Keto vs Fasting - Which Is Better?

hello health champions today I'm going to talk about keto versus fasting the

ketogenic diet versus fasting or intermittent fasting so in this video

you'll learn how they are similar and how they are different so that you'll

know how to pick one over the other or a combination of both so you can reach

your health goals the fastest and in perfect health

coming right up the first thing they have in common is that they are very

strict on carbohydrates they restrict a lower carbohydrate so in the ketogenic

diet you will eat typically less than 30 grams of net carbs per day and when you

cut the carbohydrates that low you will also dramatically lower insulin so

insulin is a fat storing hormone it converts excess fuel into fat and it

prevents the burning of stored fat for energy number three when insulin goes

down dramatically therefore then the body is allowed to start burning fat

when we reduce carbs dramatically the body has to find an alternate source of

fuel namely fat but it can't do that with a lot of insulin around so all of

these three things work together number four is ketones ketones is an

alternate brain fuel and the ketones they result they're a byproduct of fat

burning so when the body learns to use fat for fuel there's a lot of ketones

around and now they become the primary fuel for the brain so in the absence of

glucose when we don't have a lot of carbs floating around in the system then

up to 75% of the fuel for the brain becomes ketones number five ketones

the ketogenic diet it reduces inflammation most inflammation is due

to insulin and all of the factors associated with insulin and all the

factors that promote metabolic syndrome and leads to cardiovascular disease and

diabetes and strokes and so forth so by reducing insulin dramatically we also

reduce inflammation number six they both increase mitochondria and mitochondria

is the little powerhouse inside the cell it's what makes most of the energy that

you have access to on a daily basis and because mitochondria can only use oxygen

and because fat can only be burned through oxygen then when the body gets

fat adapted it's going to up regulate the number of mitochondria so you're

going to improve your ability to produce energy through the mitochondria number

seven glutathione is the body's own antioxidant there is a lot of talk about

eating antioxidants we got to get the fruits and the vegetables and the plants

and they have antioxidants and that can be beneficial not necessarily for the

antioxidants but the only antioxidant that really truly matters is glutathione

and the body can make it itself it's our internal intracellular antioxidant and

through a ketogenic diet or fasting we're going to increase that production

number eight we have a decrease in cancer because cancer loves sugar and

carbohydrates and cancer does comparatively better than the rest of

the body cells when oxygen is low and glucose is high so by changing all these

previous seven factors then cancer is not going to thrive as much and the body

has a much better chance of not feeding it and allowing the immune system to

destroy it and clean it up so all these eight factors are the same

in Kido vs. fasting except that in fasting they

happen more whatever Kido benefits we get we get more of them when we do the

fasting and why is that because Kido is a restriction in carbohydrates fasting

is an elimination of carbohydrate so if we think about this on a gradient as

from a high carb low fat diet might have 300 or more grams of sugar and

carbohydrates and Mediterranean diet might have a hundred to 200 a Paleo diet

might have seventy to a hundred low carb high fat starts at about 50 to 70 and

the ketogenic diet is anywhere from less 30 or less all the way down to 210 or

even zero but fasting is zero carbohydrates we're not eating any

carbohydrates and not only are we restricting the carbs but we're

restricting all the nutrients so if we compare the two then the ketogenic diet

and the fasting they are the closest together at the one end of of the

spectrum so in that sense they're very similar to each other

fasting just takes it one step further so those are the similarities what are

the differences how do they differ if fasting can do more is there anything

else that fasting exclusively does or that keto exclusively does well there's

something called a toffee gee that means self eating and that only happens to any

significant degree when we have extended fasts when we go for a long period of

time usually 24 hours or more even maybe 48 hours or more then we're not adding

any nutrients to the body we're not adding any building materials or any

energy substrate so the body has to get really really good at recycling and

using the stuff that we have so therefore it up regulates the cleaning

crew and it sends out all of these immune cells and all these different

macrophages and they start recycling and then once you start recycling they also

get better at repairing because all the tissues become more precious and now we

got to take care of everything because there's nothing new coming in it also up

regulates the production of stem cells it up regulates the function of the

immune system because that's part of the cleanup crew and because we're not

adding any protein either protein becomes the most precious resource we

have typically enough fat that we can generate energy but protein becomes very

very precious and in order for us not to break down muscle we have to get really

good at recycling the protein and therefore the body up regulates growth

hormone so an extended fast can up regulate growth hormone by as much as

2,000 percent that makes sure that we use the protein that's available to the

optimum degree and we maintain those muscles so there's a minimum of muscle

wasting during a fast so fasting has all of those benefits then why wouldn't we

do it forever well that's pretty obvious because if you don't eat eventually

you'll die you'll run out of fuels so that's the limitation of fasting that

you can only fast as long as you have enough resources in the body then the

body sets that limit and you don't get healthier you get sicker that's the

benefit of the ketogenic diet because with the keto diet you still get to eat

you still get to put enough fuel in the body to function you're just not putting

in the carbs to trigger the insulin and when you can eat you don't have a

problem with hunger as a matter of fact hunger usually decreases when you don't

have the blood sugar fluctuations people typically notice that they get less

hungry on the ketogenic diet and that has two benefits when you eat less you

tend to lose weight if that's goal but what I find is when you're less

hungry you don't have to eat so often it saves a tremendous amount of time to

only eat once or twice a day and you don't have to worry about getting up in

the morning and having breakfast every day you just grab a cup of coffee or

even a bottle of water and and you're good because your body is fat adapted

your hunger has gone down because you get to eat the ketogenic diet is

sustainable if you wanted to you could maintain it for months or years or even

longer because you can eat and you can work out you can continue you can

maintain your muscle or you can even build muscle while staying on a

ketogenic diet and if you have a highly active job or if you have hobbies that

require a lot of physical activity and energy requirements then you can still

eat and supply those energy requirements so these become obviously the the

drawbacks of the fasting that it is not sustainable that you will experience

some hunger because you're not eating it's typically not as bad as people

think because your body sort of you get hungry for a few minutes you drink a cup

of tea and then you're good for half a day so it's not as bad as people think

but you will have some hunger when you're fasting it is not sustainable

indefinitely obviously because at some point you run out of fuel you cannot

build muscle on auto Fiji because you're not adding any protein with with fasting

and etaf adji the protein in the body is fixed you will lose some because the

recycling isn't a hundred percent perfect so you can't build muscle and

eventually even though the auto Fujii and the high growth hormone will

maintain muscle as much as possible it will burn the fat first and spare the

muscle eventually if you go on a fast long enough then there will be a certain

percentage protein that's lost and you're not

adding any new so you will lose some muscle also if you require high activity

then fasting might be a little bit hard to do that because the etaf adji the

fasting is a little bit stressful it's so focused on healing and recycling it

may not be able to generate a lot of energy in the long run for a physically

demanding lifestyle so that's how they are similar and that's how they're

different that's some advantages and drawbacks so let's just kind of pull it

together and consider who might want to use this and when so the question is if

you're trying to lose weight how much do you have left to lose so if you have

hundreds of pounds left then no problem you can go on quite a long fast you can

extend it for a good bit thirty days and maybe more or you can do the 30 days and

then go keto intermittent fasting for a while and then do another 30 days and if

you have to lock a lot stored to burn then you can do that if you're thin like

myself then you can't go very long I still do a fast once in a while I've

done two fasts recently this year in the last year of four days and that gives me

a tremendous amount of auto Fujii my ketones went sky-high and I get some of

these benefits but I can't go much longer because then I quickly start

losing too much weight so that's the main factor of how long you can go is

how much do you have to lose next consideration is how insulin-resistant

are you and you don't want to measure this by blood glucose so some people who

are type-2 diabetic they push their body into that state for four decades they

might have a glucose of 300 and still not be as insulin resistant as some

people with a much lower glucose some people who are full-blown type 2

medics they just cut out the soda and their body starts reversing because they

even though they had pushed their body quite far they hadn't really sort of

destroyed the body they didn't have a predisposition for it necessarily

whereas someone else who might have done ketones might have been in ketosis for

months or years and who for some reason cannot seem to lose a lot of weight they

might still have a lot of insulin resistance and how do you figure this

out you do it by measuring fasting insulin not the fasting glucose because

glucose changes all the time fasting insulin is going to give you the

best picture of how insulin resistance you are because if you cut back your

carbs and your insulin stays high then you're very insulin resistant and if

that's the case then even if your blood sugar is normal you might have to go for

a good bit longer you might have to go for a week or more before your body

really makes a dent in that insulin level next consideration is how active

are you if your lifestyle requires a lot of physical activity either through your

job or through hobbies then you may not be able to do a whole lot of fasting but

if on the other hand you have more of a desk job a sedentary job you don't have

a whole lot of physical activities you might do an occasional like very very

brief hit exercise or just enjoy leisurely walks then there's no reason

why you shouldn't be able to fast quite extended ly because you even though you

don't put a lot of calories in your body your mental focus is typically better on

both keto and fasting than it is on most standard diets so a lot of people they

start fasting or doing keto they'll actually notice better mental clarity

better focus another consideration is how quickly do you want this to happen

so just like we talked about fasting does basically everything Quito does but

it does it quicker so if you're in a hurry if you really really want this to

happen quickly or if you just want to give yourself sort of a jump start if

you're a type 2 diabetic and you want to get out of the starting blocks running

then it might be a really good idea to start off with an extended fast maybe 7

1014 days so how do you do the fasting how do you get into it well most of us

already are fasting 12 hours every day if you have your last meal at 8 p.m. and

you eat breakfast at 8 then there's 12 hours during the night where you are

fasting you're not putting anything caloric and your nutrition into your

body and then all you have to do is push your breakfast a couple of hours later

and put your dinner a couple of hours earlier and you have gone to a 16 hour

fasting window and that is how I would recommend for for most people to do this

okay you start where you are and then you just nudge the Border's you nudge

the limits a little bit and you teach your body gradually to get used to it

then you slowly become fat adapted you teach your body that there's a longer

period without food and it figures out what to do then and then you can push

this maybe all the way to 20 or 24 hours which is called one meal a day and a lot

of people find it very convenient and very simple to do one meal a day and

once your body has gotten to that point now you can try and skip a day so you do

36 hours and then 48 hours and so on and once you've tried that and you know what

your body feels like how it reacts how you feel now you can go 3 4 5 days and

you're gonna be perfectly fine your body is going to be stable just pay attention

just notice how you feel and if you don't feel good then

something and if you notice that you can do several days and do fine or maybe

even a week then if you're still feeling fantastic like a lot of people will at

that point you could go up to thirty days I wouldn't recommend going very

very long unless you have medical supervision someone who can monitor

closely who has some experience with that but if you just increase it

gradually and you pay attention to how you feel then you should be perfectly

fine I would however strongly recommend with both the ketogenic diet and

intermittent fasting that you monitor that you measure your glucose and you

measure your ketones so that you know where they are because glucose should go

down and ketones should go up and if they don't if glucose goes down but

you're not making any ketones there's something wrong alright so if you don't

get these expected changes then you want to kind of back off and regroup and try

it again maybe consult with some people and see why aren't these changes

happening so if you fit into one of these four if you have a lot to lose if

you're very insulin resistance if you're very if you're not so active and if you

want to lose it quickly then I would suggest that you experiment with some

longer fasts if you don't have any of those four then you probably just want

to do a combination of keto and intermittent fasting maybe throw in a

two or three day fast a few times a year to get the autophagy benefits but you

probably are going to find that the keto plus intermittent fasting is going to

get you to your goals and you're going to find it a very comfortable very

doable lifestyle if you enjoyed this video make sure you take a look at that

one thank you so much for watching I'll see you in the next video