The keto diet (also called the keto diet) is the most effective way to burn fat without starvation or rebound.
We will agree that being overweight has become one of the most serious problems in our society. It is not only for an aesthetic matter but for the health problems that it brings.
Excess fat is behind the 3 most important causes of death: cardiovascular, neurodegenerative and cancer diseases, as well as being the main cause of type II diabetes.
But losing weight with traditional methods is a real torture!
It involves starving, having to count calories, spending indecent amounts of money on magical products … And in the end 80% of people have recovered the lost fat with so much effort after 3 months.
Faced with such a great failure of traditional diets, a revolutionary movement has emerged from science that is transforming the world of nutrition: the ketogenic diet .
In this article, you will learn everything you need to know about the keto diet.
WHAT IS THE KETOGENIC DIET?
The ketogenic diet consists of substantially reducing the consumption of carbohydrates (sugars, cereals, legumes, fruits, tubers …) and increasing the consumption of quality fats (avocado, olive oil, coconut, etc.) in order to “force” the body to consume fats again.
The goal of the keto diet is to re-educate your body so that it learns to burn fat again .
We say “re-educate” because the ability to burn fat is innate in humans and the fact that we don’t normally do it is the fault of the over-abundance of food in which we live.
Throughout our lives we have had abundant food and especially in the form of carbohydrates and therefore we have not had to use fat as a source of energy.
And, just like physical activity, the body gradually atrophies and loses its innate capacity.
The curious thing is that our body does not store carbohydrates as an energy reserve but fats (later we will see why). Therefore, we accumulate fat that we do not know how to use later.
For this we get fat .
Unlike traditional “low calorie” diets, with the keto diet you will not count calories or starve yourself.
This will surely surprise you, since it has traditionally been considered that to lose weight, what you need is to eat less.
WHY DOES THE KETO DIET WORK?
For many years nutritionists have preached that in order to lose weight, you need to eat fewer calories.
His argument was that there is an energy balance in your body:
- If you eat more than you spend : you accumulate fat.
- If you eat less than you spend : you burn fat.
So to lose weight, you burn more energy or eat less.
Its logic is overwhelming, right?
… but something is wrong …
Apart from the fact that eating little is really torture, practice does not correspond to theory.
Many of us have tried this type of diet and the result is that we either do not lose the weight we wanted, or when we stop, we regain it again.
The explanation is that the accumulation of fat in the body is not just a matter of energy balance, it is the result of a metabolic process arising from millions of years of evolution.
To understand what happens we have to review evolution and basic biology:
Humans have lived millions of years in a world of scarcity.
Until very recently, our ancestors suffered recurrent famines.
Therefore accumulating energy was necessary to survive.
And how do we accumulate energy?
An adult has:
- Glycogen (carbohydrate) reserves that allow you to survive 1 or 2 days maximum.
- Fat reserves equivalent to more than 100,000 KCal or 50 days of survival.
Curious, isn’t it?
Let’s see in more detail why we accumulate fat and not carbohydrates and what this has to do with the keto diet .
But before continuing let us tell you that if you are very interested in this topic you can complete our free course on ketogenic diet: