The food you eat is the first thing that affects your health either positively or negatively. And to lose weight most of the people opt dieting before going for an exercise plan. Because at some point they know that exercise doesn’t work to lose weight until and unless you limit your calorie intake or regulate your food. So some people go for high protein-low carb diet, some go for high carb diet and some go for the very precious high-fat diet.

Well, the idea of using fat to cut fats is quite difficult to perceive but this crazy world of athletes, sportsmen, and researchers has still found the experimental proves for the notion that high-fat diet can help you burn more fats. Sounds cool, eh? This diet plan is actually called ketogenic diet plan.

What is ketogenic diet?

It is a high fat, moderate protein and low carb diet plan that basically let your body use fat for the fuel. And that’s what the fitness freaks and athletes like about this ketogenic diet plan.

However the overall plan varies from individual to individual but it is thought that it covers 70-70% fat, 15-20% protein and 5-10% carbohydrates. Here, an important point to notice is that ketogenic diet is not similar to high protein and low carb diet. It is true that when you lower the carbs, fat proportion gets higher but still a lot of protein can cause problems with your body because both diets differ in how they treat the body’s metabolism.

To burn fats body need energy and for that body usually utilized stored fats or carbohydrates to gain energy and stores proteins for other body functions such as the growth of muscles or for extensive and prolonged exercise. And body utilizes a proper and fixed amount of proteins at a time and if you start taking a lot of proteins, the body starts preferring it and utilizes it to gain energy through the process of gluconeogenesis.

Now you must be thinking that if body utilizes proteins as a source of energy instead of your stored fats or carbs, what’s bad in that? And the answer is that proteins consumption also enhances the insulin level of the body which is not healthy in any possible way. Proteins contain insulinogenic amino acids that directly enhance the insulin production in your body. So if carbs intake can cause the imbalance in the insulin in your body, high protein utilization can also cause unwanted consequences.

For insulin, there is no doubt to believe that it is an important hormone to keep the body functioning under control. But when it is released abundantly such as through eating a lot of carbs and proteins it allows the body to use carbohydrates as the major source of energy, reduced the approach to fats to be used for energy and leads to the body to fats storage stage where it starts accumulating a lot of it. And sadly, that leads to weight gain.

The Pin Point

If you observe the typical western diet charts, you will see so many carbs out there. With that food, the body uses glucose as the main source of energy rather than stored fats, same as with the high protein diet. For energy, the body converts the glucose into glycogen but during the inactive hours, only a pinch of glucose is converted into energy while the rest of it is converted into stored fats.

I think the point of using ketogenic diet is getting clear now? Please let me know!

According to the dietary research, the body can store only 2,000 Kcal of energy as glycogen, however; it can store even more than 25,000 Kcal of glucose as stored fat. And this stored fat will stay there enjoying until you do some bursts of strength training. And if you don’t bother, these fats keep on gathering up.

But people who rely on more fats only have fats to offer to be converted into energy. So they use fats and burn them at the faster pace.

Benefits of Using Ketogenic Diet

There are people whose bodies might not cooperate much with ketogenic diet because each person has the different metabolic formula. But for those who work well with this high-fat diet, there are plenty of advantages. Such as:

• Muscle glycogen decreases
• Body uses stored fats for energy that help you drop weight
• Reliance on muscles glycogen decreases in the presence of fat
• You can perform better athletic activities
• Performance increases
• Endurance exercise has more chances to show its charms
• Lean body mass is increased that gives you a toned body
• If combined with lifting program, ketogenic diet improved body composition as a whole
• It helps athletes to keep a balance between their power consumed and weight ratio

However, with all these benefits researchers are still finding the answer for how low carb diet can affect the strength, power production, and high-intensity exercises.

We hope to listen from them soon for the sake of how to lose weight in the near future.