Keto For Beginners: What You Need To Know

The keto diet is a high-fat, low-carb eating plan that puts your body in a state of ketosis. This is when your body's carb-burning switch flips to a fat-burning one. While the keto diet can be tough to start, it can also be rewarding. Here's what you need to know before starting:

- Meal Plan: It is important to plan your meals in advance to ensure you are getting the right balance of nutrients.

- Stay Hydrated: Drink plenty of water and ensure you are getting enough sodium and potassium to prevent leg cramps.

- Stay Busy: Keeping yourself busy and focused will help you stay on track and avoid cravings.

- Weigh Yourself: Weigh yourself every day to stay motivated and track your progress.

- Stock Up: Purchase all the necessary items and ingredients before starting the diet.

- Know the Side Effects: Be prepared for the keto flu, which can include mental and physical fogginess, decreased strength and endurance, and digestive issues.

- Up Your Electrolytes: In ketosis, your body excretes more water and electrolytes, so make sure you are getting enough sodium and potassium.

- Know Your Limits: The keto diet may not be suitable for everyone, especially those with certain medical conditions or dietary restrictions.

- Have a Plan for After: The keto diet is not meant to be a long-term solution, so have a plan for how you will maintain your results after the diet.

Plan meals and stock up on ingredients before starting

Planning your meals and stocking up on the right ingredients is crucial before starting the keto diet. This is a high-fat, low-carb, moderate-protein diet, so you'll need to ensure your meals reflect this.

First, it's important to understand which foods are high in fat, which are high in protein, and which contain carbohydrates. Meat is a source of protein, while pure fats include butter and olive oil. Vegetables are a source of carbs, but they are low-carb, so you can eat them in moderation. Fruit, beans, bread, pasta, chips, cookies, candy, and ice cream are all high in carbohydrates, so these should be avoided.

Once you understand the basics, you can start to plan your meals. It's a good idea to find four to five keto-approved recipes that you know you'll enjoy. This will help you stay on track and avoid turning to carbs when you're unsure what to eat. There are plenty of keto websites and cookbooks with recipe ideas.

When it comes to shopping for ingredients, make sure you stock up on plenty of low-carb vegetables. These will provide your body with essential minerals and soluble fibre, helping to prevent constipation and diarrhea, which are common side effects of the keto diet.

You'll also need to ensure you're consuming enough fat, so add items like olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, butter, and fatty meats like bacon to your shopping list.

Finally, don't forget to drink plenty of water. It's common to experience increased thirst and dehydration when starting the keto diet, so having water readily available will help you stay hydrated.

By planning your meals and stocking up on the right ingredients, you'll be well prepared to start the keto diet and set yourself up for success.

Expect mental and physical fogginess

Starting a keto diet can be a challenging process, and one of the most common side effects is mental and physical fogginess. This usually sets in around 2 to 3 days after beginning the diet and can manifest as a feeling of being half-drunk, staring at walls, or struggling with productivity at work. This fogginess occurs because your brain is used to running on glucose, and when you drastically reduce your carbohydrate intake, it is deprived of its primary fuel source. During the first day of keto, you may feel fine because you still have some glycogen reserves, but after 24 hours or so, these reserves are depleted, and your neurons will be deprived of their usual energy source.

However, the good news is that this mental and physical fogginess is only temporary and usually clears up within a couple of days. After your brain starts burning more ketones for fuel, which typically happens within one to two weeks, you may even experience an elevated sense of mental clarity. To help alleviate the fogginess during the initial days, here are some tips:

• Go super low-carb for the first week, aiming for no more than 10 grams of net carbs per day. This will help deplete your glycogen stores and get you into ketosis faster.
• Start with an intermittent fast. Intermittent fasting can accelerate your transition into ketosis.
• Exercise strategically. Begin your first day of keto with some high-intensity exercise, and then switch to light exercises like walking or cycling on subsequent days. This will help you burn through your glycogen stores and encourage your body to utilise fat for energy.
• Consume MCTs (Medium-Chain Triglycerides). These fatty acids are converted directly into ketones, providing your brain with an alternative fuel source when glucose levels are low.
• Eat more low-carb vegetables. Green vegetables like spinach and kale are rich in iron, manganese, and potassium, which are essential for maintaining clear thinking and consistent energy levels.

Prepare for decreased strength and endurance

As your brain is struggling to energize itself during the first few days of carb restriction, your muscles will also experience a decrease in strength and endurance. This is because your muscles, like your brain, are used to running on glucose. Although your muscles can run on fat, they are not yet adapted to using mostly fat and ketones for fuel.

Some keto beginners will find that they can't follow the same workouts as before. They feel so drained early into their workout that they can't make it through their regular routine. This will typically pass within the next month as your body adapts to burning ketones and fat instead of using sugar for fuel.

However, if your training consists primarily of high-intensity activities that last longer than 30 seconds at a time (e.g. sprinting, playing competitive sports, and lifting weights in sets that have more than 6 reps), you may still struggle to keep your performance at the same level as before. This happens because your body cannot burn fat and ketones to fuel activities at high intensities.

It doesn't matter how keto-adapted you are — your muscles will always require faster-burning fuel sources like creatine phosphate and carbohydrates for high-intensity exercises. For this reason, you may need to incorporate more carbs into your diet or change your training strategies until your body is fully keto-adapted and can refill its glycogen stores effectively (this can take anywhere from 3 to 6 months).

To prevent any loss in strength and endurance, try these strategies:

• Change your training regime temporarily. Focus on exercises that are of low to moderate intensity and/or high intensity that lasts for around 15 seconds per effort. Every three to five weeks, test out your capacity for high-intensity workouts by doing your original training regime. If you are still struggling, then give your body more time to keto-adapt.
• Implement a targeted ketogenic diet. You can do this by consuming a small amount of easily absorbable carbs before your workouts.
• Try using a cyclical ketogenic diet. This keto diet approach provides you with another way of upping your carb intake so that you can improve performance and reap the benefits of ketosis at the same time.
• Make sure you are meeting your macronutrient needs. Consuming enough protein and fat is a crucial component of your diet's success and exercise performance. If you are not eating enough fat or protein, you will not be able to optimize your workouts.
• Eat plenty of low-carb vegetables. The iron, manganese, and potassium in green vegetables are all important for keeping your energy levels consistent.

Know how to remedy digestive issues

Digestive issues are a common side effect of the keto diet, as your body adapts to low-carb living. These issues can manifest as constipation or diarrhoea.

If you experience diarrhoea in the first week of keto, it is likely due to your body excreting excess water. Once your body adjusts to lower insulin levels, your stools should start becoming more solid.

If your stools remain runny after you are in ketosis, you may not be consuming enough fibre. You can experience constipation for the same reason.

• Consume more low-carb vegetables. The minerals and soluble fibre in these veggies will provide bulk to your stool while simultaneously remineralising your body. This will help prevent constipation and diarrhoea. Examples of low-carb vegetables include asparagus, kale, bell peppers, and arugula.
• Stay hydrated. Drink plenty of water and ensure you are consuming enough minerals to bring balance back to your digestive tract.
• Practice stress-relieving methods. Stress can cause both diarrhoea and constipation. Keto dieting will initially increase your stress levels, so make sure you are getting enough sleep and practising stress relief methods like meditation, yoga, and outdoor walks.

Be aware of the keto flu

The keto flu is a term that refers to the period after you start the diet when your body is adjusting to burning fat for energy. Some people have no problem with it, but others feel miserable. In the first week or so, you may experience extreme lethargy, mental fog, and even have trouble walking upstairs. You may also deal with constipation or diarrhea due to a change in fiber intake.

The keto flu is essentially what you may experience when going through a carbohydrate withdrawal. There is a good and bad side to this. On the one hand, going on a diet that makes you feel bad can make it harder to stick to. On the other hand, once your body goes through withdrawal, you’ll find that the temptations to overeat and make poor food choices won’t be as big of an obstacle as before.

The duration of the keto flu varies. While some dieters may have slight and unnoticeable symptoms for a day or two, others might have symptoms for a week or more. It all depends on how quickly your body adapts to a reduction in carbs.

• Add in a pre-diet phase where you start weaning yourself off carbs before going keto.
• Be patient with yourself. A low-carb, high-fat diet is a big change, and it might seem impossible at first. Go easy on yourself and your body.
• Listen to your body for cues like thirst (drink water) and dehydration (supplement with electrolytes).
• Add electrolytes to your water every day. Lack of electrolytes in the body is one of the leading causes of keto flu.
• Salt: When you start keto, you will naturally reduce salt intake, which reduces water retention. Since a low-carb diet is naturally diuretic, there is no need to worry about water retention, so feel free to put the salt back on the table! 5 grams of salt daily is ideal for keto flu and replenishing electrolytes.
• Magnesium: Take 300mg a day to help with keto flu.

Frequently asked questions