By CraftBelly Delights
What is the Keto diet?
Simply put, the keto diet means you’re getting most of your calories from FAT and you’re keeping your total daily carbohydrates very, very low. Like ridiculously low.
If you want to be successful, the thing about any diet is that you need to keep track of your calories. So, for a keto diet, you’ll be looking to stay within the following caloric guidelines:
Fat: 70% or more
Carbohydrates: 10% or less
Protein: % can be whatever is leftover (e.g., 20%+)
The key to a keto diet is to make sure most of your daily calories come from FAT (70% or more) and keeping the calories from carbohydrates under 10%. Yeah, that sounds a bit drastic, but there’s an important reason for this.
The foundation of a keto diet is something called “ketosis”. When your body enters a ketosis metabolic state, your body uses fat for fuel instead of carbs. So, when you’re in ketosis your body is burning fat to fuel itself.
When your body is in ketosis, you start producing ketones - the prize of all keto dieters. When you don’t have enough glucose in your blood to use for energy, your liver takes fat and turns them into ketones. Your body then uses ketones as its energy source.
The easiest rule of thumb is to keep your daily carb intake to less than 50g and the rest of it should be fat.
What about protein? That’s a good question. Protein can be converted into glucose if you eat a lot of it, which is the same as consuming carbs. So, if you eat a bunch of protein on a keto diet, you’ll end up slowing your transition to the desired state of ketosis.
But, keto is more than that. There are a variety of ways to “do” a keto diet. There’s “dirty keto”, what we like to call “cleaner keto”, and everything in between.
Dirty Keto vs Clean Keto
“Dirty keto” is to just consume anything fatty. No holds bar - just give me the fat. That’s why you see people who are on keto eating a ton of bacon, steaks, and straight-up fat. Arguably, this is the most fun type of keto because you end up eating like a glutton and still lose weight.
“Clean keto” is an approach where you try to consume “heart-healthy” fats, which are predominantly unsaturated fats. You’ll want to focus more on plant-based fats, such as avocados, nuts, olives, flax seeds, hemp hearts, chia seeds, and coconut. You can also go for greek yogurt, butter, cheese, and fatty fish. It’s a rewarding approach, if not a bit more...challenging.
