Keto Diet

Those who are overweight and finally decide to do something about it, mostly want to lose weight now!  Remember that weight gain is a long term process. You did now put on the pounds overnight.

It has been an accumulation of days and weeks and months and years of improper eating. Along with that is the guilt which tends to make people eat more to try to allay those bad feelings. S

So remember, you are not going to lose weight overnight and for some it will take maybe several weeks before you start to see the needle budge on the scale.

Now, if you want to get into ketosis quickly there are some things you can do and I’m not going to say they are easy or comfortable but they will definitely kick off the fat burning process..

The first one is doing something called intermittent fasting, also known as IF. This means on a daily basis you eat within an 6-8 hour window. It is recommended that you skip breakfast because this appears to be the easiest thing to do for most people.

So let’s say your last meal ends at 7 or 7:30 PM. You eat nothing until the next day around noon or so. I do this myself and I usually don’t eat lunch till around 1:30. It takes a while to get used to this way of eating but once you do the hunger pangs that you usually have in the morning will just go away. Your body gets used to it. Many keto dieters have had tremendous success using this technique.

Another one is eating zero carbs for a few days. This means staying away from all fruits and all starches. You can have salads and steamed veggies, because these are high in fiber and fiber is a real important component to not only helping you lose weight but keeping you from getting too hungry.

Some try doing this without any veggies whatsoever and you could do this for a few days and would be almost equivalent to a fast except you are eating fat and protein.

If you try this strategy make sure you are drinking enough water and I would do some research on this before attempting it. This is a pretty drastic way of getting into ketosis but it does work. But use this with caution. You are responsible for your own health.

I want to tell you about what I think is the real secret to keto success. One that I think a lot of dieters don’t take into consideration.

People might want to do keto because:

• They want to get into the clothes they love, or
• They are tired of feeling uncomfortable, or
• They want to look their best and feel good and confident again.

Those are all good reasons.

But really, in my view, the best real reasons and the ones you really want to focus on are these:

• I want to do keto not for just a slimmer body, but because I want to get really healthy.
• I want to be here for my friends and family.
• I want to feel great and full of energy.
• I want to have a long life where I can be and stay active and healthy even into my advanced age.
• And how bout this one: “I want to be an example to my family that anyone can achieve health and happiness provided they have the commitment to themselves and to their health.”

So, get out a sheet of paper, or take out your notebook and write down your own reasons for doing keto. Make copies of that and put it all around your house, in your purse, on your desk.

The real secret of success is staying committed to your new commitment to health.

And here is another secret: find an accountability partner. This is someone who is either doing the diet with you or someone who cares about you enough to help keep you on track.

This is someone who you can be answerable too, not condemn you if you get off track, but someone who can encourage you.

If you are doing it with one or two other people you can encourage each other to stay on the diet and achieve the results you are dreaming of and committed to.

You can do it. You deserve it. It is your time.

Some folks think “Gosh, keto can be expensive. You gotta buy grass-fed butter, coconut oil, organic food… etc.”

But actually you don’t. You can use regular butter, you don’t have to get coconut oil, although it is recommended since this oil can really help you burn fat.

The cheapest place to get coconut oil I’ve found is at Costco. You can buy a five gallon bucket of it online which is really cheap but… that’s a LOT of coconut oil.

You don’t have to get organic food. In fact, if you do it right the keto diet can be one of least expensive ways of eating you can do. Why? Because you are spending a lot less on junk food and food that is just not good for you.

And here is another little tip that will not only help you reach your weight loss goals a lot quicker but will also help you save quite a bit of money too.

That tip is…

Skip breakfast. Yep, stop eating breakfast. We’ve been lead to believe that we can’t function in our day without eating a really good breakfast. Nothing could be further from the truth… really.

Do you know that this whole thing of eating three meals a day is a recent invention starting with the industrial revolution?

Did you know that this whole thing of eating cereal for breakfast was invented by Kellogg’s? The reason he invented this eating of dry cereal is so strange and bizarre that I won’t to into it here. If you want to find out the weird origins of breakfast cereal just Google it. You will be shocked.

I normally do not eat breakfast and have done this for several years now. If someone invites me out to breakfast I will go and enjoy myself.

I love breakfast but when I do have it I have it for lunch, which I don’t eat till around 1:30 or so. By not eating breakfast not only do you save money but it is part of IF or intermittent fasting which can be a really important and healthful component of the keto diet.

By doing this many people have realized dramatic weight loss results just by not eating breakfast. It will take a while to form this habit, but eventually you won’t feel hungry in the mornings.

I have my bulletproof coffee with butter and coconut oil and I am good till the afternoon. Try it.

You can learn to shop really smart and save a ton of money doing keto.

Really? Only one calorie and tasty? Well, how can that be? Easy. Here it is.

You take a glass of water and squirt some lemon juice in it! That is it. Now you don’t wanna put too much lemon juice in it, because it is acidic and if it’s too strong it’s not good for your tooth enamel.

Now what does this do? For one thing you need to be drinking a lot of water when you are doing keto. That is a really important component of the diet.

In fact, you really can’t lose weight unless you are properly hydrated. We should all be drinking a lot more water than we do because most of us are chronically dehydrated.

But more water is especially important when doing keto since it will help you to lose weight and flush out your system.

The lemon juice recharges your immune system. It helps to detox the blood and the kidneys, and it assists in removing garbage from your cells.

You need to be getting at least 8 ounces or two quarts of water a day, and more if possible. That little squirt of lemon juice will make the water just taste a lot better.

Because you know, drinking plain old water can get boring. This lemon water drink can be a powerful keto tonic for you.

You could also try some of those fizzy flavored water drinks that have no sweetener in it at all.

Of course water out of the tap is a lot cheaper, but adding the fizzy drinks just might give that extra variety you need to make things interesting.

Also, you could add slices of cucumber and some mint as well to kick it up a notch!

Vegetables are all important on the keto diet. In fact, doing keto without veggies would be difficult since you need the fiber and the nutrients to help in the weight loss process.

There are some veggies that are recommended you stay away from namely potatoes and sweet potatoes. Does this mean you can NEVER eat them? No. But it is highly recommended that you limit or even eliminate them when you are first starting keto.

Eating them can wreak havoc on your progress and, here’s the kicker, can even make you hungrier, which is what you don’t want.

So one of the best ways to get your veggies in is to blend them. Yep, use your blender to pulverize them so they are easier to eat and drink and you can get tons of nutrition and weight loss wonder in a tall glass.

There are tons of keto smoothie recipes online so you will never be at a loss as to what to make.

You could throw in some protein powder, too. Just make sure you read the label to make sure it’s not high in sugar or carbs. Very important.

You can also add things like chia seeds, flax seed, flax seed oil, a raw egg or two (yes, raw eggs are good for you), hemp seed hearts (these are really tasty and full of protein and nutrients).

I also like to add in spices like cinnamon, ginger, turmeric. Be sure to add a little pink Himalayan salt to round out the flavor, and get some essential minerals you need. And add a little stevia or monk fruit sweetener to it too to make it really yummy.

Another great way to get your veggies in is to steam them. But I like to steam them just enough to where they still have their crunch. I think this is a lot more nutritious to steaming them to where they are just like limp biscuits. It kinda ruins the flavor too. Put a little butter and coconut oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and you are good to go.

So, it’s important to get your veggies in daily.

One of the hardest things to do when confronted with a challenge, a long term challenge, is how do we maintain the motivation that had us want to start the challenge in the first place?

Any long term challenge takes commitment and discipline. How do we keep that commitment up in the face of disappointment or drudgery or lack of speed?

We first of all have to connect with the initial reason why we wanted to do this challenge in the first place. In the area of diet staying connected to the initial reason is all important.

When dieting we can get frustrated. Things aren’t happening as quickly as we wanted, and maybe we lost a bunch of weight at first and then we are in a stall.

Or maybe at the end of the day we may be tired and overworked and we just don’t have the will power to follow through on our dieting commitment. And we just want to eat comfort food, and that comfort food is usually the starch that we just should not be eating. And is probably the reason we put on all that weight in the first place.

So what to do?

You need to really get square on your big whys. You gotta connect with the overriding reasons you want to lose weight and get healthy.

So, do this. Pull out a piece of paper and write down at least five points of why you want to lose weight. For example: I want to get really healthy. I want to be around for my family. I want to feel confident in my appearance. I want to be able to look great again in clothes. I want to feel great and be full of energy.

Then write out the negative side like: I don’t want to take any medications. I don’t want people to laugh at me and make fun of me. I don’t want to feel bad about myself or embarrassed. I’m tired of feeling tired and what to feel great again.

Write out as many of these as you can. Then make a copy and keep one in your pocket or purse, put another one on your fridge or your bedside table. These will come in handy when you are feeling down or discouraged.

This helps. Believe me. You have to stay conscious when you are taking on something this important.

You can do it!

For decades we were told that one of best most healthy foods was bad for us. All kinds of things were written that spelled out the dangers of eating this food: it would give us high cholesterol, give us cancer and heart disease, shorten our lives and, worst of all, make us fat, fat, fat.

And what food is that my friend, the one that was supposed to be evil in a wrapper, evil in the dairy case? That food is butter. Yes butter. Perhaps you have not gotten the news because there are still a lot of doctors and media people who still tell you that butter is a horrendous thing to eat.

Well, people have been eating butter, real butter for centuries and it’s only been till the last 60 years or so that humanity is experiencing the terrible epidemic of obesity and out of control weight gain. But many times ancient wisdom is a lot smarter than what modern society gives it credit for.

The fact is that now most scientists, doctors, nutritionists on the cutting edge all agree that butter is good for you. But butter has been vilified for so long that it has taken a while for that knowledge that ancient knowledge to seep back into the cultural consciousness.

When we told that butter was going to cause all these terrible health problems and we were encouraged to eat margarine, that that would help heal all the ills that butter supposedly had been creating.

But, it turns out that margarine, made with hydrogenated oil, a highly processed unnatural substance, is one of the causes of inflammation, heart disease and a host of other ills. So what we were told was healthy was actually killing us.

Why is butter so good for us? First of all it’s an all natural product. Anyone can make butter from cream within a few minutes. Butter has wonderful vitamins and minerals. And yes it is saturated fat and it does have cholesterol, which has been discovered is actually good for you.

Your body needs saturated fat, and it needs cholesterol. In fact, the fat that is already in your body is saturated and without cholesterol your body and brain could not perform many of important functions necessary for good health.

Do you know what would happen if you removed all the cholesterol from your body? You would instantly die. That is how important it is.

Butter is a very important component of the ketogenic diet since it provides you with the fat you need to switch on the fat burning signal in your body.

Imagine that eating fat to burn fat. What a concept! Also, the fat that you’ll eat on keto not only is important and necessary for many of your body’s healthy functions but it also keeps you from getting hungry.

So it helps to fill the void left by the cutting out of your habitual intake of excessive carbs which caused the weight gain in the first place.

So, yea for butter! It’s about time that it’s returned to the important place in our diet that it had been for centuries.