Try The Most Extreme Method
If you want to try the most extreme intermittent fasting method whilst on the keto diet, you can do so. This is known as 23/1 intermittent fasting keto, or otherwise OMAD. This involves eating one meal a day. This allows you to reap the benefits for 23 hours of the day. The remaining one hour is when you eat. As you are also on the keto diet here, you should make the meals keto appropriate. So, a large high fat and high protein meal would be ideal. This could include low-starch vegetables and lean meats topped with seeds, high fat sauces and dairy. A small amount of carbs is key to ensure you do eat some carbs. This can be found in fruit, nut butters and sauces.
The number one benefit of the OMAD fast is resilience. Studies show that the long fasting period of 23 hours stresses your cells into being stronger. This is known as hormesis. It will maximise all benefits of the keto intermittent fasting diet. Such as maximised reduction in heart disease, anti-aging, increased weight loss and metabolism. The results are incredible. Yet, this method should be done with caution and the right knowledge.
Try these top tips for yourself and see the benefits maximise. Be sure to stick to keto based meals during eating hours to successfully achieve this diet.
Some may be wondering if intermittent fasting can work without keto. Here is more:
What To Know Before Combining The Diets For Weight Loss
Before combining these two popular diet trends, you should know a couple of things:
Always start the keto diet first and then combine intermittent fasting with it, otherwise, your body will face difficulty in managing both at the same time.
When you follow these kinds of diet plans, having sickness at the beginning is very common. So, when you start a keto diet, having symptoms like headache, nausea, cramps are all a part of the adapting process, as your body is shifting its fuel source from carbs to fats. And same with fasting, when you decide to merge these two, you should prepare yourself and your body, to go through some changes.
When you start low-carbohydrate diets, you may experience lower blood sugar levels before the body gets orientated with the change, so it is normal to feel more tired and lazy for few days.
This plan is a very healthy way of eating, you just have to reschedule your meals and eating patterns. But people with these issues must consider their respective doctors first
- Pregnant and breastfeeding women
The results of the keto diet can also vary from person to person. Some people may lose weight faster than others, as everyone adapts to it according to their body functioning.
Tips For Intermittent Fasting
If youre considering fasting, we recommend you heed the following advice:
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Con: It May Affect Athletic Performance
While IF may help reduce fat stores while preserving muscle mass, the extremely low carb level of the ketogenic diet has been shown to negatively affect athletic performance. This may not be the case with everyone, but carbohydrates, not fat, are still considered to be the best source of fuel for athletes.
Try The Most Popular/effective Method
The most popular method is 16/8. Otherwise known as the timed restricted eating routine. This involves 16 hours of fasting and 8 hours of eating. During the eating window you should consume balanced keto meals. Either 2 large meals or 3 smaller meals. Avoid snacking to maximise results and to maintain a strong digestive system. Overeating can cause your digestive system and your metabolism to slow down. This can cause stomach issues and weight gain.
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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:
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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The Keto Intermittent Fasting Connection
The ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting share many of the same health benefits because both methods can have the same result: a state of ketosis.
Ketosis has many physical and mental benefits, from weight and fat loss to improved stress levels, brain function, and longevity.
However, its important to keep in mind that if you take a milder approach to keto intermittent fasting for example, eating within an 8-hour window you probably wont enter ketosis .
Not everyone who tries intermittent fasting aims to enter ketosis. In fact, if someone who fasts also eats high-carb foods, theres a very good chance theyll never enter ketosis.
On the other hand, if ketosis is the goal, you can use keto intermittent fasting as a tool to get there and improve your overall health.
If youre new to the keto world and would like some helpful tips about how to start, here are a couple of beginners guides to help you with your first steps:
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Intermittent Fasting And Its Relation To Ketosis
Intermittent fasting consists of eating only within a specific period of time and not eating for the remaining hours of the day. Every person, whether theyre aware of it or not, fasts overnight from dinner to breakfast.
The benefits of fasting have been used for thousands of years in Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine as a way to help reset your metabolism and help your gastrointestinal system after overeating.
There are many approaches to intermittent fasting, with different time frames:
- 16-20 hours fasting period
- Alternate-day fasting
- 24-hour day fasting
If you want to start fasting, one popular version is the 16/8 keto intermittent fasting method, where you eat within an 8-hour eating window , followed by a 16-hour fasting window.
Other fasting schedules include the 20/4 or 14/10 methods, while some people prefer doing a full 24-hour fasting day once or twice per week.
Intermittent fasting can put you in a state of ketosis faster because your cells will quickly consume your glycogen stores, and then start using your stored fat for fuel. This leads to an acceleration of the fat-burning process and increased ketone levels.
Take the keto quiz
- Keeping blood sugar levels stable
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Atkins’ Shared Benefits With Intermittent Fasting
While its currently popular to combine low carb living and intermittent fasting, its not strictly necessary. When adapted to a low carb diet like Atkins, your body is already trained to burn fat for fuel, and your diet is already helping to maintain your blood sugar levels. Some people may find that if the caloric deficit that can occur while intermittent fasting is too great, it can also slow their metabolism, hindering their weight loss goals. One helpful suggestion is that if you are pairing intermittent fasting with Atkins, make sure to consume adequate protein during your feeding window in order to help maintain muscle mass. An Atkins bar or shake is a great way to up your protein intake right before you begin your fast.Rather than using IF as an all-the-time diet, some people already living a low carb lifestyle use IF as a way to get back on track. If following a diet like Atkins 100, which allows for more fiber-rich carbohydrates per day, you may find IF slightly easier.
Could Treat Epilepsy
Ketone bodies as an energy source for the brain have been proven effective for epileptic patients, especially children. So says a 2008 report from Nutrition in Clinical Practice. That report mentions that when children ate a keto diet, up to 16 percent of them had no more seizures. Another 50 percent had fewer seizures.
Since the keto diet has had such beneficial effects on epilepsy, researchers are looking into how this low-carb way of eating could help those with Parkinsons and Alzheimers.
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Will You See Results
Results are obviously important and perhaps the main reason why people try intermittent fasting or the keto diet during their lives. This method is safe, but will it produce the outcomes you desire?
In short, yes.
If done right, you can enjoy the following benefits of combining keto and intermittent fasting:
- Quickly reaching the state of nutritional ketosis
- Reducing initial side effects like upset stomach and keto flu
- Getting rid of cancerous cells
- Having less hunger pangs
- Avoiding brain fog that comes from eating lot of carbs between fasts
- Preventing drastic shifts in sugar levels that can cause mood issues like depression
- Still be in fasting mode even when youre eating
- Rapidly reducing fat tissue
- Reducing oxidative stress and inflammation
- Improving cognitive effects
Many people who combine both diets actually see better results than people who only stick to one method. Dozens of studies have been done on men and women to determine whether or not fat loss and improved health are actually benefits of this combination.
One study that appeared in the Journal of Translational Medicine studied 34 resistance-trained men for eight weeks. The numerous researchers discovered guys who did the combo of keto and intermittent fasting actually lost 14% more body fat than the control group.
People who did keto at the same time actually retained more muscle mass than those who just tried intermittent fasting, making it a great way to cut fat while retaining healthy muscle.
Benefits Of Keto Diet
With its soaring popularity, keto has received a lot of attention from researchers. Though the science is still coming out, clinical studies have already found that keto can provide numerous benefits including:
- Improved blood lipid levels.
- Make meals more satiating, reducing cravings for processed and high-carb foods
- Regulates inflammation and increases immunity
- Helps your body absorb fat-soluble vitamins .
- Protects the glycocalyx the membrane that covers the surface of every cell, responsible for overall health, and is easily damaged by sugar intake.
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/5is It Safe To Do So
It’s important to remember that both Keto and Intermittent Fasting do have their fair share of pros and cons. So, following two diets at once could also mean that you end up at the risk of double the side-effects, especially if you are a beginner.
Experiencing low blood sugar, nausea, mood swings, fatigue, constipation can also be common in the starting days. More so, do remember that trying the two diets together also requires a lot more patience and commitment, since it’s a narrow way of eating.
If you do try the diets, the best would be to ease into them, rather than going all-in. Add foods in your diet which release energy slowly, and don’t completely quit out carbs. If you have a history of eating disorders, trying this method out wouldn’t be wise.
The Possible Health Benefits Of A Keto Intermittent Fasting Diet
There isnt research on the health effects of doing keto and IF together, but its clear that ketone levels increase when the plans are combined. This may help accelerate weight loss, says Dr. DAgostino. Still, everyone responds differently, so this may not be true across the board, he says.
Shemek has all of her clients use keto or the IF and keto combo. My clients are typically all prediabetic and overweight. Once they see and feel what eating in this way does for them including regulating their blood sugar levels they are able to stay on an IF and keto plan easily. The success of the combined approach reinforces their committment, she says.
One interesting way that low-carb IF diets are being studied outside of weight loss is for cognitive health. Richard Isaacson, MD, director of the Alzheimers Prevention Clinic at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYorkPresbyterian in New York City, says that doing a low-carb, time-restricted IF may be beneficial for calming down insulin pathways and letting the brain benefit from cleaner burning fuel, which may offer benefits for people with Alzheimers disease.
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How To Make Keto Fasting Easier
Fast in shorter increments!
Fasting only periodically and when youre not busy can also make the task less daunting. So, you may not want to do it every day, every week, and during times when youre super crazed at work or are juggling a million tasks in the day!
You could, for example, fast every other weekend. The 5:2 diet, where you eat regularly for 5 days and eat few calories for 2 can also seem more sustainable than complete food restriction.
Intermittent Fasting Is Not Enough To Keep You In Ketosis
The 16/8 fasting window may not be enough to get you into or keep you in ketosis. Even if you do end up in ketosis, if you continue to eat a diet with even a moderate amount of carbs itll probably kick you out of ketosis each time.
This can result in unpleasant side effects such as the keto flu and being overly hungry each time you start fasting again.
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Make Sure You Eat Enough
Combining intermittent fasting with keto diet doesnt mean you eat too little. Though Intermittent fasting is meant to reduce your overall calorie intake, it doesnt involve reducing your food intake drastically.
Hence, during the feeding period of 6 hours, you can eat nutritious ketogenic foods. This will help you avoid any deficiencies and metabolic issues and stimulate ketosis.
Diet Improves Intermittent Fasting With Ketosis
Since both intermittent fasting and a ketogenic diet use ketosis to burn fat for energy, they do incredibly well together.
However, intermittent fasting is not a must to reach ketosis.
So if fasting is not for you or does not fit into your everyday life, you can still follow a ketogenic diet and gain similar benefits.
But on the other hand, you wont reap the more profound benefits of intermittent fasting without a lower-carb diet.
Because if your body has to burn through full carbohydrate stores before entering ketosis, you have significantly less time to burn fat while fasting.
Nevertheless, my experience is that intermittent fasting makes everyday life easier rather than more complicated. Accordingly, it saves time and money.
If you are into intermittent fasting, check out my article about the One Meal A Day schedule, which I use to bring even more flexibility and efficiency into everyday life.
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What Foods Are Best For Achieving Your Fasting Goal
Below is a list of foods suitable for the attainment of the goals and purpose of an intermittent fast .
Other foods allowed during fasting are vegetables, whether fermented or unfermented, sauerkraut, tempeh, lettuce, celery, tomatoes, strawberries, cucumber, skimmed milk, and plain yoghurts. You should also make sure to drink lots of water during this period. In fact, it would be best if you made it your rule not to consume refined grains, processed foods and meats, and soft drinks, among others.
