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Reading time: 5 min The ketogenic diet continues its exponential rise; gaining followers year after year. Its easy understanding and implementation are an important part of its success. After all, it's just about not eating carbs... Or at least, that's the concept that has permeated socially. While it is a dietary approach with much potential to improve health, its misinterpretation and practice often ruin its potential benefits . For these reasons we are going to expose the most common mistakes in the ketogenic diet and how to solve them.Mistake 1: Taking for granted that we are going to lose weight and body fat
Most of the followers who win this dietary approach arrive for a very specific objective: to lose weight and body fat. And while the keto diet has great potential to achieve this goal, it's a big mistake to think that it will do so for the sake of doing it. It is very likely that we will lose a few kilos on the scale in the first weeks of implementation, but the reality is that the weight lost corresponds mostly to muscle and liver glycogen , which are carbohydrates stored in the body. In addition, glycogen retains a high amount of intracellular water, so it is normal to go to the bathroom frequently during the introduction of the diet and, therefore, lose even more weight on the scale digits.
As you can see, of all the weight lost, practically none is from body fat. Which means that, as soon as we reintroduce carbohydrates into our diet, we will regain every last gram of previously lost weight.
Understanding this point is very important as it can frustrate many people. Therefore, you must understand that the fat you can lose will be determined by your ability to achieve an energy imbalance or caloric deficit with your diet.
Mistake 2: Eating processed foods without variety
The first known flaw in this diet inevitably leads us to the second: eating ultra-processed foods and making them the basis of our diet. Fried pork rinds, bacon, bacon, nut creams... These are foods with just traces of carbohydrates and very fatty; even rich in group A vitamins, which makes us think that they are ideal for this diet. But a ketogenic diet can look better and be more sustainable if we rely on other essential and higher quality foods.
Vegetables are the most overlooked great foods during this diet . They provide a large amount of fiber, minerals, vitamins and phytochemicals. They also promote proper functioning of the digestive ecosystem and should be the basis of this dietary approach.
It is important to remember that this diet is based on consuming little carbohydrate, but not eliminating it completely … Furthermore, getting into ketosis by continuously measuring the level of ketones in the blood should not be a priority. The cornerstone has to be to put most of the few carbohydrates that we eat in the form of vegetables and vegetables as varied as possible.
Error 3: Not completing the diet with sports
Without a doubt, this is the most common mistake. Diet is only a part of everything that a healthy and complete lifestyle occupies because, to achieve an optimal hormonal or emotional state, sport is the best complement that exists.
Playing sports and gaining muscle mass help us to raise our metabolic rate, which are the calories we burn at rest, and therefore, to be able to eat much more while we achieve our goals. In addition, doing intense exercise favors the ability of our muscles to capture glucose in the body, which allows us to reintroduce amounts of carbohydrates without failing our purpose with this style of eating.
Mistake 4: Incorporate unnecessary calorie servings
While there are potential cognitive benefits to drinking an Irish coffee or bullet coffee in the morning, these should be reserved almost exclusively for high-performance athletes with an efficient metabolism and who demand a very high amount of energy in their daily lives and during high intensity training.
For an average user who does moderate exercise, these 'keto snacks' could account for up to 30-35% of the total intake of appropriate daily calories. And, although they come from a quality food such as virgin coconut oil, the ease of eating them is extreme, so that we can easily get fat or simply not achieve any of the proposed objectives in the medium term.
Mistake 5: Understanding this diet as a solution to all our problems
There is no such thing as a way of eating that will solve every last one of our problems, not even the keto diet. But this lends itself to such an interpretation because the first sensations it usually produces are wakefulness in the morning, activity, suppression of hunger... It almost seems like what we have been looking for for years. But lengthened indefinitely in time and dogmatically, that is; By not adapting it to our life situation, it can turn against us, preventing us from sleeping properly or going into states of malnutrition due to eating very little and ingesting few nutrients.
It is important to know the instrumental character and the form of incorporation that this way of eating has. To do this, you have to introduce it into your life by asking yourself a few simple questions: Will I never try a funny piece of bread again? Will I not be able to taste a good plate of pasta again? Will I not try a piece of cake on my birthday until the rest of the year? of my days?
Everyone is free to draw their own conclusion, but the first objective to comply with a diet is its adaptability to our rhythm of life, and this requires that this diet be conceived either as a specific strategy or as a flexible implementation and always with the objective in the long term to re-introduce carbohydrates without causing us the metabolic mishap that they used to cause.
Mistake 6: Macronutrients and ratios
On most occasions we tend to stay with the 'leitmotifs' and lose sight of very important concepts and parameters. In the case of the ketogenic diet, it is usually the proportion that the parts keep. This nutrition system does not consist of completely eliminating carbohydrates and raising dietary protein intake to pathological limits, but rather in maintaining adequate proportions that favor an environment that helps us regulate biorhythms ; to stay active in the morning and get rest at night.
wake up mood
chill mood
These proportions of macronutrients, approximately, are the following:- 25% Proteins
- 15% Carbohydrates (Most of these being fiber)
- 60% Fat