Facts and Benefits of the Ketogenic Diet
Making the decision to follow a diet can be an excellent first step in beginning your healthy eating journey! When it comes to choosing which diet is best for you, getting informed first is the key. Whether you’re exploring popular diet trends or more specialized options, choose a diet that will last by fitting into your lifestyle. In this post, I wanted to talk about the ketogenic diet: an option that’s rising in popularity due to its impact on weight loss, cravings, and mental clarity.
The ketogenic diet is an eating plan that relies on mainly on healthy fats with limited protein and carbohydrate consumption. With the majority of your daily calories coming from fat, a small amount from protein, and a very limited amount from carbohydrates, your body enters into and maintains a state of ketosis. In this state, your body starts feeding off of fat for energy instead of carbohydrates.
The strict guidelines for the ketogenic diet are one of the biggest drawbacks, even for professionals, but if you’re willing to carefully plan your meals and avoid eating unhealthy fats, you may experience more benefits than just weight loss. This diet has the potential to help stabilize blood sugar and improve metabolic health as well as reduce appetite, curb cravings, improve brain functions, and prevent excess oxidation which causes signs of aging. The ketogenic diet can also help to protect your body against cancer by addressing issues such as DNA damage, inflammation, blood sugar, and weaknesses in the immune system.
There are many great potential perks to the ketogenic diet, but remember that there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all diet. Always listen to your body; the diet you choose should feel right to you. As with any change, there will be an adjustment period and the results won’t come overnight. They shouldn’t. Your eating plan should be focused around a well-balanced diet that helps you to live your best, healthiest life.
If you decide to try out the ketogenic diet, or if you’ve made the decision to commit, here are a few recipes to help get started! One of the biggest challenges with this eating plan is the limited intake of carbohydrates; check out this keto bread to meet your low-carb needs. If you need to satisfy a lingering sweet tooth, try these keto brownies. Lastly, consider starting out with this variation of one of my favorite healthy go-to recipes: zucchini noodles.
If you’d like to catch more tips and advice for healthy eating and cooking like a chef, be sure to follow me on Instagram at OfficialChefT, check out SimpleEatsTV on YouTube, and find my podcast, Simple Eats w/ Chef T, on iTunes, Google Play, Overcast, Pocket Cast, and Radio Public.
Always remember to Eat with a Purpose!
Resources:
Health.com
Wellness Mama
Mind Body Green
Elana’s Pantry
