The Complete Keto Diet for Beginners: How to Lose 1 Pound Per Day, Sharpen Your Mind, and Transform Your Health

By Dana Robinson

The Only Ketogenic Diet Book You’ll Ever Need!
What if there was a nutrition strategy that would easily melt away your extra fat, boost your energy levels, and regain mental clarity?
Wait, there is one. It’s called the Ketogenic Diet and it’s about a century old, though it was forgotten for decades.
The Ketogenic Diet has been rediscovered and now YOU can reap its benefits too: lose weight FAST, reduce fatigue and inflammation, and say goodbye to brain fog!
This diet will put your body into fat-burning mode and make your liver produce superior fuel for your brain. Sounds complicated?
Don’t worry, this Ketogenic Diet book for beginners will make your dieting as easy as it can be! It provides expert dieting tips and tricks as well as several ready-made meal plans and dozens of mouth-watering recipes so that you can start immediately.
Are you ready to transform your body and unleash the power of your brain?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781678117887

Dana Robinson

Dana Robinson is the president and founder of Partners in Change, Inc. She and Jim Robinson, chairman of Partners in Change, Inc., have coauthored and coedited three books on human performance, including the award-winning Performance Consulting.

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Chapter 1: Ketogenic Diet Fundamentals

In 1924, Dr. Russell Wilder introduced a ketogenic diet at the Mayo Clinic. The diet was designed to treat epileptic patients, and it was awesome! As new anti-seizure drugs emerged in the 1940s, the diet fell out of popularity but was still used to treat patients with no medication relief.

The diet originated from a discovery in which doctors learned that eating a high-fat, low-carb (HFLC) diet releases the same ketones that your body produces during fasting. The HFLC diet groups were much more effective in the test groups than in fasting patients because the HFLC patients had to eat until they were full and satisfied!

This was the product of a ketogenic diet.

It's an HFLC diet that lets your body make ketones and mimic the positive effects of fasting while eating to your heart and stomach content.

What Is the Ketogenic Diet?

The Ketogenic diet (keto) is an eating plan with very low carbohydrate intake, which are macronutrients found in food.

Low carb diets are eating plans which usually restrict carbohydrate intake to less than 100 grams per day, the Ketogenic diet is the most restrictive of these and restricts intake to less than 50 grams per day, ideally beginning with 20 grams.

It is essential to understand that keto is not a fad diet or a temporary weight loss solution.  It is designed to be a lifestyle plan that not only leads to successful weight loss, but also promotes overall health, energy, and vitality. It removes sugar and processed food from your diet.  Most low-carb diets only encourage you to eat fresh, whole food for better overall health and well-being.

While some may doubt how safe it is to drastically lower carb consumption, the wide variety of whole foods available makes it quite simple, and several studies show that they provide better weight loss results than low-fat diets or even low-calorie diets.

In addition to various metabolic processes in the body, one of the reasons for this is that decreasing carb intake naturally controls the appetite, and people find that they consume less often because they are happy and without hunger. 

Generally, a keto diet may be suitable for diabetics who are overweight and obese, anyone who needs to improve their metabolic health, and for other reasons of nutrition.

The keto diet is a low or zero carbohydrate diet, but it differs from other low-carb diets (such as Paleo) by purposely altering the sugars, fats, and protein proportions to convert fat into the body's primary fuel source. Our bodies are used to being fueled by carbohydrates. Fats are rarely turned on, which is a secondary source of fuel. That means the extra fat will be stored, and the pounds will continue to be added.

For most diets, the only way to reduce fat is to eat less fat and exercise a lot to increase energy consumption over daily intake of calories, which is why most people do not lose weight on traditional diets.

The ketogenic diet, on the other hand, uses fat for fuel, which means that it is used rather than stored. This makes it easy to lose weight. The ketogenic diet is known as the healing diet, as well as weight loss. The lack of intake of sugar has been shown to help and prevent many diseases such as heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer, epilepsy, and many aging symptoms.

To get into ketosis, the regulation of sugars, fats, and protein is vital. It is a condition when the body is forced to use fat as its primary fuel, deprived of the normal carbohydrates and sugar. The fat/protein ratio is significantly higher than the general carbs ratio.

Consuming fewer carbs, of course, also means reducing your body's amount of insulin. Less insulin, less fat, and less sugar storage. That's why the keto diet supported people with diabetes so well. It naturally adjusts the sugar level.

Carbs, fat, and protein ratios can vary. Most people still lose weight and give themselves up to 50 grams of carbohydrates a day. On a stricter regime, the consumption of carb will range from 15 to 20 grams per day. The fewer carbohydrates, the faster the loss of weight, but the diet is very flexible.

You don't count calories on your keto diet. You count carbohydrates, and you change carbs vs. fat and protein consumption. A standard keto diet should derive 60% of its calories from fat, 15% to 25% of protein calories, and 25% of carbohydrate calories. The only dietary limitation is sugar, which must be avoided.

There's no fad in the ketogenic diet. The advantages and therapeutic effects of ketosis have been shown by many scientific studies. Talk to your doctor about the ketogenic diet if you are interested in eating less sugar, weight loss, or preventive measures against vulnerable health problems.

To maintain your progress, the Keto Diet requires conscious decisions on your part.

Types of Ketogenic Diets

Keto is flexible, and three distinct plans target different goals.

Standard Ketogenic Diet (SKD)

This one is very low in carbs, with moderate protein, and high in healthy fats.

The ratio is typically 75% fat, 20% protein, and 5% carbs

High-Protein Ketogenic Diet

This plan is like SKD but includes more protein.

The ratio is typically 60% fat, 35% protein, and 5% carbs

Cyclical Ketogenic Diet or CKD

This plan is widely used by athletes, bodybuilders, weightlifters and anyone participating in high-intensity exercise and features short periods of high carb intake

5 keto days followed by 2 high carb intake days

Targeted Ketogenic Diet or TKD

This plan is also used by bodybuilders, athletes, and those who work out regularly to fuel intense workouts.

High load carb intake based around workouts

The Downside in Exercise

Since everything has its pros and cons, the only downside of this diet is that those who regularly engage in intense exercise, athletes, and bodybuilders will typically not derive the energy needed to perform during strength training, intense weight lifting sessions, sprinting or intense workouts of any kind. 

This is because when you lower the number of carbohydrates in your diet, you’re also reducing your glycogen levels, which is the default energy source for muscles during workouts, and when glycogen is lacking, so is performance.

The good news is that strength trainers, bodybuilders, sprinters or anyone doing intensive training does have options in following a low carb lifestyle, so they can enjoy the numerous benefits it offers without sacrificing the performance needed for training.

The Cyclical Ketogenic Diet

One of the options to go low carb and still train at your maximum is with the cyclical ketogenic diet.

How CKD Works

A cyclical ketogenic diet (KCD) means you’re refeeding your body – through a cycle that lasts a week with a certain amount of complex carbohydrates, limited amounts of fat, and protein.

Plan Details

5 days ketogenic, then 2 days carb load with high to medium GI (glycemic index) foods.

On the 2 days when you do a carb-load, you increase your carb intake by 50 – 60%. This high amount is typically above a person’s usual dietary intake, but the reason behind this increase is to immediately refill the glycogen levels in the liver and revamp muscle energy but leave nothing behind to be stored as fat.

This means you increase your carb intake significantly during the cyclical refeed, also known as carb-load.

Another option is a bi-weekly cycle where a ketogenic diet is followed for 10 – 12 days, followed by 3 to 4 days of carb loading.

Both can yield excellent results, but it mainly depends on your own training schedule, goals, preference, and results.

The Goals Of CKD

The first goal of this type of diet is to provide you with a break of sorts from going with barely little or no carbohydrates at all as in a standard ketogenic diet, to eating a high carb load in line with your workout needs.

The second goal is to modulate your hormone levels and thyroid gland, which becomes suppressed during dieting.

The third goal is to replenish your body’s dwindling supply of glycogen right when your body needs it the most, so it’s used as energy rather than being stored as fat.

Who Benefits From CKD?

The only way not to gain weight on a CKD plan is to use your refueled glycogen levels for high-intensity training, as a way of increasing your endurance and maintaining muscle mass.

This allows those engaging in athletics, weightlifting, or strength training to maximize fat-loss while building lean mass.

This sort of training would be tough, if not impossible, by only eating low carb.

For this reason, the time between carb-loads is crucial, as well as the kinds of foods you eat during the carb-load is critical for the success of this diet and the continued health of your body.

It mainly depends on how intense your training is, as well as your overall fitness goals.

Implementing CKD

For starters, you will need to start a carb-load once a week. Adjusting the intervals between carb-loads is the trick, and it will take some time to get it just right, as individual results will vary.

The key is to implement carb loads, but not allow the body to slip out of ketosis.

Measure how much your carb intake is during a load then gauge ketone levels in the urine in the following couple of days. Remember to give your body time to adjust to this new diet and metabolic state.

Limit your fat intake while you’re loading up on carbs but keep the amount of protein intake the same, or maybe even increase it slightly in line with the intensity of your training.

EXAMPLE FORMULA

A simple way to make sure you’re getting the right amount of nutrients during the low-carb part of this diet is as follows:

This calculation is based on a person whose lean body mass is 150 lbs. And who follows a 2000-calorie/day diet. To compute your lean body mass, you can use this calculator  http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/lbm_calculator.htm or any of the many others available online.

Protein intake should be at 1 gm/lb. of lean body mass = 150 gm of protein daily

Carb intake should be 0.1 - 0.2 gm/lb. of lean body mass = 15 – 30 gm daily

Proteins and carbs have 4 calories/gram which means the total amount of calories so far is (150 + 30 {or less}) x 4 = 720 calories

Fat intake will be measured according to how many calories are leftover to reach the 2000 calories/day goal (2000 – 720 = 1280), and since 1 gm of fat has 9 calories, 1280/9 = 142 gm/day is the amount of total fat intake for one day

Therefore, your daily nutrient intake would be as follows:

150 grams of protein

30 grams of carbohydrate

142 grams of fat

Starting Your Carb-Load

Begin roughly 5 hours before your final workout of the week and eat about 25 – 50 grams of carbs in addition to some protein and fats. This will help commence the production of liver enzymes.

Then 1 – 2 hours before the workout, eat anywhere from 25 – 50 grams of both glucose (brown rice, yogurt, oats, and milk) and fructose (fruit) to replenish the liver glycogen levels.

Low Fructose: lime, apricot, lemon, and rhubarb have .5 grams per gram

Moderate Fructose: 1 cup of diced cranberries, ½ a small peach, 1/4 cup of cantaloupe, and 1/4 cup of strawberries have between 0.51 gram and 1 gram.

High Fructose: 1/2 cup of pineapple, 1/2 a grapefruit, and 1/2 cup of raspberries have 1 to 2 grams of fructose.

Very High Fructose: 1/2 cup of blueberries, 5 cherries, and 1 kiwi have 2 or more grams of fructose.

The next 48 hours will mainly be based on your own personal preferences and body needs, but a basic guideline of the carb-load is as follows:

1st day: 70% of your total caloric intake should be nothing but carbs (4.5 grams/lb. of lean mass), mainly those with a high GI such as white bread and rice, bagels, potatoes; protein and fats should be evenly split, with each taking only 15% of your total caloric intake

2nd day: 60% carbohydrates (2.25 grams/lb. of lean mass), preferably those with a bit lower GI (raisins, bananas, pita bread, basmati rice all have a medium GI