Our healthy weight loss blog has been getting a lot of love lately, so we decided to expand it to include a new section called “Why Dieting Doesn’t Work”, which will offer insights from our team and the latest research on why dieting doesn’t work. We hope this section will help people understand the problem with the current approach to health and fitness.
How many diets are out there?
In contrast, only one works — keto! The only way you’re going to lose weight, maintain your lean muscle mass, and improve athletic performance is by tapping into your fat stores. But most people find this difficult to do because it goes against every cultural and psychological instinct we’ve grown up with. This is why so many people who try the Atkins diet or some other low-carb diet fail: They go too low in their carbohydrate intake and become too carb-deprived to lose weight. Not enough calories turned into energy, and they shed blood cells like crazy.
The idea is that the fasting induces mild stress to the cells in your body, helping them become better at coping with such stress and possibly helping enhance cell repair and regeneration (hence the name of the protocol). The point of the fast is to kick your body into a mode of clean adaptation where it’s better able to burn off stored fat for energy, increases basal metabolic rate, and helps even out insulin levels.
A good rule of thumb is that if you can walk a mile without getting out of breath, then you’re doing something wrong. But it also means that if you are getting out of breath, then you are pushing yourself too hard. There’s a reason why the most common exercise programs involve walking, jogging, cycling, or swimming.
Why dieting doesn’t work
When we diet, our bodies have an incredible amount of resources they must use in order to stay alive and function. A great deal of our energy goes toward processing food and making sure we don’t die from starvation.
These processes take up a tremendous amount of energy and are very expensive. Our bodies only have so much money for all these functions, so when you deprive yourself of calories or cut out one type of food, your body will be forced to go elsewhere to meet its energy needs.
In a state of ketosis, your body isn’t running on stored fat. It’s running on fat that you’ve eaten. So, you’re still eating a lot more calories than you would be if you were not fasting. You just won’t be storing those calories as fat.
How to get results fast
I’ll get to the best part right now! The key to getting fast results from the ketogenic diet is to start slow. This allows your body to get used to the new diet and adapt quickly. Here is how I recommend you start: Cut out carbs entirely and eat protein and fat for meals only. This is called the fast-track. Take this approach for a week and monitor your energy levels. If you feel like you’re running out of gas or are having energy crashes, then it’s time to go back to eating carbohydrates again.
