4 Things to Prepare Before Going Keto

Do you constantly feel sluggish and tired, despite regular eating schedule? Are you tired of too much eating yet feel like you never have the energy you’re supposed to get? Also, are you looking to improve your diet?

If you are, chances are you’ve heard about keto diet. This unique diet has been gaining popularity this past few years, thanks to the different approach toward fat, which shocked yet at the same time delighted people.

In a nutshell, keto diet is a diet that follows high fat, medium protein, and low carbohydrate rule. It’s unique compared to other diet methods, which usually shy away from fat. In keto diet, you’re supposed to fulfill 70-80% of your daily energy necessity with fat. In other words, most of your meal will consist of fat from various sources, from meat to dairy to oil. Sounds tasty?

But how can you go healthy, even manage to shape your body, with fat-ridden diet? Keto diet explains how from its name. The word keto is actually taken from ketosis, a metabolic process that happens when your body doesn’t have enough carbohydrate to burn into energy and switch to burn fat instead. During ketosis, your body produce ketones.

It is really interesting, because it seems like you can eat your favourite fatty food but still get the benefit of burning fat.

1.    Educate yourself, double check the fact

Keto diet may sound simple. Just eat lots of fat and almost no carbs. Do this, and you’ll probably butcher the diet altogether. Eat lots of fat, but what kind of fat? Are all fat the same? Is there any fat source that is better than the other, and is there any that you should avoid? How much is ‘lots’ exactly?

How much of carbs is ‘almost no carbs’? What will happen if you exceed the limit? For a simple sentence, there are loads of questions that you should know the answer, or you’re risking to fail the diet or even endanger yourself. For a start, you can check these best ketogenic books for more complete information.

2.    Consult certified professional on diet or nutrition

Although keto is effective and fun, you can’t deny that it’s not for everyone. While its approach of hi-fat is certainly appealing, it’s almost extreme low-carbs diet is harder to sustain for a long time, unless you are very committed for it or actually suffers from illness that requires you to sustain this diet until you’re recovered.

For most of us, who wants to do keto to maintain health and shape body better, keto is not dangerous, but you better consult professional on diet or nutrition and make a plan together about it. You can choose attainable and reasonable goal from the dietthat won’t make you give up in the middle of the diet.

3.    Purge your fridge and pantry from unhealthy food

Fridge and pantry are danger zone for most of dieter. When you’re  hungry, you check the fridge. When you’re bored, you check the fridge. If you happen to see leftover pizza when you’re so hungry you can’t sleep at night?

Most of us mortals won’t be able to resist the temptation. So, make those ‘keto no-no’  food inaccessible from us in the first place to ensure the continuity of your keto diet.

List of big no-no if you want to do keto diet is everything with sugar and carbohydrate. This means bread, pasta, rice, and noodle should be eliminated except for bare minimum. Donuts, cakes, cookies are out of the question as well, because they are sweet.

What you should know also is that most of fruits also have pretty high carbs, so you should also eliminate them from your fridge. Check the carbs amount online and sort which one gets to stay and which one doesn’t. Fruits juice is so sweet it’s not keto friendly anymore.

4.    Restock with Keto-Friendly Food

Now that you have an empty fridge or pantry, it’s time to restock it. What you should note is that you shouldn’t just fill them with healthy food. Because, while all keto-friendly food are healthy, not all healthy food are keto-friendly.

Because this is high fat diet, stuff your fridge with fatty food. But, not just any fat. Pick high quality, unprocessed fat from whole food such as fatty cut of steak, salmon, tuna, nuts and avocado.

If you have to have processed food, then always make sure to read the label and confirm that it is low-carb. Some ‘keto-safe’ processed food are butter (preferably from grass-fed cattle), cheese, heavy cream, cream cheese, and other dairy.

Green vegetables should be keep aplenty, like cucumber, spinach, kale, arugula, and lettuce. Other coloured, non-starchy vegetables like carrot and olive as well.

It will keep you nourished with vitamins and minerals, especially because you can’t eat most of fruits. Speakingof fruits, the most common berries are safe for keto: strawberry, raspberry, blueberry and blackberry.

For pantry, stock with extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, fish oil, or even MCT oil.

What do you think? It’s not that much difficult to prepare for keto diet, right? Of course, it will requires a little time and effort from your part, but not by much. The hardest part is actually when you’re in the middle of the diet! It’s hard to stay away from bread for too long, right?

But, with the right preparation, you will ease into the diet better and therefore will be less likely to quit. After some time, you will find that sugary and salty food isn’t as tasty as you remember them to be, because you’ve got used to the new, healthy diet.

That is the minimum preparation for keto diet. Of course, compiling them all in an article would be difficult, so make sure to check our link on best keto books above. So, do you think you’re ready for new shift in lifestyle?