Keto Diet vs Intermittent Fasting I.F. - Which Is Better?

Keto versus intermittent fasting. what is Keto? what is intermittent fasting? when

should you do one or the other or could you even do them together? in this video

we're going to explore these ideas so that you can make the best decisions for

your health goals and you can do it in a healthy way coming right up

I'm Dr. Ekberg I'm a holistic doctor and a former Olympian if you want to truly

master health and performance by understanding how the body really works

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

miss anything both ketogenic diets and intermittent

fasting have gotten a lot of headlines lately and the reason is they get

results for people why do they work so well for all sorts of health problems

because most health problems are due to insulin resistance whether it's obesity

or pre-diabetes or full-blown diabetes insulin is the central component and

insulin resistance is the result of getting this system out of balance so

the ketogenic diet is when you reduce carbohydrates so much that your body has

no choice but to start burning fat because most people have trained their

bodies into relying on carbohydrates so their bodies don't know how to use fat

and the only way to get the body to start using that fat again is to reduce

the carbs so much that the body really has no choice and then as the body

learns to burn fat you become fat adapted and a byproduct of fat burning

is ketones so cutting carbs low enough to produce ketones is called a ketogenic

diet and it's a measurable physiological state you can do a urine test you can do

a blood test and you can see if you have ketones to a significant degree then you

know that at that point you're burning fat

so that's a good thing and once you start burning fat instead of carbs and

you lower the carbs there's less need for insulin so you reverse insulin

resistance same thing with intermittent fasting

because the only thing that cuts carbohydrates more than the ketogenic

diet is fasting meaning you don't eat at all for a period of time so these two

concepts really go hand-in-hand and it's a very good idea to use the two together

so let's look a little bit about how this mechanism in the body works where

does the problem start and and how do we improve it so if you eat food any kind

of food then your body gets more resources and it can use the resources

for fuel or it can store some of them for later use or if you eat something

that has building blocks your body can build a new tissue so the most blood

sugar the most insulin response you can get is by eating carbohydrates any food

you eat will give you some insulin response but carbohydrates give you the

most because carbs are absorbed very quickly they raise blood sugar quickly

and when blood sugar goes up very quickly then we need insulin to lower

the blood sugar again so we get a large spike of insulin the more blood sugar

Rises the bigger the spike of insulin and of course this happens more the more

refined the carbohydrate is so the the worst would be pure glucose and pure

sugar and refined grains refined starches because when they refine

they're broken down to smaller particles smaller components so it's very very

quick for the body to absorb them and that's a problem fast absorption causes

high insulin spikes and insulin is a storage hormone it's an anabolic

hormone why do we have it because the body goes through periods of feast and

famine sometimes there's plenty sometimes there's not so much so when

there's plenty it's a good idea to put some away for the times where we don't

have so much so when you have plenty your body first says let's build and

repair the stuff that needs repairing and the second says second thing it says

is let's put some away for another day so that means when there is plenty of

food and you get a big insulin spike the tendency to store is much greater than

the tendency to use and when you develop insulin resistance now the cells get so

much that they start saying no we can't handle any more fuels you gave us all

this sugar we converted it to glycogen as much as we could then we turn the

rest into fat but now we just have no place to put it and at that point the

cells start to put up a defense they become resistant to insulin and at this

point when insulin is high then we don't have access to use it anymore all those

stores we put away the body doesn't release them freely under the influence

of a lot of insulin so what happens then once we custom the body to this

carbohydrate metabolism to the habit of relying on carbohydrates for energy is

we get hungry very quickly if you get hungry quickly you have to eat more

meals and you get cravings for more carbs and so on and so on so what's the

problem with frequent meals we hear that so much they tell us oh you should eat

small meals frequently why is that a good idea or a bad idea no it's a

terrible idea every time you eat anything it's to some degree a mess

to trigger insulin and to increase storage and if you do that six times a

day you're telling the body to store fat six times a day and then you get more

and more cravings and what do you crave you crave carbohydrates because they're

absorbed the fastest they can get your blood sugar back up the fastest and now

you get stuck in a loop where you're storing more and more you're using

you're burning less and less you're eating more frequent meals you're

telling your body often several times a day four five six times a day to store

more carbs as fat on the other hand if we eat a different kind of food if we

eat fat and protein if we eat fatty meats and non starchy vegetables and

butter and full fat dairy and fish then this food is absorbed much much slower

whereas carbohydrates can start getting into the bloodstream basically within

seconds or maybe a few minutes fat and protein going take hours after you eat a

big steak with some fat then it might be three four hours before that has any

impact on your blood sugar or a significant impact so it's a very slow

absorption which means that there is a very small insulin response and that

means that with this kind of food there's a balance between storage and

usage we eat we have plenty the body puts some of it away but because the

insulin isn't so high we have access to the storage so if you go for a few hours

between meals then it's not a problem you feel full much longer so the

tendency becomes to eat fewer meals I have people all the time we put them on

a program in the clinic and they start eating fewer carbs they start

cutting back on the bread and the pasta and the cookies they start eating a

little bit more fat they start eating real food and all of a sudden they say

do I have to eat three times a day can I can I skip breakfast I'm not really

hungry in the morning and this is what happens when your body gets into balance

we're not designed we're not required to eat three to six times a day that's a

modern idea based on carbohydrate dependency once we eat whole food we

start to eat fewer meals your body is totally satisfied with having at first

three and then eventually two and in some cases maybe just one meal a day and

because of this because you have a balance between the storage and the

usage you put some away and then you use it when you need it instead of getting

cravings you get balance so this system is much much easier to maintain it is

easier on on the mind it's easier on the hunger because you're balanced you don't

get out of control you don't have blood sugar swings so keto and intermittent

fasting fits right into both of these systems and what I would suggest is you

do this gradually because it's not that you can't do it fast it's not that you

don't get great results but if you truly want to make long-lasting changes if you

want to do things that you can continue for the rest of your life and why

wouldn't you if something gets you healthy then of course you want to do it

the rest of your life then you want to create habits around this you want to

take out one type of food and create a habit around a healthier type of food

until that becomes the norm until it doesn't feel strange and if you do it

gradually then in a matter of a few months you will have all new habits and

your body wasn't shocked and you grew into that new lifestyle so

it's not a strain or a stress so if you do keto you start by cutting down the

carbs by increasing the fat and the protein depending on how much protein

you eat protein shouldn't be too high because that also triggers insulin but

different people do well on different amounts of protein so some people who

are very insulin resistance they might want to cut their protein down quite a

bit maybe in the 15-20 percent range where others who are maybe leaning more

toward a carnivore diet if they do well on that they might go a little bit

higher on the protein and intermittent fasting fits right into this as well

because intermittent fasting is when you go longer between meals so the opposite

of intermittent fasting is six meals a day when you eat every time you get a

chance you top off your blood sugar a little bit your body never gets a chance

to recover from that insulin resistance with intermittent

fasting most people I would recommend is you start cutting carbs increase fat and

skip snacks then you probably are at three meals a day and then when you

don't feel the need for three meals a day you skip one of them typically a lot

of people have no problem skipping breakfast but everyone's different so

play with it then you're at two meals a day so now maybe you eat at 9:00 in the

morning and 6:00 at night so you have a nine hour feeding window and the rest is

a fasting window it's a 15 hour fasting window then you move it up and you eat

at lunch and you eat at 6:00 now you have an 18 hour fasting window then you

might push it another couple hours you eat at 2:00 and at 6:00 now you have a

20 hour fasting window so depending on what you need to do you can push the

window even further and some people go into 24 hours 36 hours etc and there's

some benefits to that but play with it and see what works for you see where you

feel the best so the best way to do this of course then is to combine the

low-carbohydrate with the few meals some people can get away with medium to high

carb and few meals so I did a video on ohm add one meal a day on a keto diet

versus a diet with more carbohydrates and some people can do that and feel

great on it so there's no hard and fast rule that says this is the way it is I

think for most people it's probably a whole lot easier to skip meals the less

carbs you eat because the better fat adapted you become the easier it's going

to be to stretch that fasting window but again everyone is different and I've had

people comment and say oh yeah I had to do it with keto or no I feel much better

when I when I do it with some carbohydrates for most people I think

the low-carb version is better it's going to be easier but if you really

want to and the car a little bit more carb works for you then that's still

powerful because even if you're not keto you are utilizing the principle of

intermittent fasting anytime you don't eat you don't produce insulin and you

allow your body to become more insulin sensitive the worst of course is as

always the official guidelines to eat high carb to eat bread and pasta and

whole grains and to eat six times a day that is a terrible idea if you are

insulin resistant if you're young and active and you're not insulin resistant

if your body is still functioning really well then you can get away with that

type of lifestyle at least for a good long while maybe decades but

for most people on that diet they're going to develop insulin resistance

after a while and if you have insulin resistance already then it's a terrible

idea then you need to go and use one or more of these tools to reverse insulin

resistance so both keto and intermittent fasting

are tools to reverse insulin resistance you can use both or you can use one at a

time I would probably recommend that you do both because it just makes good sense

you get your results faster and one kind of really feeds into the other it makes

it very very easy to do if you have any questions or comments on what we just

talked about please let me know down below and if you're new to the channel

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