A Beginners Guide to Keto
A beginners guide to keto | Getting Started on Keto | Keto guide for beginners | Keto Beginners |
Getting Started on the keto diet
So you’ve read a bit about how what the keto diet is all about and now you are taking the plunge and want to get stuck in. You might have seen and heard many success stories of friends, family members and even celebrities losing huge amounts of weight. Have you tried various diets and none have been right for you? Well here we hope to help you get started on the keto diet with some helpful advice, tips and other information to prepare you for the change your body is about to go through. And just to clarify, it is a probably one of the biggest shocks your body will have gone through. But, if you see this through, take advice, do the right things and this will become your new lifestyle.
For many people, once they get started on keto, they find they just don’t want to get off it. There are lots of great foods to eat, and not to mention the health benefits, weight loss and body shape change. So please read on, get on board the keto journey and embrace it. There will be times when you might feel less motivated if weight loss slows, or stalls for a period. This is normal for many people. So let’s get started!
Advice and info on getting started
Keto for beginners – Changing over to keto can be challenging for some. It’s normal to feel a little scared when starting a diet that has such a huge impact in how your body works. To help you succeed, your first tip is to try and stick with foods that are naturally low in carbs. If you find a keto recipe, try to use the ones with just a few ingredients. Don’t get too complex straight away. You’ll quickly pick up and be able to identify low carb foods and then you can soon start experimenting further.
Because you are now eating a low carb diet with your body being used to carbs as your main source of energy, you now need to make sure you get enough protein and fats. If you don’t you will feel hungry, miserable, no energy and more likely to fail. You can read our guide on Fats, Carbs and Proteins to get more info as to which foods contain what.
You may or may not have already heard stories about people on the keto diet getting flu. So during the beginning of keto, your body needs more electrolytes ( foods that are high in magnesium, potassium and sodium ) If you don’t get enough of these at the start, you will experience flu like symptoms, such as aches, pains, and severe lack of energy. This can of course be avoided in some ways. For one, make sure you get your salts and drink water. You can even put some rock salt in water. Other ways such as bone broth and supplements can be found in our pages related to keto flu and keto supplements.
What to expect when starting out
Keto guide for beginners – These can be bought online ( Amazon have some high rated here ) or at your pharmacy and are used for testing ketone levels in your urine. They are small strips that have a colour indicator for you to compare to a colour chart.
It will take a few days, 1-3, for your body to start producing ketones and then they will be passed through and appear in your urine. This is because your body does not know what to do with them yet. Eventually the colours on the strips will lighten and go back to neutral as you body enters ketosis and becomes keto adapted.
It can take up to 4 weeks as this is a complex process involving most of the body’s systems. It has to also be said that it can take months before your body fully knows how to use keytones. But, once you are keto adapted, your primary source of energy will come from these and so your energy levels will increase and be restored.
During the induction stage, your hormone levels will change as a result of you glycogen levels being depleted and so your body retains less water. A large amount of weight loss is quite common in the first few days and weeks of the keto diet. This is because one molecule of glycogen attracts 4 molecules of water. So you will probably spend a lot of time on the toilet as you excrete water due to losing glycogen. Once all the glycogen stores from your body have gone and you enter ketosis, you will begin to burn your fat stores. If you are a larger person then you could see a considerable amount of weight loss in a short time.
What else can you expect?
Insomnia – Some people, not all can experience difficulties falling asleep when getting started on the keto diet. If this is you, there are many tips, tricks and supplements out there to get you through the first stages and back to sleeping normally.
Keto Breath – Once again, this does not affect everyone starting on keto, but some will get a fruity type of breath smell. Try not to go straight for mints and gum as they can kick you out of ketosis. Instead, try to drink plenty of water or mint tea. It won’t last forever anyway and so it’s not a big deal. Read more about Keto Breath here.
Pages you might like..
