10 Amazingly Easy Steps You Must Do Before Starting Keto For Beginners

hello health champions what is the best way to start the ketogenic diet and what

would you want to do even before you start the ketogenic diet so there's

going to be a lot of good information for a beginner here but there's also

going to be a lot of value for someone who's already doing the ketogenic diet

because it's going to solidify all the reasons and the understanding that you

have of why you're doing it coming right up

hey I'm dr. Ekberg I'm a holistic doctor and a former Olympic decathlete and if

you want to truly master health by understanding how the body really works

make sure you subscribe and hit that notification bell so you don't miss

anything to make sure you watch carefully on each

of the 10 points so you get the full understanding and also make sure you

stay to the end because I've got a really exciting bonus for you the

ketogenic diet has received a lot of attention in the recent years because

people are getting results but there's also a lot of criticism there's a lot of

skepticism there's some people who are just totally opposed and then there's

others who say that reluctantly that yes it does help with weight loss but you

don't want to do it long-term so there's a lot of fears like why would you want

to do it if it helps but you can't do it long-term and all of that is based on

misunderstanding so today we're gonna clear all of that out and we're gonna

give you the perfect way to start a ketogenic diet a lot of people are

afraid they don't know if they can do it right and they've also heard about all

these reactions the keto flu the nausea the stomach upset the headaches and I'm

gonna show you a way where none of that is gonna happen number one I would

suggest that you set some goals and this may sound a little strange what does

that have to do with keto I just want to lose weight well the more goals the more

reason you have the more likely that you'll feel good about it and the more

likely that you're gonna follow through so first of all you want to figure out

what is your goal do you want to lose weight you want to

get healthy spell it out write down five things you want to get more flexible you

want to get more athletic you want to have more energy spell it out and then

you want to also give yourself sort of the the negative motivation and this I'm

not in favor of being negative but this can be very very powerful you write down

what will happen if you don't change what will it cost you health-wise what

will it cost you in terms of quality of life if you don't change anything all

right that can be very very powerful because then right after that you look

at the flip side of that and now you talk about you spell out even more how

do you want to feel how are you going to feel when you've accomplished all those

things when you have your ideal weight when you're flexible when you have the

energy when your life is the way it's supposed to be spell it out give

yourself five or ten different reasons for each one of these points and then to

really really sort of knock that out of the park

you will write down five to ten reasons why you absolutely will succeed why you

deserve it why you can do it and why it will happen and if you take an hour or a

couple of hours and you do this and then you write it down in an easy form where

you could look at it on a daily basis there is no way that you can fail with

this so the first why is personal why do you want to do this the second why is

why kedo what's so special about Kida what is it that that kita will do that

other diet hamund done so here is where we first need to understand that most of

the health problems that we have most of weight loss most of all the modern

diseases are because of insulin resistance the vast majority and the

ketogenic diet is a very very powerful tool to reverse insulin resistance

because a high carb high sugar diet triggers a lot of insulin when we have a

lot insulin for long periods of time we

develop insulin resistance insulin resistance creates even more insulin

production over time and all that insulin is a storage hormone so it clogs

us up it packs on the fat and we develop all these things associated with

metabolic syndrome the type-2 diabetes the high blood pressure the

cardiovascular disease the increased risk of stroke and also Alzheimer's

disease and dementia all of these are insulin resistance so

how does the ketogenic diet reverse that well fat is the only thing that doesn't

really trigger any insulin so by cutting back the sugars to a very low level

cutting back the carbs you're going to trigger very little insulin but then you

need to eat something else instead of those sugars and carbs and the obvious

choice then is fat because fat doesn't trigger insulin and the second thing

that the ketogenic diet does is it produces ketones there by the name and

when you cut back the carbs the body has to find an alternate fuel source which

is fat and at first the fat will be in the diet but as you get fat adapted your

body will start burning the fat off the body and when the insulin goes low

enough now your body doesn't care if you get the fat from the diet or from the

body it has equal easy access to both which means that you start losing weight

and your hunger goes down but a byproduct of fat burning is ketones and

ketones is the alternate fuel for the brain so ketones is an alternate brain

fuel if you eat a ton of carbohydrates and sugar then almost a hundred percent

of your brain fuel is going to be glucose but if you get on a ketogenic

diet then as you get into deeper nutritional ketosis you will have up to

75 scent of the fuel for the brain be

provided by ketones right so that's a good thing in itself but what's even

more important is that if you're very insulin resistant your brain can also

become insulin resistant and the insulin has different roles in the brain but

basically if the brain is insulin resistant then it doesn't work quite

right and it is lacking in fuel so now if you produce ketones then you have a

fuel for the brain that doesn't depend on insulin so you've bypassed the

resistance of giving the brain the resources and once you understand all of

that you also understand that I know you want to lose the weight but the weight

is not the problem the weight loss is not the goal the goal is to get healthy

to get the insulin resistance lowered and to provide some good fuel for the

brain so your body starts working again then you'll reverse the metabolic

syndrome and all of these things and guess what the weight loss will be a

bonus but don't focus on it because it's really irrelevant I know it's sort of

what's bugging you and you wanna get it done but focus on the health and

understand that the weight loss is just the result of insulin resistance so you

can lose weight by exercising five hours a day you will lose some weight but you

may not get your body back to balance you may not reverse insulin resistance

and then it's gonna be a constant fight and as long as you can't any time you

can't keep up the five hours of working out then the weight will tend to come

back so you have to get the body to balance you have to get healthy then the

weight will come off number three thing you want to do is to learn what foods

are ketogenic and there's a lot of misconceptions here some people think

that it's all about bacon and meat and fat and and butter and yes those are

good things but that's not the bulk or not definitely not all of the food

you're eating so any whole food that is non-starchy is

okay what does that mean so you can eat meat you can eat fish you

can eat chicken you can eat venison but you want to find a good quality and

understand that if the animal was unhealthy then it's not going to be

healthy for you if the animal was unhealthy it's gonna have all sorts of

inflammation and the wrong ratios of omega-3 fatty acids but if the animal

was healthy then everything was taking care of the animals imbalance and he

will provide good nutrition for you then you want to understand that you can eat

fat whole healthy fat and you can eat any non starchy vegetables

okay so broccoli cauliflower you can eat kale and lettuce and spinach and and

beans and asparagus there's hundreds and hundreds of different items that are

perfectly fine so it's not just about loading up on the fat and eating bacon

you can have some bacon but have some vegetables and some avocado and things

with it and then you want to learn to count net carbs and net carbs means that

you look at the total amount of carbohydrate in the food and then you

subtract the fiber because fiber is technically a carbohydrate but you can't

digest it so it doesn't count for you it doesn't contribute to any blood sugar it

doesn't give you any calories it just passes through so you don't count it the

fourth thing you want to do before you start keto is you want to recover from

fat phobia alright we have fat phobia it's so widespread it has penetrated

every level of health care and education whether people have are intelligent or

not they just have fat phobia because we heard it so many times but we need to

understand about fat that fat is good fat is food it's a normal healthy part

of what humans have eaten for as as we have been around as long as it's

not altered alright if it comes from an animal that healthy then it's not

altered if it comes from an avocado or a coconut or from an olive then it's

healthy if we take the avocado or the olive or the coconut and we squeeze it

and we make oil it's still good as long as we don't add excessive heat or

chemicals so that's why coconut oil and extra virgin olive oil and butter are

good fats because they are easy to produce you don't have to punish them

you don't have to destroy them you don't have to apply all that heat and pressure

if it's easy to get the fat out of them then the fat is unaltered and it's a

good fat the thing to understand and the biggest reason that they keep putting

out studies that show that fat is bad is because they don't understand what

insulin does and they don't understand what a low carb diet is earlier this

morning I saw another study another article and they said oh look saturated

fat is bad and then they said on a low-carb high-fat diet and they ate 40%

of calories from fat and 40% of calories from carbohydrate that is a moderate fat

high carbohydrate diet it will keep the insulin high and insulin plus fat is a

bad thing because insulin doesn't allow you to burn the fat it doesn't allow you

to use the fat the whole point of this is to allow the body to switch from a

carbohydrate metabolism to a fat metabolism and if the insulin is high

you're not allowing that switch and 40% of calories from carbohydrate is going

to keep insulin way way too high it doesn't give you a body a chance to

recover from that insulin resistance so whenever you see a study then

ask yourself how did they study this are they really understanding what they're

doing did they keep the carbohydrates below 10% or in keto maybe even below 5%

because if they didn't it's not a low-carb high-fat study what you will

find is if you do that if you keep your carbs really low and you eat whole

healthy fats from good sources then your blood triglycerides will drop within

days if you run the blood work they will go down which proves that if your lower

insulin you will burn the fats and then fat is a good thing it becomes a fuel

not a burden the fifth thing you want to do is to throw away sugar okay some

people say that you want to go through your whole pantry or whole house and

throw out anything that is not keto I don't think you have to start there but

you do want to throw away anything that is sugar anything that is sweet anything

that has an addictive effect anything that you know that you can't have just

one piece because those things are drugs and they make you lose your equilibrium

they make you lose your sense of hunger they have drug-like effects and they

will sabotage your efforts so you want to throw away any candy ice cream potato

chips anything sweet anything processed or

starchy alright because their drugs what you can keep is dark chocolate and you

want to find a good quality that you like and if you can't tolerate it yet

you want to work your way up to where you really enjoy seventy five percent or

higher chocolate cocoa content why is that because at that level the sugar is

so diluted by cocoa that it doesn't have that drug effect and it's different for

different people so you're gonna have to experiment a little bit but what I find

is I like 78 or 85% chocolate and if I have a piece

then it's very satisfying I don't have the urge to have another right whereas

if you eat milk chocolate or you eat chocolate with 50 percent then the first

piece gives you a desire for more and more and more and more and you can't

have that number six do you want to start measuring something and I would

strongly suggest you get a home kit to measure blood glucose and ketones you

don't need to measure ketones right away because there won't be any but you want

to get in the habit you want to have the equipment and you want to learn a little

bit about where your glucose levels are and how it behaves with different foods

and then as you get ready to go into ketosis you want to have the kit ready

so you can start measuring and seeing what those changes are then I would also

suggest you get a lab test either just go to any lab where you just pay upfront

or you can get it through your doctor at a visit and you want to get the a 1c and

you want to get fasting insulin because I've done a lot of videos you could look

at why that is important on insulin resistance and home iír and so forth but

you want to understand what your baseline is and because first of all you

can see where you are so you might see how far do you have to go how hard are

you gonna have to work what how drastic of a change do you have to make but it's

also going to allow you to monitor progress other than just on the scale

and how you feel this will be a very concrete measurement so these are the

four things that I would suggest glucose ketones a1c and fasting insulin get

yourself a kit for home and get yourself a lab test so you know where you stand

as a baseline number seven is electrolytes and if you go cold turkey

which is not what we're talking about in this programming these recommendations

then electrolytes can be a big problem because you're going to lose a lot of

fluids you're going to lose a lot of electrolytes and that's where most

people get their keto flu their headaches there they don't feel good if

you do it the way we're talking about to do it gradually

then electrolytes are probably not going to be an issue and you get plenty of

electrolytes from your non starchy vegetables and you can make sure that

you get enough salt on your food you get a good quality salt like a pink salt or

a sea salt then you probably won't have any problems but it never hurts to be a

little extra cautious because electrolytes are super important not

just if you're doing the keto diet or not all right you want to make sure that

you you have enough and you notice how you feel and so forth it's very easy way

to supplement number eight I would strongly recommend that you start a food

journal you can write it in on a piece of paper in an Excel spreadsheet you can

get a food app on your phone but you want to keep track of what you're eating

for many reasons the first one is to be honest with yourself so be totally 100%

honest and put everything in there first of all you're gonna notice what you're

actually eating some people go oh my god I had no idea

I ate 22 times a day but other people are also gonna notice that they once

they get in the habit then you pick something up and you go oh I have to put

this in my journal well you know I didn't really want this that was just a

habit I just picked it up because it wasn't there so it helps reinforce what

your habits are and how to change them the other reason for a food journal is

that you can keep track of your carbohydrates and in order to get into

the ketogenic diet then you want to keep them for most people at least below 50

carbs but most are probably going to have to get down to 30 and for some

people with really stubborn metabolism and insulin resistance you might have to

get down to 15 or even 10 at grams of carbs per day before you

start reversing your insulin resistance and before you start making significant

ketones number nine learn to cook keto foods so there are lots and lots of

recipes out there so if you already know how to cook then just go on the internet

get yourself one or two or three good cookbooks

on the ketogenic lifestyles you have ketogenic keto recipes and if you don't

know how to cook then you'd better learn and it's super easy it's just one of

those skills don't give yourself any excuses anymore just learn how to cook

and by following these recipes and by picking up a recipe here and there

you're gonna learn faster than you think it's like any other habit but it's a

life skill that you have to know if you're gonna be healthy in the long run

so a good goal I think is to on the internet or in a cookbook find two to

three new recipes every week just try stuff and some of it you're gonna love

and some of its gonna be not so interesting and then you create a little

archive of all the stuff you love and before you know it you'll have 10 15 20

wonderful recipes of food that you love food that is satisfying that's based on

actual whole food and then you're well on your way that's how you turn it into

a lifestyle rather than just a diet because diets don't work if you think

you're doing something temporarily then somewhere in the back your mind you're

planning to stop doing it and then chances are you're gonna go back to all

the stuff that created the problem in the first place

maybe not all at once but you'll start down a slippery slope if you haven't

ingrained a really solid lifestyle habit the tenth thing you want to do before

starting a ketogenic diet I believe is get fat adapted alright the whole point

of this is to transition from a carbohydrate dependent

metabolism to a fat based metabolism where your body learns to burn fat and

where it can go comfortably and for long periods without sugar and carbohydrates

that's called getting fat adapted and the easiest way to do this is to start

assuming that you eat three meals a day or let's say you eat three meals a day

plus snacks then the first thing you do is to reduce the snacks and then you

replace one meal with a ketogenic meal one of those things that you've learned

to cook now so one meal a day is a ketogenic meal and what you'll find is

if you were snacking before you won't want to snack anymore because the food

is going to be so much more satisfying it's going to fill you up and you'll

have no need to to supplement your your energy with any snacks alright and once

your body is comfortable with once you cut out the snacks and you're

comfortable with one ketogenic meal per day then you replace a second meal per

day assuming you eat three meals a day so now you have two out of three meals

being ketogenic and you are learning to cook you're learning to eat fewer meals

your body is adapting and learning to live off fat instead of carbohydrate and

then once you feel ready for it now you take all three meals you replace the

third meal as well with a ketogenic meal so you have three killer genic meals and

you're gonna feel very very good you're gonna feel satisfied and stable all

right are you ready for your bonus the very last thing that you need to do

before starting a ketogenic diet is to realize that by the time that you have

done numbers items 1 through 10 it is too late to start a ketogenic diet you

have already started you are already doing a ketogenic diet line

style you have replaced three meals with ketogenic meals and if you haven't

started measuring yet you will find by now if you do that you are having

ketones in your blood streams and that's probably why you're feeling so much

better at this point so this is how you can transition into it without even

realizing you're doing it people talk about the keto flu and these drastic

changes and will I get hungry and for some people that's okay you can do that

but in my humble opinion I would say that if you do it this way it's going to

be so smooth you're not even going to notice it and before you even have

realized it you are already on track to doing what you want to do to reaching

your health goals and it's going to be so easy so congratulations on your new

lifestyle it is not dangerous if you eat whole food and real food and a variety

of food it is what we are supposed to eat once you reach your health goal then

you can decide if you want to start introducing a little bit more carbs that

may be okay depending on on where you are some people probably want to keep

the ketogenic lifestyle at least 80 90 to 100 percent for years and years and

years others can probably go 5050 between a ketogenic and a low carb

lifestyle figure out what works for you experiment see where you feel the best

where your insulin where your glucose where all these different markers work

the best and where you function the best if you enjoyed this video make sure you

take a look at that one as well I appreciate you watching and I'll see you

in the next video