Implement Coconut Oil Into Your Diet
We already talked about how coconut butter can be a healthy source of good fats, and so too can coconut oil. The fats within it, or medium-chain triglycerides, go straight to our liver. They then become ketones or can be sourced for energy.
There are different types of medium-chain triglycerides, and coconut oil has up to four kinds. One source that comprises half of all medium-chain triglycerides in coconut oil is lauric acid. Thats quite important, it turns out. Theres a potential for your body to maintain ketosis by having higher lauric acid levels since it metabolizes slower.
Do be aware that too much coconut oil can lead to diarrhea and stomach cramps, so dont go all in immediately. Instead, ingest a teaspoon daily and then consume no more than three tablespoons every day once your body adjusts.
How To Stay In Ketosis
This article was medically reviewed by Sarah Gehrke, RN, MS. Sarah Gehrke is a Registered Nurse and Licensed Massage Therapist in Texas. Sarah has over 10 years of experience teaching and practicing phlebotomy and intravenous therapy using physical, psychological, and emotional support. She received her Massage Therapist License from the Amarillo Massage Therapy Institute in 2008 and a M.S. in Nursing from the University of Phoenix in 2013.There are 8 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been viewed 48,466 times.
Ketosis is the process in which, due to a lack of carbohydrate intake, your body breaks down previously stored fat to meet your energy needs.XTrustworthy SourcePubMed CentralJournal archive from the U.S. National Institutes of HealthGo to source Though there can be dangers involved with ketosis, including dehydration and other side effects, many people look to limiting carb intake as a way of losing weight and improving metabolic function. Safely staying in ketosis, though, involves much more than just limiting carbohydrate intake. Ultimately, by exercising and eating right, fasting, and consulting professionals to make sure you stay healthy, youll be more equipped to safely stay in ketosis.
I Learned To Be Very Creative In The Kitchen
It’s almost impossible to eat at a restaurant and keep your keto status. Luckily, I consider myself an adventurous cook, frequently cooked at home before the diet, and am willing to try new recipes.
Write the recipes down, use a meal-tracking app like MyFitnessPal to record the ingredients, and you can figure out if a recipe can work for you. It takes a bit more work than an average meal plan, but it’s worth it.
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Autophagy: A Nobel Prize Winning Lifestyle Hack
In 2016, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Yoshinori Ohsumi for discovering some of the mechanisms of autophagy the process by which the cell devours itself. Superficially, this sounds like a terrible thing for our cells to do until you consider what is really taking place.
When our cells undergo the process of autophagy, non-essential parts like damaged proteins are recycled and invading microorganisms and toxic compounds are removed. This means that autophagy plays an important role in stopping the aging process, reversing disease, and preventing cancer, but it doesnt happen all the time.
Fasting, protein restriction, and carbohydrate restriction are the three main ways that can initiate different autophagic processes all of which are not the same. This is part of the reason why a ketogenic diet has so many positive effects, and it also shows you why intermittent fasting is a way to improve your diet even more.
Though this is reason enough to fast more, autophagy isnt the only upside of intermittent fasting. In fact, the combination of keto and fasting can provide us with a wider array of benefits.
Track Your Carbs To Stay In Ketosis
Carb intake should be kept very low so your body utilizes its natural fat-burning capabilities. You wont ever reach ketosis if you arent diligent about finding the carbohydrate count that is just right for your body.
The best way to determine the exact net carb count thats right for you is by figuring out your total daily calorie intake. Again, you can use the keto macro calculator for this.
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What Is Water Fast
A water fast is a type of diet that involves drinking only fluids, such as pure water or broth. A person can do it for short periods to lose weight quickly while getting rid of toxins in the body and putting less stress on organs like the liver which has been taking care of processing food all these years.
The first few days are usually fine you will experience hunger pains. But this is temporary because ketosis becomes established after five days without eating anything.
As mentioned earlier, breaking the fasting process should be done gradually by starting with some raw organic vegetables before adding leafy greens, salads, and eventually other foods back into your diet.
How Long Does It Take To Go Into Ketosis When Fasting
The length of time it takes for fasting to induce ketosis varies between people. It depends on many factors, including how often you eat, your activity level, and the number of carbs you consume. The beginning of intermittent fasting ketosis can start after 12 hours for some people. By 24-48 hours, the body is reaping the full benefits of ketosis .
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Fasting For Short Periods
can help a person reach a state of ketosis.
In some controlled cases, a doctor may recommend fasting periods of , but most people do not need to fast this long to reach ketosis.
IF manage obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, and it may also protect against certain cancers and neurological disorders.
However, confirming these benefits and IFs long-term safety and efficacy requires more research.
Anyone interested in trying IF should speak with a doctor first, as it is not advisable for everyone.
Keep Up Your Proteins
Once youre eating solid foods again after your water fast , you want to manage your proteins carefully. Your body should get proteins to the point where your muscle mass doesnt deplete even when youre not consuming many carbs.
You also need enough that your liver gets amino acids to trigger gluconeogenesis. With this, your body produces fresh glucose stores. You must have this source of glucose since not every organ relies on ketones for energy.
Eating too few proteins could harm your health, even if it does make it easier to get back into a state of ketosis. Do your body a favor then and incorporate proteins into your diet, just not too many.
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So Should You Get Into Ketosis Fast
As mentioned above, you can use these methods sparingly and carefully, and for the short term.
Keto should be a long term focus on your overall health which means avoiding the things that knock you out of ketosis to begin with.
Set some goals, remember your WHY of doing Keto and stay strong nothing tastes as good as healthy feels
When you do need that quick boost, you can use one or all of these 3 methods to get your healthy lifestyle back on track.
Its important to observe and be mindful about why you slipped up and know what your triggers are, so you can design your life around healthy choices and be the best you can be!
Always Measure Ketones With A Blood Ketone Meter
We recommend the Precision Xtra Blood Glucose and Ketone Monitoring System, but there are certainly other options you can use as well. Whatever meter you choose, youll want to make sure your meter has the capability to measure blood ketones AND blood glucose. Because even though blood glucose fluctuates throughout the day and is generally less reliable as a measure of ketosis, its still an important measurement when paired with your blood ketone reading.
We recommend the Precision Xtra to measure Blood Glucose and Ketones.
The pairing of blood ketone and blood glucose values will give you a snapshot of your metabolic state. And now that we know how to measure ketosis, we can move on to the real work – getting into ketosis in 24 hours.
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Getting Into Ketosis: How Long
To find ketones in your blood, breath, or urine, you may only need a day or two of keto dieting or intermittent fasting. How long to get into ketosis can vary from person to person, and full-on keto-adaptation can take two weeks or more.
To support ketosis, try intermittent fasting, MCT oil, and exogenous ketones. And remember the two primary keto commandments:
Follow these tips, and youll be in ketosis before you know it.
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Keep A Track Of Your Keto Diet:
This is when you need to think about how to stay in ketosis after water fast because you will have to watch out for the carbs and minimize their quantity. Only good fats are recommended to you so that you dont kick yourself out of the ketogenic diet.
Keep track of the keto diet as it was before the water fast.
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Acetone And The Breath Test
Acetone is found in your breath, and studies have confirmed testing acetone breath levels is a reliable way to monitor ketosis in people following ketogenic diets .
The Ketonix meter measures acetone in your breath. After breathing into the meter, a color flashes to indicate whether youre in ketosis and how high your levels are.
Muscle Loss Prevention And Autophagy
Before the Nobel Prize was awarded to Yoshinori Ohsumi, other researchers were making groundbreaking discoveries about autophagy. In 2009, an article was published in Cell Metabolism entitled Autophagy Is Required to Maintain Muscle Mass. In this article, researchers described how deactivating an important autophagy gene resulted in a profound loss in muscle mass and strength.
This happened because autophagy is necessary to clean up damaged proteins and mitochondria in muscle cells. If autophagy is never activated then the proteins and mitochondria will remain damaged and the muscle cells will begin to die, which causes a loss in muscle and strength.
This seems counter-intuitive because we assume that the nutrients we eat will repair the damage, but it makes sense when you think about it another way.
If you want to refurbish a room, it is best to clean the room and remove the old furniture before you put the new furniture in. The same thought process applies to your cells. We must use intermittent fasting to let autophagy clean the room of the cell before we put in new furniture. If we dont, our cells can become cancerous.
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How Long Does It Take To Get Into Ketosis
You cant just snap your fingers and magically get into ketosisit takes a bit of time. It is important to realize that lifestyle factors, aspects of your own body and metabolism, and even sleep and stress could influence how quickly you can get into ketosis.
In general, there are three primary ways to get your body into a ketogenic state: a ketogenic diet, exercise, and fasting.
Ways To Get Into Ketosis Fast And Speed Up Ketosis
Ok here they are, the 3 ways that I use to get into Ketosis FAST and start feeling all those awesome benefits again!
These tips also work to speed up ketosis.
It can be helpful to speed up ketosis if youve been stalled for a while or want a reboot.
To speed up ketosis the process is the same, as what youre really doing is going deeper into ketosis.
If youve been stalled for a while or wondering why Keto has stopped working for you, my article here might help you further.
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A Sample Menu For Keto And Intermittent Fasting
If youve gotten the green light from your healthcare team and want to try this combined approach, you might be wondering what youll eat . Your instincts are right: This diet is all about the timing.
Below, heres what Shemek says three days on the plan might look like when done with time-restricted eating in a 16-hour fast, 8-hour feed pattern. This approach isnt the only way to do IF there are many ways to fast. For example, you can also do a 12- or 14-hour daily fast.
In this plan, youll see that snacks are optional. Also keep in mind that your carb, protein, and fat needs to stay in ketosis depend on your individual health. Working with a registered dietitian familiar with keto-IF can help you determine those ratios.
The Bottom Line On Combining The Keto Diet With Intermittent Fasting
The keto diet is a restrictive high-fat diet, and intermittent fasting restricts the number of hours you will be eating. There is a lack of research on each diet alone, along with this combined plan, so its unclear exactly what youre getting into if you try them individually or together.
If you decide to give the diets a go, know that they are extremely restrictive, so it may be difficult to stick with the low carb count and confined eating window.
Before deciding to follow keto and IF together, be sure to consult your healthcare team. Your provider can help you determine whether this combined diet plan is a good fit for you, and then they can help you adjust any meds youre on to help increase your chances for success in the safest way possible.
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What Is Water Fasting And Ketosis
Water fasting is a technique to help the body enter more quickly into ketosis, even faster than the low-carb technique.
When water is upheld, excessive body fat remains the only energy source that remains to break. When ketones break, the body sheds weight faster.
During this, for 12 hours, you keep the water fast you try to keep yourself hydrated by consuming only water-like substances.
During these 12 hours, when starving on melted carbs, the brain starts burning fat and hence helps the body with perfect ketosis.
But, during this time, you need to be very sure that you dont dehydrate your body and kick yourself out of ketosis or play with your health.
So, How to Stay in Ketosis After Water Fast? Check the line coming ahead:
Limit Your Carb Intake
On the keto diet, you will need to drastically decrease your carbohydrate intake. On keto, roughly 5-10% of your daily calories will come from carbs. This comes out to about 30-50 grams of carbs per day, a fraction that you would see in a standard American diet.
On keto, the majority of these carbs will come from vitamin-rich, keto-friendly foods including leafy green vegetables and low-sugar fruits. Be sure to check out the full list of foods to eat on a ketogenic diet.
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Eating Only 20 Grams Of Carbs A Day Is Hard
The keto diet plan is a high-fat and low-carb diet. I would actually describe it as extremely low-carb-you’re allowed to eat just 20 grams in a day. Some people on keto follow a net-carb plan and you’re allowed to eat more carbs in a day. For my 30-day diet and for the sake of simplicity, I stuck with total carbs.
As a rule, I aimed for 20 grams each day-2 at breakfast, 5 at lunch, 3 for snacks and 10 for dinner. I found that if I aimed for 20, I’d land under 30. That was successful enough for me.
The key to hitting my number was to plan, plan, plan. I worked out all three meals, down to the condiments, plus snacks on the weekends. If I knew what I was having and what I was “allowed” to have while staying under my carb goal, I found managing the infrequent cravings and hunger pangs easier. I can’t stress enough the importance of planning for a keto diet.
Can Reduce Metabolic Syndrome Risk Factors
Metabolic syndrome is a group of disorders that could contribute to an early death. The group includes decreased good cholesterol, elevated triglycerides, higher fasting blood sugar, boosted blood pressure, and obesity in the abdominal area.
Yet a 2003 study from the journal Metabolic Syndrome and Related Disorders noted how cutting carbs can reduce metabolic syndrome.
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How To Test Ketone Levels
To determine if you’re successful , youll need to measure blood ketone and glucose values.If you do a quick search on how to measure ketones, youll find 2 options: blood ketone meters and urine sticks. While it may seem tempting to just pee on a stick, we highly discourage the use of a urine stick.First off, urine sticks do NOT measure circulating ketones – they only measure the ketones that are leaving your body. Furthermore, if your goal is to reach ketosis in 24 hours, a ketone urine stick will NOT tell you if youve achieved your goal. Ketones will show up in your blood long before they show up in your urine. So for these reasons and more
Drink Water And Other Fluids
You must drink enough fluids during the refeeding period, but dont overdo it. Your stomach will shrink during fasting, and drinking too much in the beginning, can cause gastric problems. Therefore, it is good to start with smaller amounts and slowly increase your intake to about 2-3 liters of water per day.
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