Living a ketogenic lifestyle (“Keto”) enables me to stay in the best physical and mental shape of my life. So what is keto? Keto is a low carb/moderate protein/high fat nutrition plan known as The Ketogenic Diet or Keto Diet. I started doing Keto 4 years ago, just after publishing my first book, Get Fit, Lean and Keep Your Day Job. Fitness and nutrition has been a lifelong interest of mine. As a teenager, I began weight training and trying different diets. From Atkins to Paleo to Mediterranean to South Beach, I’ve tried every popular and sometimes not so popular diet plan. After a lifetime of experimentation, what is my conclusion? For both short term and long term positive health outcomes, nothing is as effective as Keto.
Keto popularity is growing fast and with good reason. With hundreds of successful clinical trials of patients, San Francisco based Virta Health is focused on reversing type 2 diabetes. Their prescribed treatment? A well formulated keto diet. Another Bay Area startup, Jump Start MD, markets themselves as a weight loss solution. Their prescribed treatment? You guessed it, Keto.
I advocate Keto for both short term and long term health. You can improve your body composition (lose fat and gain lean muscle) and more importantly, prevent and reverse most non-infectious disease by following a Keto nutrition plan. My new free algorithm, Keto Score, helps you get into and maintain nutritional ketosis. You can calculate your own personal Keto Score, available to anyone, at ketonescore.com
Why is Keto the best solution for fat loss?
Carbohydrates are most people’s primary source of energy. When you fuel yourself with carbs, your body converts dietary carbohydrates into blood glucose (blood sugar.) Elevated blood glucose in turn triggers an insulin flood. The hormone insulin, like all hormones, is a messenger, and specifically, insulin is a messenger that instructs your body to store excess blood glucose as fat. You don’t get fat from eating fat. You get fat from overeating carbohydrates. Unlike carbohydrates, our bodies have no biological mechanism for converting dietary fat to stored fat. When following a Keto plan you fuel yourself with fat. Both stored fat and dietary fat can be converted to blood ketones, and those blood ketones, as opposed to blood glucose, become your body’s primary fuel source. There is no better diet for losing fat than eating fat.
I’m a fat loss expert. Many times over the years as a men’s physique competitor, I’ve taken my body fat down to 6%. I “leaned out”, as the bodybuilding community calls it. When I was fueling myself with carbs, leaning out was very difficult. It felt like I was starving because the blood sugar spikes and inevitable blood sugar crashes put me on a roller coaster of energy highs and lows. I was always hungry. I craved my next carb fix so I could temporarily bounce back from the blood sugar crashes. Leaning out on keto is effortless by comparison. Why?
When doing Keto, most of your calories come from fat so instead of experiencing blood sugar spikes and constant hunger, you have a steady level of energy throughout the day. Because keto provides a sustained even energy level, many professional athletes, including endurance athletes, are adopting keto as their primary nutrition plan.
There’s even more benefits than fat loss and steady energy levels. Keto has also been shown to improve mental focus, cognitive function, and mental clarity. Ketones easily cross the blood/brain barrier and are a preferred fuel by the mitochondria (power plants) of brain cells. So Instead of feeling distracted and irritable most of the day because of carb/sugar crashes, I feel mentally sharp and focused.
Why is Keto best for long term health? As mentioned above, eating too many carbs elevates your blood glucose which in turn floods your blood stream with insulin. Elevated blood glucose and insulin spikes are inflammatory. Inflammation is the root cause of most non-infectious diseases including type 2 diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and cognitive disorders like Alzheimer’s, dementia, and Parkinson’s. Many forms of cancer are thought to be caused or exacerbated by inflammation. Recent research suggests that inflammation and epilepsy are tightly linked, and potentially even causative.
Following Keto, you’ll eliminate the inflammation caused by elevated blood glucose and insulin. Doing Keto you can prevent, and in many cases reverse, non-infectious disease. Numerous clinical trials have proven that following a Keto Diet can reverse type 2 diabetes, obesity, and heart disease, and many more are under way in the areas of cancer, neurologic diseases, and metabolic syndromes. It’s well documented that Keto has also been successfully used to treat childhood epilepsy for decades, and many hospitals and health systems are now establishing ketogenic therapy programs.
Following a Keto plan is not difficult. First, you need to accept a couple facts that are contrary to popular opinion and sadly, conventional wisdom. Carbohydrates are not an essential macro nutrient. Fat and protein are essential. That’s right, we do not need to eat carbohydrates. The small amount of blood glucose required for some vital bodily functions like brain activity, can be converted from dietary protein. Through a process called gluconeogenesis, protein is converted to blood glucose. This also explains why eating too much protein defeats a keto plan. Over eat protein and you will elevate your blood glucose as if you were eating too much carbs. On a true Keto plan you eat moderate amounts of protein. It’s worth mentioning that you do not have to eat meat. Grass fed red meat is great, but not required. There are many sources of animal fat including whole eggs, cold water fish, butter, and whole fat dairy.
Sadly, far too many health providers continue to cling to the second bit of conventional wisdom in desperate need of debunking. Saturated fat and cholesterol are not bad for you. In fact, saturated fat and cholesterol are beneficial anti-inflammatory nutrients. Unfortunately, mainstream medicine continues to propagate 1950’s dogma instead of real science. The myth linking saturated fat and cholesterol to heart disease is a product of bad science, shady business interests, and corrupt politics.
You probably have little interest in taking your body fat down to 6% but like most people, I’ll bet you’d like to shed a few pounds of fat. Most importantly, nobody wants to succumb to non-infectious disease. Unfortunately and statistically, most modern humans will. But you don’t have to follow the herd. Whatever your current age or health might be, it’s never too late to start doing Keto. Keto will stop elevating your blood glucose, stop the inflammation, and improve and maintain good health.
Please check out Keto Score at ketonescore.com for more helpful information. You can calculate your own personal Keto Score as often as you like and ask questions in our Keto Coach Forum. What’s really cool is that the app is FREE. I look forward to seeing you there, and helping you embark on or continue a successful ketogenic lifestyle!
Yours in Fitness and Health,
JD Griffin
Author, Get Fit Lean
Certified Nutrition Coach
Keto Score Founder
Keto popularity is growing fast and with good reason. With hundreds of successful clinical trials of patients, San Francisco based Virta Health is focused on reversing type 2 diabetes. Their prescribed treatment? A well formulated keto diet. Another Bay Area startup, Jump Start MD, markets themselves as a weight loss solution. Their prescribed treatment? You guessed it, Keto.
I advocate Keto for both short term and long term health. You can improve your body composition (lose fat and gain lean muscle) and more importantly, prevent and reverse most non-infectious disease by following a Keto nutrition plan. My new free algorithm, Keto Score, helps you get into and maintain nutritional ketosis. You can calculate your own personal Keto Score, available to anyone, at ketonescore.com
Why is Keto the best solution for fat loss?
Carbohydrates are most people’s primary source of energy. When you fuel yourself with carbs, your body converts dietary carbohydrates into blood glucose (blood sugar.) Elevated blood glucose in turn triggers an insulin flood. The hormone insulin, like all hormones, is a messenger, and specifically, insulin is a messenger that instructs your body to store excess blood glucose as fat. You don’t get fat from eating fat. You get fat from overeating carbohydrates. Unlike carbohydrates, our bodies have no biological mechanism for converting dietary fat to stored fat. When following a Keto plan you fuel yourself with fat. Both stored fat and dietary fat can be converted to blood ketones, and those blood ketones, as opposed to blood glucose, become your body’s primary fuel source. There is no better diet for losing fat than eating fat.
I’m a fat loss expert. Many times over the years as a men’s physique competitor, I’ve taken my body fat down to 6%. I “leaned out”, as the bodybuilding community calls it. When I was fueling myself with carbs, leaning out was very difficult. It felt like I was starving because the blood sugar spikes and inevitable blood sugar crashes put me on a roller coaster of energy highs and lows. I was always hungry. I craved my next carb fix so I could temporarily bounce back from the blood sugar crashes. Leaning out on keto is effortless by comparison. Why?
When doing Keto, most of your calories come from fat so instead of experiencing blood sugar spikes and constant hunger, you have a steady level of energy throughout the day. Because keto provides a sustained even energy level, many professional athletes, including endurance athletes, are adopting keto as their primary nutrition plan.
There’s even more benefits than fat loss and steady energy levels. Keto has also been shown to improve mental focus, cognitive function, and mental clarity. Ketones easily cross the blood/brain barrier and are a preferred fuel by the mitochondria (power plants) of brain cells. So Instead of feeling distracted and irritable most of the day because of carb/sugar crashes, I feel mentally sharp and focused.
Why is Keto best for long term health? As mentioned above, eating too many carbs elevates your blood glucose which in turn floods your blood stream with insulin. Elevated blood glucose and insulin spikes are inflammatory. Inflammation is the root cause of most non-infectious diseases including type 2 diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and cognitive disorders like Alzheimer’s, dementia, and Parkinson’s. Many forms of cancer are thought to be caused or exacerbated by inflammation. Recent research suggests that inflammation and epilepsy are tightly linked, and potentially even causative.
Following Keto, you’ll eliminate the inflammation caused by elevated blood glucose and insulin. Doing Keto you can prevent, and in many cases reverse, non-infectious disease. Numerous clinical trials have proven that following a Keto Diet can reverse type 2 diabetes, obesity, and heart disease, and many more are under way in the areas of cancer, neurologic diseases, and metabolic syndromes. It’s well documented that Keto has also been successfully used to treat childhood epilepsy for decades, and many hospitals and health systems are now establishing ketogenic therapy programs.
Following a Keto plan is not difficult. First, you need to accept a couple facts that are contrary to popular opinion and sadly, conventional wisdom. Carbohydrates are not an essential macro nutrient. Fat and protein are essential. That’s right, we do not need to eat carbohydrates. The small amount of blood glucose required for some vital bodily functions like brain activity, can be converted from dietary protein. Through a process called gluconeogenesis, protein is converted to blood glucose. This also explains why eating too much protein defeats a keto plan. Over eat protein and you will elevate your blood glucose as if you were eating too much carbs. On a true Keto plan you eat moderate amounts of protein. It’s worth mentioning that you do not have to eat meat. Grass fed red meat is great, but not required. There are many sources of animal fat including whole eggs, cold water fish, butter, and whole fat dairy.
Sadly, far too many health providers continue to cling to the second bit of conventional wisdom in desperate need of debunking. Saturated fat and cholesterol are not bad for you. In fact, saturated fat and cholesterol are beneficial anti-inflammatory nutrients. Unfortunately, mainstream medicine continues to propagate 1950’s dogma instead of real science. The myth linking saturated fat and cholesterol to heart disease is a product of bad science, shady business interests, and corrupt politics.
You probably have little interest in taking your body fat down to 6% but like most people, I’ll bet you’d like to shed a few pounds of fat. Most importantly, nobody wants to succumb to non-infectious disease. Unfortunately and statistically, most modern humans will. But you don’t have to follow the herd. Whatever your current age or health might be, it’s never too late to start doing Keto. Keto will stop elevating your blood glucose, stop the inflammation, and improve and maintain good health.
Please check out Keto Score at ketonescore.com for more helpful information. You can calculate your own personal Keto Score as often as you like and ask questions in our Keto Coach Forum. What’s really cool is that the app is FREE. I look forward to seeing you there, and helping you embark on or continue a successful ketogenic lifestyle!
Yours in Fitness and Health,
JD Griffin
Author, Get Fit Lean
Certified Nutrition Coach
Keto Score Founder
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