We love the ketogenic diet, but it isn’t magic. Like any other diet, the keto diet requires you to eat the right kinds of foods, in the right proportion, for the best results. There are variables in your diet, and they can’t be ignored just because you’re cutting out carbs. For many people, this is enough to start losing weight, but it’s neither optimal or sustainable. The keto diet requires a good balance of macros. When it comes to health, macronutrients are roughly balanced against food quality and nutrient timing, and they’re even more important for physique changes. So, read on, because today we’re going to provide you with all the information you need on the ketogenic diet and macronutrients. This isn’t just about getting into ketosis - but building the best possible diet. Obviously, a ketogenic diet stats with carbohydrates. Or, at least, reducing their role in your diet. It’s not a complicated idea, at the root: you eat fewer carbohydrates and you get better at using other fuel sources over time. This means that you could just take this one step and forget about the rest of the variables in a diet.
It’d be ridiculous, but when has that ever stopped humans from doing something? We believe in a more measured approach to carbs. The point of carbohydrates is to provide short-term energy for a variety of bodily processes - from brainpower to muscular strength. This is why they’re so common in the diet - especially the awful kind that is hyper-palatable and packed with sugar. To clarify, carbs are not bad for you - at least scientifically. What might be bad for you are the behavioral challenges that surround carbohydrates and the way that they fit into your diet. These are the real problems: over-eating carbs is closely linked to both obesity and diabetes - two of the most common and life-threatening issues today. This is crucial: there are 3 key types of carbs that you need to handle. They are sugars, starches, and fiber. These are in order of digestion: sugars are fast-absorbing carbs for short-term energy while starches are slow-release and provide sustained energy over a few hours.
Fiber is even further along with this trend being indigestible from the start. These all have separate effects on the body and the foods you consume on a ketogenic diet should favor high-quality starches and fiber. Sugar is the classic villain in nutrition science - it’s considered to be one of the biggest signs of poor health. This isn’t totally accurate, it can be very healthy in the right contexts, but as humans, we’re awful at managing our sugar intake. This is one of the key things we focus on cutting out early on, and it provides benefits if you’ve got a high-sugar diet. Associations with diabetes and obesity are a problem, but the keto diet almost entirely removes sugars. This is the main category that common carbs fall into bread, pasta and rice. Obviously, this is a range of different compounds and they have different effects. There’s no one starch, but a selection. They range from being slightly more complex than sugars to huge chains of carbs that provide slow energy and may even be closer to fiber.
This is where most of the carbs should come from in a normal diet - and should represent the main source of NET (or digestible) carbs on a ketogenic diet. They’re slow absorbing, assist with fueling your existence and they often come bound up with fiber in vegetables like carrots. You might not be able to avoid starches, but that’s fine because they’re a natural, sustained energy source in your fruit and veggies. This is the most important carbohydrate for keto. Fiber is non-digestible, which is why you can consume pretty much any amount and not drop out of ketosis. The fact that you can’t digest fiber is also the source of its metabolic and digestive benefits. First, it’s a way of regulating the speed at which your body absorbs other foods. This is great when combined with dietary fats, which might otherwise cause some digestive slow-down. Second, this slow-absorption means that everything you eat with fiber is going to be released into the bloodstream more slowly.
This is less important for keto - where fast-absorbing sugars are almost 0 - but key for any diet. Fiber plays into a whole bunch of health benefits, and its why you can’t just rule out carbs. This form of metabolism-regulating carb is why you need tons of veggies (as well as the crucial vitamins and minerals). This is a necessity for the ketogenic diet, but it also comes with a few challenges - such as ‘keto flu’ and fatigue. So, we have a method for carb-limitations. To start with, you need an idea of your current carb intake and your goal intake. A goal intake on the ketogenic diet is usually around 5-10% of calories, so usually around 30g a day. What you do - to get the most from your diet - is to figure out the difference and reduce 10% every 3-4 days. This is going to produce a gradual adaptation to fats as primary fuel-source.
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