ketogenic diet good for weight loss?

A ketogenic diet is a high-fat, moderate-protein, and low-carb diet. It primarily works by lowering insulin levels, producing ketones, and increasing fat burning.

Unlike with calorie restriction, keto helps you lose weight by putting your body into ketosis. When you eat minimal carbohydrates, your body produces ketones for energy. Ketones are made in your liver from fatty acids found in food or your own body fat. Therefore, your liver actually burns fat to make ketones.

After your first week of following the keto diet, you will likely see a significant drop in weight. On a “normal” diet with a caloric deficit and regular exercise regime, most people can expect to lose one to two lbs a week, while those following a keto diet typically see a drop of anywhere from two to ten pounds.

But a true ketogenic diet is different and calls for up to 90% of your daily calories to come from fat. That is often hard for people to maintain. However, research has shown that people can achieve faster weight loss with a keto diet compared with a calorie-reduction diet.

The pace will slow down eventually, and you can expect 4 to 10 pounds a month of burned fat while sticking to Keto. That means you can largely expect to lose 40 pounds in the same 4-5 months as on average.

Keto diets definitely work without exercise. In fact, many personal trainers and nutritionist would not recommend the keto diet if you were about to embark on a hard training programme. This is due to the things that happen to the body when it starts to burn fat as an energy source, rather than sugar.

Quick Keto Facts

➼ Ketosis occurs when the body is denied access to glucose, its main fuel source.

➼ In ketosis, stored fat is broken down for energy, producing ketones.

➼ Some people use a ketogenic diet to lose weight by forcing their body to burn surplus fat stores.

➼ The ketogenic diet was originally developed in the 1920’s to treat epilepsy but was inadvertently discovered to offer many other health benefits.

➼ There are multiple variations of the ketogenic diet.

Signs and Symptoms of Ketosis

➼ Weight loss

➼ Increased ketones in the blood

➼ Appetite suppression

➼ Increased focus and energy

Types of Ketogenic Diets

Classic Keto: The strictest form of keto, classic keto requires a 4:1 ratio of fats to carbs or protein. This is a structured, individualized plan in which your diet will consist of 90% fat. Foods are usually weighed when following this regimen.

Modified Keto: The modified version of the diet is intended to be less restrictive. It might be a good place to start if you’re new to keto, or if you’ve done classic keto for a long time and you’re trying to taper down to a more sustainable, long-term eating regimen.

MCT: This version allows for a higher protein and carb intake than classic keto. MCT is short for Medium Chain Triglycerides, or highly ketogenic man-made fats.

Modified Atkins: Carbs are limited in modified Atkins, while fat is encouraged. Protein is not limited at all. When you do consume carbs on this diet, fats should accompany them.

Intermittent Fasting: This dietary intervention launches the body into ketosis by shortening the window of time that you eat during the day. For instance, you may only eat during an 8-hour window of the day, and fast for the other 16 hours. This forces the body to burn energy from fat.

What does “good” mean exactly?

For example - specific diets might be efficient as you lose a lot of weight quickly. Other diets are effective - you leverage and consider your actions to have the highest long-term success rate. Efficient would have a tremendous short-term success rate, whilst effective - will be a great long-term solution.

Let’s Apply these terms and answer the primary question. I’d say that in its raw form, the keto diet is efficient. That said, some websites make it effective, for example - Keto Cycle, but more about that later.

Keto is great for quick weight loss

Now, why is it not effective?

Well, the keto diet goes against the norm. We’re accustomed to having carbohydrates on our plates. Trying to change something that you’ve considered interchangeable for decades is quite tricky.

• You need to search for keto recipes
• You have to deal with the cravings
• You, most probably, will do all that alone

However, I’ve used the terms “raw form” when talking about the keto diet not being effective deliberately.

Yes, keto is challenging to stick to IF you’re doing everything by yourself.

But you don’t have to!

We live in the most technologically advanced age in the history of humankind. Why wouldn’t you use that?

For example, there are certain websites like KetoCycle where you can get a personalized meal plan for a period of your liking, consultations with nutritionists, workout routines, and access to the private community:

Take a FREE quiz and get the personalized 28-day meal plan

Also, one of the most common problems people face when doing keto is a reality check. There’s no way to know how much weight you will lose because it depends on so many factors. I don’t want to repeat myself, but we live in the digital age and there’s a tool for everything:

Add your characteristics and get the weight loss estimate (Ketogenic diet)

Final note:

Keto is very efficient in losing weight, but to make it effective - you’d need to either put in some REAL effort or use some tool that’d do the work for you.