Learn More About the New Diet Taking the World by Storm
We entrepreneurs need to take our health seriously. After all, our work is demanding, and if we work alone, we are our business. We must stay healthy. If we fall ill, our business can take a serious hit. Many of us, therefore, take a keen interest in our diet.
However, there seems to be a new dietary craze every other month these days. What’s more, they’re just getting crazier and crazier. Most of us have learned to tune them out when they pop up on our social media pages or in the news. We’re pretty sure that none of them could possibly work.
There’s a new diet, however, that is gaining popularity based on its effectiveness. The ketogenic, or keto, diet has proven time and again to help dieters lose weight. Even better, especially for us entrepreneurs, these dieters gain energy and reduce their risk factors for diseases.
So, what is this new diet? And how is it any different than the other thousands of other eating plans out there? We’ll walk you through the basics of the keto diet in this article. Then you can get a feel for if it’s right for you.
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What Is the Keto Diet?
The ketogenic diet is a high-fat-intake, low-carbohydrate-intake diet. When a person starts the keto diet, after about 3 to 7 days their body will enter into a metabolic state referred to as ketosis.
Once in ketosis, your body switches from using glucose as its primary source of energy to using ketones. These ketones are a more stable and steadier source of energy than glucose, being derived from fats as opposed to carbs. This dietary plan encourages you to eat fresh foods like organic meats and veggies full of healthy fats and oils, as opposed to the chemically treated and processed food you were consuming before.
How Is It Different from Every Other Diet out There?
Well, for one thing, on the keto diet, you don’t have to obsess as much about your total calorie consumption in a day. You’re not trying to meet some generic magic number that someone decided was the perfect number of calories for a wide range of diverse people. The keto diet is all about adapting this lifestyle and eating plan to make a positive change in your overall health. It encourages you to focus on your intake of macronutrients, rather than your calorie intake.
Unlike a lot of other dietary regimes, the keto diet has been proven to help lower your risk factors for diabetes, stroke, various heart diseases, Alzheimer’s, epilepsy, and many other chronic diseases. It can also help to boost your overall energy—not just because you’re losing weight, but because you’re eating better foods.
Unlike diets that offer special foods or specific and expensive meal plans, the keto diet is easily manageable. In other words, you can easily continue it on your own. Where other diets attempt to avoid fats, the keto diet encourages them. That’s because of more recent scientific studies that do not correlate fats with heart diseases.
Sounds Complicated. How Do I Even Get Started?
There are several sources online that can help you get started. For instance, there’s tasteaholics. Websites such as these will walk you through everything you need to get on board with this diet. You’ll get starter information, recipes, blog posts about coping with the changes, and everything in between.
Many even offer tips and guides for how to cook your favorite foods to satisfy some of your cravings for carbohydrates. For example, you can use cauliflower to replace quite a few of your favorite dishes. Try cauliflower mac and cheese for starters, or mashed cauliflower, cooked like mashed potatoes. Other sites like Proper Good even offer keto prepared meals ready for the go. If you prefer books to Internet research, there are also tons of books available on the market about the keto diet. Look for really great recipe books to help you get accustomed to cooking in this new way.
Just Avoiding Carbs Can’t Be All. What’s the Catch?
Avoiding carbohydrates is much harder than you might think. In a society full of bread and potatoes, it’s all too easy to overeat carbohydrates on a regular basis. After all, at a fast food restaurant, French fries only cost around a dollar, while a salad can cost $5 or more. However, carbohydrates should only account for 5 percent of the calories you consume daily. If you get fries with your burger, you’ve already well exceeded that limit.
So, if Carbs Are Only 5%, What’s the Rest?
A person on the keto diet should have around 65-75% of their daily calorie intake from fats. The remaining 20-30% should come from proteins. If you prefer to monitor your calories more closely and give yourself the best shot at success, tasteaholics.com offers a keto calculator. This will help you be sure you’re eating the correct number of calories and eating the correct macronutrients, which are carbohydrates, proteins, and fats.
Finally
The ketogenic diet can be a great lifestyle change that can really make a difference in your quality of life. It can increase your energy, help you lose weight, and lower your risk factors for many serious health concerns. It’s easy to maintain over the course of your life and will greatly improve your overall quality of life. On the other hand, if you’re diabetic, you should consult your doctor before trying this diet, as it could be dangerous.
Especially if you’re an entrepreneur, though, we hope we’ve sparked your interest and that you continue your research into this fascinating and successful way of eating. It could help to put you on the road to long-lasting success.