Ketogenic Dieting: Getting Started
Ketogenic Dieting: Getting Started
As this series continues I am going to constantly provide information that I hope allow someone to understand why keto is effective; however, since this will take some time and many posts, I want to first talk about how to do a ketogenic diet so anyone can start the diet at any point. Through my experience with ketogenic dieting I have found some methods to be more effective than others. The method that I have found to be most effective is to first calculate how many calories you are currently consuming each day, then take these calories and incorporate the ketogenic diet macronutrient ratio (75% fat, 20% protein, and 5% carbohydrates).
Now that you have your macronutrients (208g F, 125g P, 31g C) you can evenly divide them up into how many meals you will consume in a day. One interesting benefit to keto is that hunger is not usually a huge issue. For this reason, I suggest eating 3-4 whole meals each day when first starting out. After having more experience with the diet, you may even find that you only want to consume 2 big meals each day. For this example, assume the person chooses to consume 4 meals each day. Now you can divide your macronutrients up into each meal.
What this is showing is you will consume 52g of fat, 31g of protein, and 8g carbs each meal. A common complaint with ketogenic dieting is how to plan a meal to hit macronutrients of this nature. For this I recommend learning about staple foods of the ketogenic diet.
These are a few of the common staple foods of the diet; however, there are many other food options that can be incorporated into the diet.
After someone gains an understanding of what types of foods to eat, they can now begin structuring their diet. To hit the macros for each meal I suggest that you choose a protein source (or a combination of protein sources) and an amount that first hits the protein limit for that meal. After this, the person can calculate how much fat is remaining for that meal and meet that macronutrient by adding an item off the fat list (a topping like blue cheese or ranch is easiest). The last step is to fulfill the carbohydrate limit for this meal by adding the appropriate amount of vegetables. After trying this a couple times, it can be quickly learned how to develop a proportional keto meal.
In our last post we mentioned that there is an adaptation period that occurs during the first stage of the ketogenic diet. We will still talk more about this period in the future; however, it is important to note that this adaptation period runs a lot smoother if the user stays strict to the diet. I truly believe that it takes 100% commitment for this diet to be successful and even more so during the early stages. Be on the lookout for the next part to this series!
