Intermittent fasting is a way of reproducing our ancestral eating habits in modern life. This means cycling between daily intervals of not eating and windows for eating.
intermittent fasting is a stable and effective dieting strategy that can help us reach our body composition goals. Intermittent fasting may help your body reach ketosis quicker than the keto diet alone. That’s because your body, when fasting, maintains its energy balance by shifting its fuel source from carbs to fats — the exact premise of the keto diet
While intermittent fasting, it is much easier for us to maintain a calorie deficit, which results in weight loss and improved metabolic function. This is arguably the main reason why skipping meals can be so effective in enhancing many aspects of our health.
Despite what you may speculate, intermittent fasting is relatively easy to incorporate into your lifestyle. Many people report feeling better and having more energy during a fast. Hunger is usually not that big of an issue, although it can be a problem in the beginning while your body is adapting to your new feeding times.
From the above intermittent meaning, you don’t need to skip breakfast to maximize your keto diet results. Intermittent fasting is not essential, it is just another tool in the health optimization toolbox that will be a staple for some and useless for others.
When Intermittent fasting is done properly it:
- Regulate blood glucose
- Control blood lipids including cholesterol and triglycerides
- Decrease the risk of coronary disease
- Manage body weight
- Help you gain (or maintain) lean muscle mass
- Stimulate human growth hormones
- Activate stemcell production
- Reduce the risk of cancer, and more
How to know if intermittent fasting is working.
- Because Intermittent Fasting has a unique system of addressing weight loss and energy production, there are a few ways to tell when Intermittent Fasting starts to work.
- You’re Not Hungry. …
- Body Fat % Is Going Down. …
- Improved Bloating/Bowel Movements. …
- Increased Energy Levels. …
- Decreased Sugar Cravings.
Types of Intermittent Fasting
The 16/8 Protocol: You fast for 16 hours and then consume your daily calories within a set 8-hour window.
The 5:2 Diet (The Fast Diet): This way of fasting involves eating as normal for 5 out of 7 days of the week consecutively.
On the other two remaining days, you drastically restrict your calories to around 500 a day if you’re a woman and 600 if you’re a man.
The 24-Hour Protocol: With the 24-hour protocol, you just skip two meals in a day and take a break from eating for 24 hours. For example, if you eat on a normal schedule and finish dinner at around 7.30 PM, you wouldn’t eat again until 7.30 PM the next day.
Alternate-Day Fasting: Alternate-day fasting requires you to fast every other day.
You can either fast totally on your fast days and just consume water, Lipton, and coffee or you can severely restrict your calories to around 500.
The Warrior Diet – Day Fasting: This diet involves fasting all day and feasting during the night within a 4-hour window.
Benefits of Intermittent fasting:
- It promotes growth hormone secretion and insulin sensitiveness, two essential things for fat loss and muscle gain.
- Intermittent fasting can aid to improve your brain health.
- Intermittent fasting also helps positively counteract serious cognitive conditions such as Alzheimer’s, dementia, etc
- Intermittent fasting support muscles gain and definition.
- Intermittent fasting speed up weight loss
- Intermittent fasting support improves focus and concentration
Read Also: 14 High Blood Pressure Food to Avoid
What is a Ketogenic Diet?
A ketogenic-keto diet means eating high-fat, moderate-protein, and low-to-no carbohydrates. By cutting carbs and getting most of our calories from fat, our bodies switch from relying on carbohydrates for fuel to converting the fat we eat, and the fat we store on our bodies, into molecules called ketones that fuel our cells.
When the levels of ketones in our blood get elevated, we enter the metabolic state called ketosis–the root of the term “keto diet”.
What is ketosis?
Ketosis is a metabolic state in which your body uses fat for fuel instead of carbs.
It occurs when you significantly reduce your consumption of carbohydrates, limiting your body’s supply of glucose (sugar), which is the main source of energy for the cells.
It’s also important to decrease your protein consumption. This is because protein can be converted into glucose if consumed in high amounts, which may slow your transition into ketosis.
Practicing intermittent fasting could also help you enter ketosis faster. There are many several forms of intermittent fasting, but the most common method involves limiting food intake to around 8 hours per day and fasting for the remaining 16 hours
The calorie breakdown of a typical ketogenic diet looks like this:
-70-80% of calories from fat-15-30% calories from protein-0-10% calories from carbohydrates
Most ketones pack more energy per unit than carbs. They can also fuel the vast majority of your cells. For the few other types of cells that need glucose, your body will synthesize it from protein. This is a natural process called gluconeogenesis.
Different types of ketogenic diets
- A standard ketogenic diet (SKD): This is a very low carb, moderate protein, and high-fat diet. It typically contains 70% fat, 20% protein, and only 10% carbs.
- The cyclical ketogenic diet (CKD): This diet involves periods of higher-carb re-feeds, such as 5 ketogenic days followed by 2 high carb days.
- A targeted ketogenic diet (TKD): This diet allows you to add carbs around workouts.
- High protein ketogenic diet: This is similar to a standard ketogenic diet, but includes more protein. The ratio is often 60% fat, 35% protein, and 5% carbs.
Nevertheless, only the standard and high protein ketogenic diets have been studied extensively. Cyclical or targeted ketogenic diets are more advanced methods and are primarily used by bodybuilders or athletes.
Benefits of the Keto Diet
The science is still coming out, clinical studies have already found that keto can provide numerous benefits including:
- Improved blood lipid levels.
- Improved insulin sensitivity.
- Reductions in the severity of type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease
- Reduces and reverse symptoms of PCOS
- Treatment for numerous types of cancer
- Reduces and slows the progression of neurological disorders like epilepsy, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s disease.
- Significant weight loss
- Make meals more satiating, reducing cravings for processed and high-carb foods
- Regulates inflammation and increases immunity
- Helps your body absorb fat
- Soluble vitamins (K, D, E, etc).
- Protects the glycocalyx –the membrane that covers the surface of every cell is responsible for overall health and is easily damaged by sugar intake.
Read Also: 7 Amazing Benefits of Fruit Salad
Benefits of Combining Intermittent Fasting and Keto
Intermittent fasting and keto share different advantages like improved fat burning, better cellular repair, improved insulin sensitivity, and lower risk of disease. Let’s outline it one offer the other.
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Increase Weight Loss
Both intermittent fasting and keto are clinically proven to promote weight loss. When skillfully combined, the weight-reducing factors in each are strengthened: Intermittent Fasting promotes thermogenesis, while keto tells your body to metabolize stored fat.
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Smoothen Your Transition into Ketosis
Keto is about switching your body from using carbohydrates for energy, to burning fat into ketones. The typical way to do this is by cutting carbs and increasing fat intake in your diet. For many people, this transition can take some time and it comes with several unpleasant side effects known as “keto flu.”
Intermittent Fasting speeds up ketosis and smoothens the transition. When you fast, your insulin levels drop, causing your body to use its stored carbs (glycogen). Once these are depleted your body begins using fat for fuel.
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Strengthened Anti-Cancer Factors:
Studies on mice show that fasting can result in important reductions in the incidence of lymphomas and tumors. The anti-cancer factor is the reduction in glucose and insulin.
A keto diet practically eliminates sugar. When you’re not eating sugar, your body isn’t producing insulin. In this way, intermittent fasting and keto combine to starve cancer cells that rely on sugar.
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High Cellular Renewal:
Intermittent fasting can trigger a process of cellular “spring cleaning,” called autophagy. Old cells are metabolized, and new cells are born (see above), keeping tissues healthy.
When you combine Intermittent Fasting with a keto diet that cuts out carbs, you’re stimulating the removal of cells damaged by the bonding of sugar molecules in a process called glycation.
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Keto Can Fuel and Protect Fasting- Stimulated Stem Cells
Studies show that intermittent fasting can increase the production of stem cells in the intestines, muscles, and brain. At the same time, Intermittent Fasting preserves the ability of stem cells to regenerate independently in the long term.
Yet ending a fast with sugary processed foods can lead to precancerous lesions and increased cancerous activity–especially in the intestines and liver.
Combining intermittent fasting with a high-fat, low-carb keto diet fertilizes the fresh crop of new cells with energy-packed ketones while protecting them from the damage wrought by carbs and insulin.
Ketogenic Diet Meal Plan
Switching over to a ketogenic diet can seem overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be tough.
Your focus should be on curtailing carbs while improving the fat and protein content of meals and snacks. To reach and remain in a state of ketosis, carbs must be limited, while certain people might only achieve ketosis by eating 20 grams of carbs per day, others may be successful with a much higher carb intake.
Mostly, the lower your carbohydrate intake, the easier it is to reach and stay in ketosis. This is why sticking to keto-friendly foods and avoiding items rich in carbs is the best way to successfully lose weight on a ketogenic diet.
Keto-Friendly Foods to Eat
When following a ketogenic diet, meals and snacks should center on the following foods:
- Egg: Pastured, organic whole eggs make the best choice.
- Poultry: Chicken and turkey.
- Fatty fish: Wild-caught salmon, herring, and mackerel.
- Meat: Grass-fed beef, venison, pork, organ meats, and bison.
- Full-fat dairy: Yogurt, butter, and cream.6 Full-fat cheese: Cheddar, mozzarella, brie, goat cheese, and cream cheese.
- Nuts and seeds: Macadamia nuts, almonds, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, peanuts, and flaxseeds.
- Nut butter: Natural peanut, almond, and cashew butter.
- Healthy fats: Coconut oil, olive oil, avocado oil, coconut butter, and sesame oil.
- Avocados: Whole avocados can be added to almost any meal or snack.
- Non-starchy vegetables: Greens, broccoli, tomatoes, mushrooms, and peppers.
- Condiments: Salt, pepper, vinegar, lemon juice, fresh herbs, and spices.
Avoid foods rich in carbs while following a keto diet.
The following foods should be restricted:
- Bread and baked goods: White bread, whole-wheat bread, crackers, cookies, doughnuts, and rolls.
- Sweets and sugary foods: Sugar, ice cream, candy, maple syrup, agave syrup, and coconut sugar.
- Sweetened beverages: Soda, juice, sweetened teas, and sports drinks.
- Pasta: Spaghetti and noodles.
- Grains and grain products: Wheat, rice, oats, breakfast cereals, is, and tortillas.
- Starchy vegetables: Potatoes, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, corn, peas, and pumpkin.
- Beans and legumes: Black beans, chickpeas, lentils, and kidney beans.
- Fruit: Citrus, grapes, bananas, and pineapple. High-carb sauces: Barbecue sauce, sugary salad dressings, and dipping sauces.
- Certain alcoholic beverages: Beer and sugary mixed drinks.
The following items should be avoided:
- Unhealthy fats: Margarine, shortening, and other sources of trans fat.
- Processed foods: Fast food, packaged foods, and processed meats such as hot dogs and lunch meats.
- Diet foods: Foods that contain artificial colors, preservatives, and sweeteners such as sugar alcohol, and aspartame.
Keto-friendly beverage choices include:
- Water: Water is the best choice for hydration and should be consumed throughout the day.
- Sparkling water: Sparkling water can make an excellent soda replacement.
- Unsweetened coffee: Try heavy cream to add flavor to your cup
- Unsweetened green tea: Green tea is delicious and provides many health benefits.
If you want to add some extra flavor to your water, try experimenting with different keto-friendly flavor mixtures.
For example, tossing some fresh mint and lemon peel into your water bottle can make hydration a breeze.
Though alcohol should be restricted, enjoying a low-carb drink like vodka or tequila mixed with soda water is perfectly fine on occasion.
Intermittent Fasting And Keto Story.
I have a friend who came for service early last year, she was a beautiful and chubby lady and she didn’t like the fact that she was chubby.
She started work on her diet, how many times she eats, and when to do it, and she also registered in a gym.
But you know that is one thing to go to the gym and is another to watch what you eat when to eat, and the quantity you eat because no later how your gym if you don’t cut down on your food, intermittent fasting will not take place.
My friend decided to use the process and today, she’s not chubby, she has the shape she’s wanted to like if you see her you wouldn’t know she was once a chubby lady and she’s very happy she achieved her body perfect shape.
Conclusion
Intermittent Fasting works together for a few reasons, though, the primary one is that following a strict keto eating plan can be quite challenging to start with, thus, every time you eat, there’s a slim chance you might get it wrong and inadvertently consume foods that aren’t deemed keto-friendly, and as a result, you’re knocked out of ketosis.
Therefore, beginners following a keto diet are often tempted to overeat; first, the food is so delicious, and second, many people that start a keto eating plan have previously struggled with issues such as portion control, which means it’s one less chance that we could screw it all up.
As a beginner, if you want to use fasting to enter the state of ketosis, you’ll need to fast for a long period until all your glucose stores have been sapped.
Or if you want to use intermittent fasting to help kick start ketosis, it will have to be combined with an extremely low-carb ketogenic diet to consume those stored carbohydrates.
