- Getting into ketosis seems like it's easy,
and quite frankly, it kind of is.
But there's some ways that you can enhance
or accelerate how fast you get into ketosis.
One of the things that I want to point out first
is when you're trying to get into ketosis
and maybe you've never done it before,
you want to try doing it at a period of time
when you're not under a lot of stress.
Here's the thing.
Cortisol, stress, it's the enemy of ketosis.
Cortisol allows glycogen,
which is stored carbohydrates in your muscles,
to get released into the blood stream.
This, of course, triggers a blood glucose spike,
which inhibits ketogenesis.
It stops the production of ketones.
When you are someone that is just first
starting to get into ketosis,
it's already hard to convince your body to create ketones.
When you add glucose into the mix simply because of stress,
it makes it very difficult.
So I usually say, set the stage properly.
You should be in a little bit more of a stress-free mode.
I actually recommend starting a ketogenic diet
right after vacation because you're calm, you're relaxed,
and it's before you go right back
to the hustle and bustle of work.
So that's just something to keep in mind.
Another thing that you want to do
is you want to make sure that you're keeping, of course,
your carbohydrates very, very low
but you're periodically switching between
higher fat and lower fat.
Now, what I mean by that is when you're first starting
on a ketogenic diet, you might have one day
where you have, oh, let's say 100 grams of fat
and you might have another day where you have
50 grams of fat.
What I have noticed in a lot of situations
is that by reducing the fat intake now and then,
you allow the body to adapt
and use its own stored body fat for fuel.
This is a very efficient process
and allows the liver to utilize that fat as ketones
a lot easier, thereby making the transition into ketosis
a little bit easier.
Now, a couple quick tips, too,
'cause not everyone likes to just taken in a bunch of
MCT oil.
C8 MCT oil is going to generate ketones the fastest.
Okay, that's great.
But again, if you don't like having straight oil,
then what's the solution?
Well, believe it or not,
goat cheese has a high amount of caprylic, C8, acid in it.
So what that means is if you consume goat cheese,
you are, in turn, getting the MCTs
that are going to allow you to get into ketosis
a little bit faster.
So enjoy the goat cheese.
I always say just level it up.
Have a bunch of that goat cheese.
Additionally, you can also have olive oil.
Olive oil isn't an MCT, but it's a monounsaturated fat
and people forget that just because it's not an MCT
doesn't mean that it's not effective at generating ketones.
Studies have shown that monounsaturated fats
actually create ketones quite well,
plus there's some other benefits of olive oil
that we don't have to talk about in this video.
The next thing that you can do
is prior to going on a ketogenic diet,
practice a little bit of what is called
alternate day fasting.
There's been some studies that have shown that
participants that alternate day fast,
so they do one day of intermittent fasting,
maybe 18, 20-hour fast, and then one day not,
another day fasting, another day not,
end up being a lot more fat adapted.
And therefore, it means that you can get into ketosis
a lot easier.
So the goal with alternate day fasting
isn't necessarily to get you into ketosis
but it's to sort of allow yourselves to get
a little bit of a taste of what's to come
when they do into ketosis,
so that what you want to do is
if you know you're going to go into ketosis next week,
if you practice a little bit of intermittent fasting,
it can help you out a ton.
Additionally, if you want to get into ketosis the fastest,
the best bet is just to do a little bit of fasting.
Do a 24, 48-hour fast,
more than likely you're going to be in ketosis
relatively quick anyway.
And it just gets faster and faster
the more often that you do it.
But the big one that I want to talk about today
is going to be what kind of exercise to do.
Low intensity, steady state cardio
is the best way to condition your level to generate ketones.
It is not the truth that you need to get rid of
all the carbohydrates in your body first.
They feel that they need to go and do
full body glycogen depletion workouts
and drain all their body's carbohydrate storage
before their liver will ever produce ketones.
That's not true.
You actually just need to drain the liver glycogen.
The muscle glycogen can still stay elevated.
So to give you an example,
if I were to go into ketosis right this second,
I would probably still have
a good amount of muscle glycogen stored.
I don't have to burn through that
in order to get into ketosis.
So, low intensity steady state cardio
doesn't even touch the glycogen stores.
It utilizes much more of beta oxidation,
where the liver produces energy from fats.
We want to condition that process to occur.
So the first day or two, it's not even worth it
to do a whole lot of activity, to be honest.
It's not even worth it to do a lot of cardio
because your body's not going to be burning those fats yet,
so what I recommend you do is days one and two,
just keep it super low intensity.
Maybe go for a little walk, okay?
And then day three that you're trying to get into ketosis,
go for a long walk, maybe a 60, even a 90-minute brisk walk
and that's going to help you generate ketones
a lot faster than hitting the weights.
In fact, hitting the weights or doing higher intensity work
is actually going to slow down ketone production
because you're going to burn through what ketones are available
and your body will be forced to utilize glucose,
and it's going to pull that from other energy substrates.
So this whole time, you need to be measuring.
I cannot overemphasize that,
because every situation's going to be different.
Some days, you might get into ketosis in 24 hours
and sometimes you might take 72 hours to get into ketosis.
It all depends on stress
and other lifestyle factors as well.
But if you constantly measure
and you do it a few times per day,
you can see where you're at
and where you should be timing your workouts, for example.
So if you start to see your ketone levels are increasing,
that would be a great time to go do some steady state,
low intensity cardio to try to get that number up
a little bit more to get you into that fat adapted state.
So anyhow, when it comes to measuring,
you want to leave the guess work out of the equation.
Always leave the measuring to the meter.
Keto-Mojo is the gold standard when it comes down
to ketone testing.
So as always, keep it locked in here with Keto-Mojo
and we'll see you soon.