Is Intermittent Fasting Keto
This way of eating can align with keto, and some research shows that it can help you achieve better fasting results .
Rather than thinking of these approaches as intermittent fasting vs keto, they can work together to ensure you dont feel hungry since youll enjoy healthy and satisfying fats during your eating widow.
Intermittent Fasting & Keto: The Ultimate Guide
a year ago
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.
Intermittent Fasting And Ketosis
One of the best things about fasting is that it can help you get into ketosis faster.
The two are related for a few reasons:
So, is intermittent fasting 16/8 guaranteed to get you into ketosis? No, but it can help get you there if you do it along with a keto diet.
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Benefits Of Intermittent Fasting
There are several advantages to intermittent fastingboth physiological and psychological.
The first benefit may be for those looking to lose weight. While the research isnt definitive on this, many people report that they find it much easier to stick to than traditional diets where youre forced to consume much fewer calories than you need.
Some might find it easier to simply not eat than to chronically maintain calorie intake well below their means. This could be more of a psychological effect than something physical. In addition, IF may make it easier to meal plan . If its one of your fasting days, you dont have to worry about preparing a meal, making time to eat, or worrying about WHAT youre going to eat. When done in the proper context, this could free up some time to be productive in work or hobbies.
Intermittent fasting is in its infancy as far as research goes, and most studies have been conducted in mice.
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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Challenge #: Keto Flu
Most people dont consume enough electrolytes. Period. But on a keto diet or intermittent fasting regimen, the potential for deficiency is magnified.
Thats because a low insulin state makes you excrete more sodium and fluids through urine. If these arent replaced, youll end up dehydrated and electrolyte deficient.
The resulting cluster of symptomsheadaches, fatigue, weakness, cramps, etc.are often called keto flu. Luckily, its an easy fix.
What You Can Do: Drink Electrolyte Water. We recommend taking 5000 mg sodium, 1000 mg potassium, and 200 mg magnesium on top of food sources. Consume these electrolytes with fluids to keep your energy up and prevent keto flu symptomsalso, spread them out! I wouldnt down all that at once unless you enjoy disaster pants.
LMNT Recharge was formulated for exactly this purposeand is ideal for those on low-carb or fasting regimensbut feel free to whip up electrolyte homebrews if you have spare time and are fairly taste-agnostic.
Use Supplements If Necessary
If you do worry about nutrient deficiencies, supplements are a good idea. They will help you attain all the essential nutrients, vitamins and minerals your body needs in order to stay healthy and well functioning. It will also maximise results as your body will not be deprived of any essential components.
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Health Benefits Of 16/8 Intermittent Fasting
Adopting this eating style may seem difficult if youve never tried it before, but once you get used to it, its easy to follow. Plus, the research-backed benefits make it an excellent tool to improve your health.
Intermittent fasting 16/8 has been researched for its ability to improve multiple aspects of your health.
If You Need To Lose Weight A Diet That Focuses Mainly On When You Eat May Be A Good Way To Shed Pounds And Improve Your Cardiovascular Health
Anyone who’s tried different weight-lossdiets is probably familiar with their pitfalls. Low-calorie diets often leave you tired, hungry, and cranky. Low-carb or “keto” diets can cause cravings and constipation. Low-fat diets are also tough to follow and, contrary to popular belief, they do not seem to prevent cardiovascular disease.
Another diet trend, intermittent fasting, takes a different approach. Rather than limiting what you eat, this diet limits when you eat . For some people, that change may be easier to manage, says Dr. Eric Rimm, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Short-term studies suggest that people stick to intermittent fasting diets as well as or better than they do to other diets. And according to a 2019 review article in the journal Nutrients, intermittent fasting promotes weight loss and may reduce risk factors linked to heart disease, including diabetes, high blood pressure, unhealthy blood lipid levels, and inflammation.
“However, we don’t have much evidence about how well this diet works over the long term,” says Dr. Rimm, noting that there are just two long-term studies of intermittent fasting, each lasting a year. Nor are there large populations of people who’ve followed this eating pattern for years. That’s in contrast to two other diets linked to a healthy heart and healthy body size the Mediterranean diet and a vegetarian diet.
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Can Combining Keto And Intermittent Fasting Help Me Lose Weight
Theres some solid consensus among the RDs: combining keto with IF does help you reach ketosis faster, which may lead to additional weight loss.
IF paired with keto intensifies the effects of the ketogenic diet, since they both increase the ketones in the blood, says Titgemeier. Since the time it takes to enter into ketosis differs from person to person , anything that can make that happen sooner is appealing to keto dieters…even if it means piling yet another diet on top of the one theyre already doing.
Additionally, Shapiro says that grouping your meals into a smaller window may allow your body to burn its energy stores instead of continuing to build them upsomething which could cause more fat loss than if you did only keto or IF. Eating heavy meals and then letting your body digest will allow for weight loss and hormone balance as well as time for our bodies to use the nutrients we are ingesting for energy, she explains.
Does Intermittent Fasting Put You In Ketosis
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If you are eager to find out different ways to get into ketosis faster, you might have stumbled upon an option of intermittent fasting.
But, taking a decision to combine your keto diet with another form of a special diet is not easy.
Several questions can arise in your mind before you take this step and among these the most important is Does intermittent fasting put you in ketosis?
You need to check the facts about intermittent fasting and its effect on ketosis.
Also, in case you do decide to go ahead and include intermittent fasting in your keto diet, you must do it the right way.
Proper care has to be taken to ensure intermittent fasting does not pull you out of ketosis and hamper the results.
In short, its a decision that can be taken after careful consideration.
So, are you ready to learn more about does intermittent fasting put you in ketosis or not?
If yes, lets begin
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And What’s The Deal With Intermittent Fasting
IF is a pattern of eating where you restrict foods and sweetened beverages for an uninterrupted period of time every day and then eat only during the remaining hours .
You can pick your windows but we encourage people to eat when the sun is up and fast when the sun is down, says registered dietitian Amy Shapiro, founder of Real Nutrition. During fasting hours you can drink water, black coffee or plain tea, but nothing that provides calories or requires any sort of digestion or shift in hormones.
The theory behind IF is that depriving your body of calories for an extended period of time forces it into a temporary state of starvation and slowed metabolism. This makes your fat cells burn glucose for energy and can lead to improved weight loss results. One plus is that you don’t necessarily need to cut out any foods to stick with IF. It’s really the slashing of calories in general that’s said to boost weight loss, and experts say there’s not one IF schedule that works better for losing weight over anotheryou can choose whichever one works best with your lifestyle.
There are several different ways to schedule your fasting times, but the 16:8 version is the most commonly used. For people who are newer to IF, the 14:10 schedule might be easier to stick to, because you have a 10-hour eating window and only a 14-hour fast.
Also something to note: IF is not recommended for people with a history of disordered eating, since it can get into pretty restrictive territory.
More Benefits Of Fasting
Along with rapid fat loss and dramatic seizure reduction, fasting has also been shown to have several other health benefits.
Autophagy and Fasting
Autophagy is a vital process which removes toxins and estrogenic chemicals and recycles damaged cell components. In your body, cells degrade and then they recycle any unneeded or dysfunctional proteins and organelles using lysosomes in your blood.
Studies have shown that you can increase the presence of autophagosomes in tissues 4-fold just by fasting for less than 48 hours.
Brain Health and Fasting
While fasting, your body relies on ketones made from stored fat, which are small enough to pass through the blood-brain barrier. One study on fasting found that the expression of genes encoding for mitochondrial enzymes and energy metabolism in the hippocampus were enhanced.
The hippocampus is very important to human cognition in terms of memory and learning, so more mitochondrial activity there would mean more brainpower. Literally!
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The Complete Guide To Intermittent Fasting 16/8
Intermittent fasting is an effective fasting method with research-backed health benefits, including healthy weight loss, better cognitive function, and lower inflammation. It has become a popular tool for improving overall health and reaching nutrition and fitness goals. The most well-known, approachable, and sustainable method is intermittent fasting 16/8.
What Is Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting is a way of recreating our ancestral eating patterns in modern life.
This means cycling between daily periods of not eating, and windows for eating.
When done properly IF has been shown to 234:
- regulate blood glucose
- reduce the risk of cancer, and more
Heres an example of a popular 16:8 fasting method:
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How Intermittent Fasting Works
Intermittent fasting is the method of cycling between periods of fasting and eating. When you increase the time between mealswhat is known as a fasting windowyou force your body to rely on stored fuel for energy. Burning that stored fuel can help your body manage weight, stabilize blood sugar, and improve metabolism, among other benefits. Read more about.
While there can be benefits and the science behind IF is growing, it is still a somewhat controversial approach and is not recommended for those with eating disorders or those who are pregnant or nursing. As with starting any new diet or exercise routine, consult with your doctor or healthcare provider for guidance on whether intermittent fasting is right for you.
Helps In Boosting Fat Loss
You are able to lose a ton of fat when you combine both intermittent fasting and keto. Fasting is a great way of breaking out of your weight loss plateaus quickly. This is because intermittent fasting promotes a process known as adipose thermogenesis, which helps in enabling your body to produce heat through burning fats. Hence, as more and more fats burn, your body is essentially losing weight quickly in a short period of time.
When you fast, you are basically reducing your daily calorie intake. In addition to that, your body can only consume a certain amount of calories in one sitting. Hence, by contracting your time periods of when you consume your food, you are in turn decreasing your overall calorie intake for the day. Limiting your food intake to certain time periods can also aid in the reduction of needless snacking.
With a keto diet, you are able to adapt your body more easily to the state of fasting. This is because ketosis aids in stimulating the process of fat burning through the decrease in carb intake. Hence, your body is now using up its stored fats to provide you with energy. This then makes your body more adaptive to fats and helps you partake in fasting with more ease which in turn helps you lose fat.
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Combining Keto & Intermittent Fasting: Benefits + Challenges
Although they may seem different on the surface, Keto and IF share many similarities. They both encourage the body into a Ketogenic state, and have the potential to increase fat burning. Theres also a lot of crossover between the potential wellness benefits, from heart health to insulin sensitivity.
You may be wondering whether it’s safe and effective to combine the two — extending your fasting window, and consuming a high-fat diet during your eating window.
The good news is that because both diets work via similar underlying mechanisms, they have the potential to complement each other. Keto and IF act synergistically towards the same end goal – making the body more adept at burning fat as a fuel. You might also find that the common challenges of each diet are canceled out when you combine them together:
- Restricting food intake through IF may make it easier to get into and stay in ketosis, as this kick-starts the depletion of carbohydrate levels.
- A Ketogenic diet may make intermittent fasting feel easier as your body becomes more fat-adapted, and you feel more satiated from consuming higher-fat foods.
- If youre fairly new to Keto, you may find that IF helps you stick to the diet, as you have fewer meals to think about and prep.
That being said, there are some potential drawbacks to be aware of:
What Exactly Is The Keto Diet Anyway
The ketogenic diet is a macronutrient-restrictive pattern of eating where the majority of the calories you eat come from fat, while the rest comes from a moderate amount of protein and little to no carbs. For the most part, this means saying goodbye to fruit and pasta, and hello to steak and eggs.
This high-fat, low-carb diet encourages the body to use fat for energy instead of sugars. When your body does not have enough carbs to sustain everyday activity, the liver breaks down fat into ketones, which can then be used as energy. This metabolic process is called ketosis that’s where the phrase “going keto” comes from.
Studies have shown that the keto diet can have many health benefits. It’s been proven to increase weight loss, improve brain function, and reduce blood sugar levels. It has helped many people who have suffered from obesity and diabetes. However, eating in this way can be extremely challenging.
“People don’t usually fashion their plate around fat,” says Kristen Mancinelli, MS, RDN, author of The Ketogenic Diet. “I mean, you really eat 25 grams of carbohydrates a day, mostly coming from non-starchy vegetables like broccoli or lettuce. It’s sort of hard to grasp because it’s not what we’re used to.”
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I Tried The Ketogenic Diet For 30 Days And Heres What Happened
Is the high-fat, low-carb diet all its cracked up to be? Learn more about my plan including what I ate, my challenges and successes, plus my overall results, weight loss and takeaways from one month on the keto diet.
As a rule, I shy away from extreme diets or eating regimens. Atkins? Never heard of him. Whole 30? Wholly not going to bother with it. Paleo? Some things are better left in the history books.
However, the simplicity of the ketogenic diet appealed to me, and seeing as I had a wedding to attendand a bridesmaids dress to wearI needed something effective to help me shed some weight, and fast.
Find out what happened when I decided to shun carbs for 30 days including how I did it, my successes, my challenges, my results and my life-long takeaways.
