5 Reasons Why I Love Keto Diet and how to make a smooth start

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For those who don’t know what the keto diet is, a quick recap: you focus on cutting carbs below 10%, aim at 20% proteins and the rest is fat. Obviously, the quality of fats you eat is important, so in terms of the quality of foods, keto is similar to paleo. For more details, I recommend this article.

From time to time I switch to keto for a couple of weeks or months. I guess there are several reasons why I like this diet:

• it’s for lazy people — imagine that you can eat once or twice a day (really!) and you don’t feel hungry (or sometimes you do, but it's different hunger than on carbs). There are no strict rules on how many times a day you need to eat. You eat when you're hungry and on keto, you will be surprised how rare your body will ask for food.
• you eat less so you don’t have to visit shops so often, and even when you do, your shopping list is simple. I found out that on keto I have almost exactly the same shopping list every 2, 3 days: high-quality meat (fat meats), vegetables, butter, fat cream, cheese, and eggs.
• it works very well together with intermittent fasting, which I will write about next time (I hope)
• you loose weight very quickly (well…at the beginning it's mostly water that you lose) but it goes back as soon as you load carbs again, so if you want to stay in shape you need to be consistent and stick to keto for longer
• and the most important reason: ketosis — is a metabolic state which occurs when you cut carbs to a minimum (believe me 10% of your calories intake in carbs is less than you think). What I like about this state is that your brain works much better, you are capable of doing more work with less effort and your energy level is constant during the day (no carbs, no insulin peaks, no energy drops). What also changed in my case is that I was able to sleep much better.

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So let’s say you’re convinced, you ordered a keto diet plan from your favorite meal planning website and you’re ready to start, what’s next? Here are some recommendations that will make your life easier:

• Don't wait till Monday (or New Year). People tend to postpone changing their habits. In my opinion, the quicker you start, the better you will do
• Drink a lot of water (i also add salt to it, so you make sure you don’t lose too much sodium, which is often the case when people start keto)
• Order a set of vitamins to keep them on the right level. What I used is something similar to this.
• Get rid of all the carbs you have at home to avoid the temptation
• Learn how to prepare bulletproof coffee
• Avoid keto cheat meals for the first two weeks (search google, keto cheat meals are awesome!)
• Exercise — hitting the gym or running will help your body get rid of carbs (in simple words) and get into a keto state quicker

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There are also disadvantages of keto, in my case the most difficult was:

• your breath smells funny, at least at the beginning
• going into a ketosis state sometimes makes you feel ill, dizzy, and lack energy (its the effect of cutting sugar which was delivered constantly to your body)
• it’s difficult to go out and have dinner with your friends at the restaurant (well technically it’s possible, but very often I was surprised by some hidden sugar in sauce or vegetable salad)
• every, single cheat meal that contains sugar punish you miserably as you will jump out of ketosis state and the whole process has to start again