Intermittent Fasting With Ketosis 10 Benefits Of Going Keto
Intermittent Fasting | Health Benefits | Fasting and Ketosis | Weight Loss | Keto | Mental Health | Combining Fasting With Keto | | FAQ | Studies
Both intermittent fasting and the ketogenic diet have gotten a lot of attention lately.
Since Yoshinori Ohsumi was awarded the Nobel Prize for discovering autophagy a primary health benefit of fasting in 2016, intermittent fasting started to become socially acceptable .
Therefore, more and more people are discovering that intermittent fasting works with ketosis and that you can comfortably combine it with keto.
From being healthy to simplifying everyday life, regular intermittent fasting has many benefits. Furthermore, these benefits can be even more significant if you combine them with a ketogenic diet!
Summary Of What Weve Learned
Peter VanNewhyzen
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Stable Blood Sugar Levels
Stable blood sugar levels are vital to the success of any diet. This is because when glucose levels plummet, it leads to intense hunger, which almost always results in binge eating. Stable blood sugar levels help eliminate headaches, lack of focus, poor memory, and brain fog as well. Interestingly, these are common complaints among those who follow high carbohydrate diets, as opposed to diets that are rich in fat and protein.
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Intermittent Fasting & Keto: The Ultimate Guide
Intermittent Fasting & Keto: The Ultimate Guide
Posted a year ago
Tony ONeill, PT, DPT, MSc, RDN
Scientific Reviewer
After a quick glance at the headlines on most health-related sites, youd no doubt notice that intermittent fasting and the Ketogenic diet are two of the most popular nutrition trends around right now.
Both are commonly used by health-conscious consumers looking to manage their weight and support their general wellbeing, and they each have a solid body of research behind them as standalone dietary interventions.
Nevertheless, you may be wondering whether it’s effective to practice both at the same time…
In this article, we take a deep dive into all things IF and Keto, exploring how they work, their potential benefits, and how to successfully combine the two.
Does Fasting Allow You To Enter Ketosis Faster
Youre certainly interested in ketosis, as the keto diet seems like it can be largely advantageous for your health. How long will it take you to enter ketosis if youre adhering to a low-carb diet?
It can be a while, anywhere from two to seven days depending on what youre eating. A week can be a long time to go without carbs, but fortunately, you can accelerate the amount of time it takes to enter a ketogenic state.
Here are some methods you can use:
What about if you go on an intermittent fast while following the keto diet? Is it possible to speed up the amount of time it takes you to enter ketosis that way?
Yes, it is. Intermittent fasting allows you to consume some food depending on the type of fast youre on. With alternate-day fasts, you spend 24 hours fasting then the next 24 hours eating, in this case, abiding by the keto diet.
On the 16:8 fast or some variation thereof, you spend 16 hours fasting and another eight hours eating. The 5:2 diet requires you to cut your calories to no more than 600 calories a day twice a week. Then youd spend the other five days eating more regularly.
You dont necessarily have to dedicate yourself to a particularly long fast to speed up ketosis. Short-term fasting for a few hours at a time, even between meals, can put you into a state of ketosis faster than eating continuously.
If you find thats not the case for you, then you can fast for periods of 24 to 48 hours, typically with a doctors approval, when on the keto diet.
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Pros And Cons Of Practicing Both Diets Together
Like any diet, combination or independent, there comes pros and cons. These may not be the case for everyone. But, these are the positives and negatives that may occur for most participants.
It is important to cover the pros and cons so that people can be aware if combining ketogenic and intermittent fasting is beneficial or right for them.
| PROS |
| Reduces the risk of heart disease |
With those pros and cons in mind, you may have some more questions. Below are answers to the top most asked questions about combining the keto diet with intermittent fasting:
Ready To Start Your Keto Diet
If youre still unsure about how to eat, what to eat or what to avoid, dont worry youre not alone! There is a little-known diet system called The 28-Day Keto Challenge which will teach you everything you need to know and guide you through your first month. Getting that in check will increase your metabolism and allow you to shed weight and shed it fast.
Women who have followed The 28-Day Keto Challenge reported losing up to 21 pounds and 2-4 inches from their waist in just a matter of 4 weeksthe methods in The 28-Day Keto Challengeare all backed by science.
Check out this video on The 28-Day Keto Challenge now to learn more about how to follow the dietand lose weight and improve your life in 28 days.
Follow the recipes for each day and feel free to mix and match your favorites if you don’t like a certain meal.
Add a couple of snacks to each day, depending on how hungry you feel and how many calories you should be consuming.
If you’re unsure about how much food you should be consuming, read our keto calories guide and calculate how many calories you should be consuming each day based on your weight loss goals.
Each recipe has the number of servings as well as the number of calories so you’ll be able to calculate how much you should be eating each day.
Pick your preferred style of fasting and allocate the meals into it so that it works for you.
For example, if you were using 16/8 fasting
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Difference Between Ketogenic Diet And Intermittent Fasting
Both diets are intended to give your body time to rest and digest, so its not surprising that they have some similarities.
However, there are also differences in their approach. For example, people on a keto diet can consume more than twice the amount of protein as people on an intermittent fasting regimen. The two diets also differ in their recommended carbohydrate intake levels with keto diets advocating for higher levels of carbohydrate intake while intermittent fasting usually advocates for lower levels.
More Abdominal Cavity Fat Loss
We noted before that excess abdominal fat is one symptom of metabolic syndrome. Worse than that, when visceral fat builds up around your abdominal cavity, it can boost your resistance to insulin as well as your rate of inflammation. You also increase your risk of developing type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
In 2008, Nutrition & Metabolism published data that found that low-carb diets can help those with abdominal cavity fat especially, lessening this fat to reduce the above health risk factors.
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The Right Way To Start An Intermittent Fasting Keto Diet
At the Cleveland Clinic, practitioners do not advise people to start both keto and IF at the same time. Its a huge shock to your system to switch from glucose as fuel to ketones, and implementing IF is a significant change, says Kwasnicka. For that reason, people would start with keto. After being on the diet for a couple weeks to months, they might consider IF.
Its also important to choose the correct timing. For their patients, Kwasnicka suggests a 12- to 16-hour fast. For many people, not eating 12 hours a day is a natural habit anyway and doesnt require skipping meals.
To start, consider delaying breakfast to get your body accustomed to going longer stretches without eating, suggests Shemek. When youve adjusted to your new eating pattern, reintroduce breakfast earlier in the day and extend your overnight fasting time, as eating breakfast not only leads to better cognition, but also improved metabolism and insulin sensitivity, according to a study published in August 2018 in the American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology Metabolism. As for the length of time to stay on keto-IF, she recommends doing keto-IF for no more than six months and then transitioning to a more standard low-carb diet.
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Succeeding On Keto Intermittent Fasting
Ive seen the keto diet, intermittent fasting, or some combo work for a lot of people.
But these approaches arent for everyone — theres no one size fits all solution. Some folks just do better with some carbs. Some do better with frequent feedings. Its hard to add muscle if youre aggressively compressing your feeding window.
Im not suggesting you should pound muscle milk every 45 minutes , but maybe 13 or 14 hours of fasting is where you top out. And thats okay.
Anyway, I believe keto and intermittent fasting are worth experimenting with. Use the tips from this article to get started, and let me know how it goes in the comments!
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Leangains Protocol Or The 16/8 Method
With the Leangains version of IF, you eat during an 8-hour window and fast for 16 hours. This method can fudge a little bit in either direction, so 14/10 or 15/9 also works.During your eating window, you can either eat two or three meals. Ideally, youre not snacking for the whole window. This method can be pretty easy to follow just by having an early dinner and a later breakfast. Or, if youre able to skip breakfast, that works too. It’s ok to drink water, black coffee, herbal tea, or even bone broth in some cases during the fasting window.Women should only fast for 14 to 15 hours at a time, due to their more complicated hormonal makeup. While there’s a lot of good research on the efficacy of intermittent fasting, much of it is done with male subjects , so it’s important to take sex into account when planning your diet. This isn’t to say that fasting doesn’t’ work for women, it’s just to say that women have more to consider, especially premenopausal women. There’s preliminary evidence that menopausal and postmenopausal women may find more success with both IF and keto, due to their lower levels of estrogen.
Can Intermittent Fasting Work Without Keto
Intermittent fasting can indeed work without keto. It has been used as an eating style for centuries for weight loss and other benefits.
Following a fasting routine with keto will still allow you to reap its benefits.
The reason being for combining the two diets is to maximise benefits. Also, to reach ketosis quicker which encourages excelled fat burning and use of fat storage.
Many weigh up intermittent fasting vs keto. Both have become extremely popular for weight loss. Some use them for the other health benefits. And, both are very effective.
To put it simply, both of these will work effectively for whatever you wish to try them for. Whether that be weight loss or improving heart health. There is not enough evidence to suggest one is better than the other. It all depends how much work you put into the diet and also on the individual themself.
For most, intermittent fasting may be easier to sustain longer term due it being more of a lifestyle change as opposed to a dietary change. Again, it all depends on the individual.
Like all diets, there are some ups and downs. For this combination diet, they are as follows:
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Types Of Ketogenic Diets
There are four main ways to practice the ketogenic diet: Standard Ketogenic Diet , Targeted Ketogenic Diet , Cyclical Ketogenic Diet , and High-Protein Ketogenic Diet . Each of these focuses on staying in ketosis as much as possible, but the latter two allow for more carbs or protein at certain points.Standard ketogenic diet : a very low-carbohydrate with moderate-protein and high-fat diet. This diet typically contains 70% fat, 20% protein, and only 10% carbohydrates. Its the most common form of the keto diet and also the most studied.Cyclical ketogenic diet : allows for periods of higher-carbohydrate intake between the keto cycles to allow for carb re-feeding. Most commonly, a CKD eater would have five ketogenic days followed by two high-carbohydrate days as one cycle. This way of eating may increase long-term compliance, but more studies need to be done to better understand it.Targeted ketogenic diet : allows for additional carbohydrates before an intense workout. Right before strength or endurance training, you would select a very easily digestible carbohydrate to boose glycogen production, theoretically to improve performance .High-protein ketogenic diet : includes more protein than SDK, usually used if a dieter experiences a loss of energy or muscle mass. The ratio for this version of keto is around 60% fat, 35% protein, and 5% carbohydrates. This way of practicing keto is closer to the Atkins diet, which allows for more protein than SDK.
What Is Intermittent Fasting
Many people assume that fasting is starvation. That assumption is incorrect. Starvation is an involuntary uncontrolled period without food. Whereas fasting is voluntary and controlled. Fasting, especially intermittent fasting, is for health, religious and spiritual reasons.
Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern method with cycled mealtimes. The method is often shortened to IF. It does not dictate which foods to eat and avoid. Instead, it gives you time periods of eating and not eating. The technique provides meal time cycles.
Understanding how to intermittent fast is essential so that a person does not over fast. Lack of knowledge can be damaging to the body and the mind.
The fasting technique is often used to aid weight loss. The food cycles allow your body to use and burn fat quicker. This helps speed up the process of weight loss and improves body fat mass and BMI. Not only does it help with weight management, IF offers many more health benefits. Fasting can reduce the risk of suffering heart conditions. It can also improve brain function and lifespan. It can also slow the progression of medical conditions such as diabetes, cancer and aging.
Many people who contemplate fasting worry that it can cause health risks. Many worry that the cons may outweigh the pros. In fact, intermittent fasting offers more health benefits than it does risks.
Now, you may wondering exactly how to combine the two diets:
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/5are Two Diets Better Than One
There are in fact good reasons why some suggest that following Keto and IF together, or simply following a low-carb Intermittent Fasting pattern can speed up weight loss. Practising Intermittent Fasting, i.e., restricting the eating window wherein you can actively consume carbs may push the body into achieving ketosis faster, which not only is crucial for fat loss but also achieve health goals. What it can also do is speed up your metabolism, and make weight management more efficient.
Experts who recommend the diet also say that following Keto and Intermittent Fasting may not actually be difficult, since it is relatively easier to pair Intermittent Fasting with other diets. So, following the two diets would mean adhering to a ketogenic lifestyle and eating within a sample eating window, on a regular basis.
Intermittent Fasting Keto Bodybuilding: Gain Muscle Workouts
Always remember to warm up before every workout. Warming up revs up your cardiovascular system by raising your body temperature and increasing blood flow to your muscles. They may also help reduce muscle soreness and lessen your risk of injury .
Here are some great examples of the best basic workouts to help you gain muscle on a keto diet while intermittent fasting .
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