What is ketogenic diet?
Ketogenic diet is a very low-carbohydrates diet and high-fat diet that has the ability to induce effective weight loss along with improvement in several cardiovascular disease risk. It is commonly called Keto-diet. It is what most people think as a low-carb diet that offers many health benefits. It’s an effective way of loosing body weight in obese or overweight people as well as lowering the risk of body system diseases.
Researchers found out that, during fasting people tends to avoid consumption of all foods for a brief period of time, this helps in reducing the amount of negative effects of cholesterol, body fat and blood sugar.
How does ketogenic diet work in the body?
Keto-diet work by deceiving your body into thinking that, it is fasting, thereby strictly eliminating glucose that is found in carbohydrates. During this process, your body becomes more efficient in burning stored fat for energy, this process is called Ketosis. Ketosis is a process the body use in compensating the system when there is low food intake or energy, so during this process the body produce ketones which are been produced from the breakdown of fats in the liver.
Normally the body make use of glucose which is gotten from high carbohydrates as the main source of energy, however ketogenic diet is all about lowering intake of carbohydrates, so stored fat is being used as source of energy.
Our body has it way of working, if carbohydrates foods is stop and replaced with fat, the body adapt to it by making use of ketone (fat) as the source of energy which typically turns your body from a sugar burner to fat burner.
Foods to avoid during Keto-diet
There are some food you need to avoid while going on Keto-diet, especially foods high in carbohydrates. The more restrictive you are on carbohydrates the faster you will enter Ketosis. List of foods to avoid includes the following below:
- Grains or starch: try as much as possible to avoid refined carbohydrates like wheat, bread, rice, yam, pasta.
- Beans or legumes: kidney beans, peas, potatoes
- Sugary foods :fruit juice, candy, soda, smoothie, cake, ice-cream
- Fruit: most fruit should be avoided except berries and avocado, try as much as possible to avoid taking apple, banana, oranges, pineapple, papaya etc. Fruit juice should be avoided 100% because they are just like sugar.
- Alcohol : eliminate the intake of alcohol when you are on Keto-diet.
- Limit your intake of saturated /refined fats i.e processed vegetable oil, mayonnaise , canola, corn oil, margarine e.t.c.
- Avoid processed food or ultra processed food of high carb especially those made with white flour, wheat flour products, box cereals, pizza, sweetened snacks.
Recommended foods for keto diet
- Vegetables: eat a lot of vegetables such as mushroom, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, spinach tomatoes , onions, pepper.
- Organ meat and raw dietary products : red meat, whole egg, chicken or, turkey, bacon, raw goat cheese, wild catch fish such as salmon, mackerel, dietary milk, cheese e.t.c
- Nuts and seeds: eat more of almond, walnuts, pumpkin seeds. e.t.c
- Healthy fats which are low in carbohydrates or no carb should be eaten such as olive oil, coconut oil, palm oil, avocado oil.
- Condiments: salt, pepper and herbal spices can be used.
- Carbohydrates that can be added for keto diet should be those foods that are complex and unprocessed such as brown rice, beans legumes, sweet potato, oats, quinoa, buckwheat, whole fuit
- Raw honey can be use as sweetener only in small quantity.
