Combining keto and intermittent fasting has many benefits
Keto and intermittent fasting have become the latest popular approaches to weight loss. Intermittent fasting has proven its worth, along with the keto meal plan. People have been wondering why, and how, to combine the principles of the ketogenic diet with practicing intermittent fasting, and whether it’s safe. This guide will answer those questions.
What is the Keto Diet?
The ketogenic diet implements meals that are very low in carbohydrates and high in fats. Examples of ketogenic foods include many types of meat, fish, eggs and certain nuts. By following this diet, your body reaches a state of nutritional ketosis. When your body reaches this stage, the lack of glucose in your bloodstream forces your body to burn stored fats to use as a source of energy.
Using a macro calculator helps individuals know the ideal ratio and limits for proteins, net carbs, and fat intake to achieve their desired weight loss.
Most people implement the keto diet to lose weight, but there are other health benefits. Increased energy levels, blood sugar level balance, mental clarity, and improved inflammatory response are some of the benefits of following the keto diet.
What is Intermittent Fasting?
It’s amazing how skipping a few meals can positively impact weight loss. Of course, there’s more to intermittent fasting than that.
Intermittent fasting is a relatively new technique that’s often used as a supplement to existing diets. It involves adhering to an eating cycle where you alternate patterns of eating and fasting. So, instead of telling you what to eat, intermittent fasting tells you when to eat.
For example, you can fast for 16 hours a day and eat for eight hours a day, which is also known as the 16:8 ratio. While this may seem daunting, you can incorporate the time you sleep as the time you fast. So, if you eat your first meal of the day at noon and eat your last meal of the day before 8 p.m., you would be right on track.
There’s also the 5:2 ratio, which involves eating for five days a week and fasting for two days a week. You can also fast every other day, with a fasting day limiting your calorie intake to 500 calories.
The intermittent fasting phenomenon has been proven to improve metabolic health, promote weight loss, and protect the body from diseases.
Benefits of Keto and Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting and the keto diet represent different dieting trends, but when practiced together they form a powerful duo. They work in tandem to boost weight loss, increase energy levels, and decrease diet plateaus.
When keto dieters reach a consistent state of ketosis, low insulin and blood glucose levels are the result. The body activates its fat-burning mode and ramps up ketone production, reducing a person’s appetite because of high ketone levels.
It’s not hard to integrate intermittent fasting into any way of eating. However, an individual who dives into intermittent fasting on a high-carb diet can feel irritable, weak and shaky. Long periods of time without food on a high-carb diet can lead to extreme drops in blood glucose levels, increasing hunger hormones and the feeling of hangry. It can be difficult to maintain a consistent intermittent fasting routine under these circumstances.
When you combine the keto diet with a regular intermittent fasting schedule, you’re experiencing the benefits of both. You burn an optimal level of fat while increasing your energy levels. Plus, you don’t struggle with intermittent fasting as you would on a high-carb diet.
The combination of the two trends increases ketone levels, keeps insulin levels low, and burns fat while reducing your caloric intake.
Is Keto and Intermittent Fasting Safe?
It’s 100% safe to incorporate both methods into your weight loss plan. Don’t see it as needing to maintain two diets; view it as each diet complementing each other.
There are a few tips you should follow before combining keto and intermittent fasting. For starters, make sure you’re eating enough food. Intermittent fasting encourages a caloric deficit to burn body fat, but it’s also important that you’re still eating healthy to avoid malnourishment.
You should also track your ketone levels so that you don’t overconsume carbs. You can accidentally kick yourself out of ketosis and ruin the benefits of the keto-intermittent fasting combination.
Keto and Intermittent Fasting Results
The combination of these two diets can have incredible results. They burn an insane amount of calories and suppress hunger; reduce cholesterol, promote mental clarity, increase energy levels, prevent cancer (in theory), and even slow the aging process; they’ve also been known to assist patients with diabetes to eliminate their medications.
The Bottom Line
Implementing keto and intermittent fasting has many benefits. The two diets go hand-in-hand and you won’t beat yourself up trying to incorporate them. Instead, you will find that both diets complement each other quite nicely. By eliminating high levels of body fat and blood sugar, you can achieve amazing health benefits.