zero and I’m here to tell you Coke Cherry Zero Sugar is AMAZING! Tastes as close to the real thing as you can possibly get and zero sugar. There is a God!
It also means you’ll need to swap out your regular sugar for Equal, Stevia, Splenda or other sugar alternatives. A lot of Keto recipes show “monk fruit” as a good substitution, but we’ve never tried it so I can’t weigh in there. In our house we live and die by a product called Swerve. It’s sold in both powered and granular form so you can use it for baking, in your coffee and every other way you currently use regular sugar. I make DELICIOUS Keto Brownies with dark chocolate and Swerve that taste better than box mix any day!
Step 2 – Nothing But Net!
So real quick, let’s define Net Carbs. Net Carbs are the Total Carbohydrates – Fiber (ex. 15g Total Carbs and 5g Fiber). This means when you track your intake you may need to do a little math to find your bottom line of Net Carb intake. For example, we use MyFitnessPal — you can adjust the intake percentage goals for your macros to fit Keto, however when you look at your intake for the day it will show you Total Carbs and Fiber but not Net Carbs; just subtract the two and call it a day.
It sounds crazy but carbs are literally in EVERYTHING. You don’t realize it until you start shopping and trying to find low carb solutions that aren’t also full of sugar. The first time we went shopping for Keto was craziness because we just didn’t know what we were in for and immediately felt overwhelmed trying to find low carb options. I promise you, it gets easier as you practice keto.
The key is to learn how to substitute. For example, I’m a taco-fiend. I can’t get enough Mexican food, I’m always down for Tacos which is great because a lot of Mexican food is actually very Keto-friendly. Just swap out the tortilla for a lettuce leaf, nix the rice and limit the beans. Add extra cheese and sour cream and call it a day! It’s that easy!
Step 3: Read Labels
I can not stress this enough…you have to read the labels. That may sound like a daunting task but really there’s three things you need to check and it only takes a second.
1 Check the sugars. You want as little sugar as possible. Be careful with your pasta sauces and anything with fruit in it as they tend to be heavy on sugar. Sugar will kick your body out of Keto quickly so try to eat as little as you can.
2 Check those carbs! If the carbs are a little high, remember you are deducting the fiber to get your net carbs like we talked about in Step 2.
3 Check the fat and protein content. Since you are cutting sugar and carbs out of your diet you need to make sure you are providing your body with enough fat and protein to sustain itself. This means if a food is low carb, low sugar but also doesn’t have a good amount of protein or fat, you won’t feel full and you won’t be getting your body into a healthy fat burn. So, make sure that while what you eat is low carb/sugar, that you are eating a lot of healthy fats and proteins. This means lots of cheese, and all the chicken, sausage, beef, pork and fish you can eat!
In closing…
Now that we’ve talked about prepping your body for Keto, you can start acclimating yourself to a Keto lifestyle. Start by working through your pantry, kitchen and secret snack drawers. You don’t have to throw everything out, I suggest moving the un-Keto foods to a different shelf out of your eye line. If you can see it you’ll want to eat it! Move it to the top of the pantry or the back of the fridge and forget about it!
Remember, switching to Keto cold turkey will ensure you catch the Keto Flu and maybe even a false start. Make sure you ease into over a few weeks, I suggested previously in this post to take the three week approach: Week 1 – Cut Sugar, Week 2 – Start Substituting for Lower Carb Options, Week 3 – Fully Take On Keto!
Join me next week for a post about The Keto Flu!
Book Recommendations
A great book to read that goes into more detail about the science of Keto, the foods you can eat, and even provides some meal plans is the Keto Quick Start, available on Amazon. We read this book our second time around trying Keto and it made all the difference.
It’s Jess Keto 