Intermittent Fasting & the Keto Diet
Did you know that the ketogenic diet was actually formed from the theory of fasting? I’m Thomas DeLauer with Keto-Mojo and I want to help you understand how testing your blood ketone levels and understanding the relationship between ketosis and fasting can truly help you get even more out of your body composition goals and get more out of your overall health goals with fasting.
You see, believe it or not the ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting are very similar. The whole idea with intermittent fasting is that you’re trying to abstain from food for a certain period of time so that your body ultimately creates ketone bodies and results in fat-burning, weight loss and fat loss, autophagy, lower blood sugar, mental clarity, and other health benefits. Now when it comes down to ketosis, of course, you’re eating the foods that are going to help your body stimulate ketones and refrain from the foods that would stop ketone production. At the end of the day we’re really after the same thing. So the benefits of intermittent fasting are similar to the benefits of the ketogenic low-carb diet.
What is Intermittent Fasting?
Generally, intermittent fasting is fasting for a minimum of 16 hours, having an eight-hour eating window, then fasting again after the eight-hour window. This can be a short-term or long-term repeat way of eating that, with the right dietary choices/macronutrients during your eating patterns (i.e. very low carbohydrates), can result in a number of fantastic health benefits, including fat loss, reversing obesity, and more.
Although personally, I recommend pushing the periods of fasting a little bit longer than 16 hours at a time because the benefits start at 16 hours.
But when you’re fasting, you typically come across a couple of hurdles. Now I like to categorize them into two things, physiological hurdles and mental hurdles.
You see we have this Pavlovian response to food. From the time that we are born, we are conditioned to eat food at the sound of a bell or at a specific time. Our alarm clock goes off, we eat food. The school bell rings, we eat food. The dinner bell rings, we eat food. We have this mental conditioning that we should just be eating at set periods of time and when we first have to overcome that it’s exceptionally difficult. We have a lot of mental roadblocks. We feel hungry even though we’re not hungry.
So what does keto testing have to do with this? Well, if you’re actually testing your ketones it’ll tell if you’re really hungry. And if you’re testing your glucose, it can tell if you’re truly hypoglycemic. Are you really feeling that way or is it just your mind playing tricks on you because you’re used to eating at a specific period of time? You’re truly trying to determine if you’re actually hungry or if you’re just mentally hungry. You can simply look at your blood ketone levels and if your ketone levels are high enough, you know that you have some fuel. And if you’re looking a little bit lower, then you know that you might truly actually be hungry. It’s really going to give you a little bit more of an indicator of whether you’re actually hungry or not.
What are the Physiological Effects?
Then we move into the more physiological effects because yes, of course, fasting does have an effect on the physical body. The same holds true when it comes down to testing, you can now figure out if your body is actually utilizing your own stored body fat as a source of fuel. This is really powerful and it’s motivating. When you’re going through a fasting period and you take a look at your ketone meter and you see that your body is actually utilizing ketones and fat as a fuel source, nothing is more motivating. You are now realizing that you’re not wasting away, you’re not burning up all your precious muscle, you’re actually burning body fat and your body is getting in an optimal ketone range.
Truly intermittent fasting is a great way to leverage the power of ketones. But the only way that you can tell that you’re getting the most out of your fast is if you test. I encourage you to test multiple times throughout the day if you’re experimenting with intermittent fasting. It’s going to tell you a lot about the peaks and the valleys throughout the day and it’s also going to tell you if you’re doing it right. Always make sure you keep it locked in here with Keto-Mojo so that you can get the most out of ketosis and now get the most out of your intermittent fasting regimen.
