Keto versus intermittent fasting. what is Keto? what is intermittent fasting? when
should you do one or the other or could you even do them together? in this video
we're going to explore these ideas so that you can make the best decisions for
your health goals and you can do it in a healthy way coming right up
I'm Dr. Ekberg I'm a holistic doctor and a former Olympian if you want to truly
master health and performance by understanding how the body really works
make sure that you subscribe and hit that notification bell so that you don't
miss anything both ketogenic diets and intermittent
fasting have gotten a lot of headlines lately and the reason is they get
results for people why do they work so well for all sorts of health problems
because most health problems are due to insulin resistance whether it's obesity
or pre-diabetes or full-blown diabetes insulin is the central component and
insulin resistance is the result of getting this system out of balance so
the ketogenic diet is when you reduce carbohydrates so much that your body has
no choice but to start burning fat because most people have trained their
bodies into relying on carbohydrates so their bodies don't know how to use fat
and the only way to get the body to start using that fat again is to reduce
the carbs so much that the body really has no choice and then as the body
learns to burn fat you become fat adapted and a byproduct of fat burning
is ketones so cutting carbs low enough to produce ketones is called a ketogenic
diet and it's a measurable physiological state you can do a urine test you can do
a blood test and you can see if you have ketones to a significant degree then you
know that at that point you're burning fat
so that's a good thing and once you start burning fat instead of carbs and
you lower the carbs there's less need for insulin so you reverse insulin
resistance same thing with intermittent fasting
because the only thing that cuts carbohydrates more than the ketogenic
diet is fasting meaning you don't eat at all for a period of time so these two
concepts really go hand-in-hand and it's a very good idea to use the two together
so let's look a little bit about how this mechanism in the body works where
does the problem start and and how do we improve it so if you eat food any kind
of food then your body gets more resources and it can use the resources
for fuel or it can store some of them for later use or if you eat something
that has building blocks your body can build a new tissue so the most blood
sugar the most insulin response you can get is by eating carbohydrates any food
you eat will give you some insulin response but carbohydrates give you the
most because carbs are absorbed very quickly they raise blood sugar quickly
and when blood sugar goes up very quickly then we need insulin to lower
the blood sugar again so we get a large spike of insulin the more blood sugar
Rises the bigger the spike of insulin and of course this happens more the more
refined the carbohydrate is so the the worst would be pure glucose and pure
sugar and refined grains refined starches because when they refine
they're broken down to smaller particles smaller components so it's very very
quick for the body to absorb them and that's a problem fast absorption causes
high insulin spikes and insulin is a storage hormone it's an anabolic
hormone why do we have it because the body goes through periods of feast and
famine sometimes there's plenty sometimes there's not so much so when
there's plenty it's a good idea to put some away for the times where we don't
have so much so when you have plenty your body first says let's build and
repair the stuff that needs repairing and the second says second thing it says
is let's put some away for another day so that means when there is plenty of
food and you get a big insulin spike the tendency to store is much greater than
the tendency to use and when you develop insulin resistance now the cells get so
much that they start saying no we can't handle any more fuels you gave us all
this sugar we converted it to glycogen as much as we could then we turn the
rest into fat but now we just have no place to put it and at that point the
cells start to put up a defense they become resistant to insulin and at this
point when insulin is high then we don't have access to use it anymore all those
stores we put away the body doesn't release them freely under the influence
of a lot of insulin so what happens then once we custom the body to this
carbohydrate metabolism to the habit of relying on carbohydrates for energy is
we get hungry very quickly if you get hungry quickly you have to eat more
meals and you get cravings for more carbs and so on and so on so what's the
problem with frequent meals we hear that so much they tell us oh you should eat
small meals frequently why is that a good idea or a bad idea no it's a
terrible idea every time you eat anything it's to some degree a mess
to trigger insulin and to increase storage and if you do that six times a
day you're telling the body to store fat six times a day and then you get more
and more cravings and what do you crave you crave carbohydrates because they're
absorbed the fastest they can get your blood sugar back up the fastest and now
you get stuck in a loop where you're storing more and more you're using
you're burning less and less you're eating more frequent meals you're
telling your body often several times a day four five six times a day to store
more carbs as fat on the other hand if we eat a different kind of food if we
eat fat and protein if we eat fatty meats and non starchy vegetables and
butter and full fat dairy and fish then this food is absorbed much much slower
whereas carbohydrates can start getting into the bloodstream basically within
seconds or maybe a few minutes fat and protein going take hours after you eat a
big steak with some fat then it might be three four hours before that has any
impact on your blood sugar or a significant impact so it's a very slow
absorption which means that there is a very small insulin response and that
means that with this kind of food there's a balance between storage and
usage we eat we have plenty the body puts some of it away but because the
insulin isn't so high we have access to the storage so if you go for a few hours
between meals then it's not a problem you feel full much longer so the
tendency becomes to eat fewer meals I have people all the time we put them on
a program in the clinic and they start eating fewer carbs they start
cutting back on the bread and the pasta and the cookies they start eating a
little bit more fat they start eating real food and all of a sudden they say
do I have to eat three times a day can I can I skip breakfast I'm not really
hungry in the morning and this is what happens when your body gets into balance
we're not designed we're not required to eat three to six times a day that's a
modern idea based on carbohydrate dependency once we eat whole food we
start to eat fewer meals your body is totally satisfied with having at first
three and then eventually two and in some cases maybe just one meal a day and
because of this because you have a balance between the storage and the
usage you put some away and then you use it when you need it instead of getting
cravings you get balance so this system is much much easier to maintain it is
easier on on the mind it's easier on the hunger because you're balanced you don't
get out of control you don't have blood sugar swings so keto and intermittent
fasting fits right into both of these systems and what I would suggest is you
do this gradually because it's not that you can't do it fast it's not that you
don't get great results but if you truly want to make long-lasting changes if you
want to do things that you can continue for the rest of your life and why
wouldn't you if something gets you healthy then of course you want to do it
the rest of your life then you want to create habits around this you want to
take out one type of food and create a habit around a healthier type of food
until that becomes the norm until it doesn't feel strange and if you do it
gradually then in a matter of a few months you will have all new habits and
your body wasn't shocked and you grew into that new lifestyle so
it's not a strain or a stress so if you do keto you start by cutting down the
carbs by increasing the fat and the protein depending on how much protein
you eat protein shouldn't be too high because that also triggers insulin but
different people do well on different amounts of protein so some people who
are very insulin resistance they might want to cut their protein down quite a
bit maybe in the 15-20 percent range where others who are maybe leaning more
toward a carnivore diet if they do well on that they might go a little bit
higher on the protein and intermittent fasting fits right into this as well
because intermittent fasting is when you go longer between meals so the opposite
of intermittent fasting is six meals a day when you eat every time you get a
chance you top off your blood sugar a little bit your body never gets a chance
to recover from that insulin resistance with intermittent
fasting most people I would recommend is you start cutting carbs increase fat and
skip snacks then you probably are at three meals a day and then when you
don't feel the need for three meals a day you skip one of them typically a lot
of people have no problem skipping breakfast but everyone's different so
play with it then you're at two meals a day so now maybe you eat at 9:00 in the
morning and 6:00 at night so you have a nine hour feeding window and the rest is
a fasting window it's a 15 hour fasting window then you move it up and you eat
at lunch and you eat at 6:00 now you have an 18 hour fasting window then you
might push it another couple hours you eat at 2:00 and at 6:00 now you have a
20 hour fasting window so depending on what you need to do you can push the
window even further and some people go into 24 hours 36 hours etc and there's
some benefits to that but play with it and see what works for you see where you
feel the best so the best way to do this of course then is to combine the
low-carbohydrate with the few meals some people can get away with medium to high
carb and few meals so I did a video on ohm add one meal a day on a keto diet
versus a diet with more carbohydrates and some people can do that and feel
great on it so there's no hard and fast rule that says this is the way it is I
think for most people it's probably a whole lot easier to skip meals the less
carbs you eat because the better fat adapted you become the easier it's going
to be to stretch that fasting window but again everyone is different and I've had
people comment and say oh yeah I had to do it with keto or no I feel much better
when I when I do it with some carbohydrates for most people I think
the low-carb version is better it's going to be easier but if you really
want to and the car a little bit more carb works for you then that's still
powerful because even if you're not keto you are utilizing the principle of
intermittent fasting anytime you don't eat you don't produce insulin and you
allow your body to become more insulin sensitive the worst of course is as
always the official guidelines to eat high carb to eat bread and pasta and
whole grains and to eat six times a day that is a terrible idea if you are
insulin resistant if you're young and active and you're not insulin resistant
if your body is still functioning really well then you can get away with that
type of lifestyle at least for a good long while maybe decades but
for most people on that diet they're going to develop insulin resistance
after a while and if you have insulin resistance already then it's a terrible
idea then you need to go and use one or more of these tools to reverse insulin
resistance so both keto and intermittent fasting
are tools to reverse insulin resistance you can use both or you can use one at a
time I would probably recommend that you do both because it just makes good sense
you get your results faster and one kind of really feeds into the other it makes
it very very easy to do if you have any questions or comments on what we just
talked about please let me know down below and if you're new to the channel
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