hello health champions today I'm going to talk about keto versus fasting the
ketogenic diet versus fasting or intermittent fasting so in this video
you'll learn how they are similar and how they are different so that you'll
know how to pick one over the other or a combination of both so you can reach
your health goals the fastest and in perfect health
coming right up the first thing they have in common is that they are very
strict on carbohydrates they restrict a lower carbohydrate so in the ketogenic
diet you will eat typically less than 30 grams of net carbs per day and when you
cut the carbohydrates that low you will also dramatically lower insulin so
insulin is a fat storing hormone it converts excess fuel into fat and it
prevents the burning of stored fat for energy number three when insulin goes
down dramatically therefore then the body is allowed to start burning fat
when we reduce carbs dramatically the body has to find an alternate source of
fuel namely fat but it can't do that with a lot of insulin around so all of
these three things work together number four is ketones ketones is an
alternate brain fuel and the ketones they result they're a byproduct of fat
burning so when the body learns to use fat for fuel there's a lot of ketones
around and now they become the primary fuel for the brain so in the absence of
glucose when we don't have a lot of carbs floating around in the system then
up to 75% of the fuel for the brain becomes ketones number five ketones
the ketogenic diet it reduces inflammation most inflammation is due
to insulin and all of the factors associated with insulin and all the
factors that promote metabolic syndrome and leads to cardiovascular disease and
diabetes and strokes and so forth so by reducing insulin dramatically we also
reduce inflammation number six they both increase mitochondria and mitochondria
is the little powerhouse inside the cell it's what makes most of the energy that
you have access to on a daily basis and because mitochondria can only use oxygen
and because fat can only be burned through oxygen then when the body gets
fat adapted it's going to up regulate the number of mitochondria so you're
going to improve your ability to produce energy through the mitochondria number
seven glutathione is the body's own antioxidant there is a lot of talk about
eating antioxidants we got to get the fruits and the vegetables and the plants
and they have antioxidants and that can be beneficial not necessarily for the
antioxidants but the only antioxidant that really truly matters is glutathione
and the body can make it itself it's our internal intracellular antioxidant and
through a ketogenic diet or fasting we're going to increase that production
number eight we have a decrease in cancer because cancer loves sugar and
carbohydrates and cancer does comparatively better than the rest of
the body cells when oxygen is low and glucose is high so by changing all these
previous seven factors then cancer is not going to thrive as much and the body
has a much better chance of not feeding it and allowing the immune system to
destroy it and clean it up so all these eight factors are the same
in Kido vs. fasting except that in fasting they
happen more whatever Kido benefits we get we get more of them when we do the
fasting and why is that because Kido is a restriction in carbohydrates fasting
is an elimination of carbohydrate so if we think about this on a gradient as
from a high carb low fat diet might have 300 or more grams of sugar and
carbohydrates and Mediterranean diet might have a hundred to 200 a Paleo diet
might have seventy to a hundred low carb high fat starts at about 50 to 70 and
the ketogenic diet is anywhere from less 30 or less all the way down to 210 or
even zero but fasting is zero carbohydrates we're not eating any
carbohydrates and not only are we restricting the carbs but we're
restricting all the nutrients so if we compare the two then the ketogenic diet
and the fasting they are the closest together at the one end of of the
spectrum so in that sense they're very similar to each other
fasting just takes it one step further so those are the similarities what are
the differences how do they differ if fasting can do more is there anything
else that fasting exclusively does or that keto exclusively does well there's
something called a toffee gee that means self eating and that only happens to any
significant degree when we have extended fasts when we go for a long period of
time usually 24 hours or more even maybe 48 hours or more then we're not adding
any nutrients to the body we're not adding any building materials or any
energy substrate so the body has to get really really good at recycling and
using the stuff that we have so therefore it up regulates the cleaning
crew and it sends out all of these immune cells and all these different
macrophages and they start recycling and then once you start recycling they also
get better at repairing because all the tissues become more precious and now we
got to take care of everything because there's nothing new coming in it also up
regulates the production of stem cells it up regulates the function of the
immune system because that's part of the cleanup crew and because we're not
adding any protein either protein becomes the most precious resource we
have typically enough fat that we can generate energy but protein becomes very
very precious and in order for us not to break down muscle we have to get really
good at recycling the protein and therefore the body up regulates growth
hormone so an extended fast can up regulate growth hormone by as much as
2,000 percent that makes sure that we use the protein that's available to the
optimum degree and we maintain those muscles so there's a minimum of muscle
wasting during a fast so fasting has all of those benefits then why wouldn't we
do it forever well that's pretty obvious because if you don't eat eventually
you'll die you'll run out of fuels so that's the limitation of fasting that
you can only fast as long as you have enough resources in the body then the
body sets that limit and you don't get healthier you get sicker that's the
benefit of the ketogenic diet because with the keto diet you still get to eat
you still get to put enough fuel in the body to function you're just not putting
in the carbs to trigger the insulin and when you can eat you don't have a
problem with hunger as a matter of fact hunger usually decreases when you don't
have the blood sugar fluctuations people typically notice that they get less
hungry on the ketogenic diet and that has two benefits when you eat less you
tend to lose weight if that's goal but what I find is when you're less
hungry you don't have to eat so often it saves a tremendous amount of time to
only eat once or twice a day and you don't have to worry about getting up in
the morning and having breakfast every day you just grab a cup of coffee or
even a bottle of water and and you're good because your body is fat adapted
your hunger has gone down because you get to eat the ketogenic diet is
sustainable if you wanted to you could maintain it for months or years or even
longer because you can eat and you can work out you can continue you can
maintain your muscle or you can even build muscle while staying on a
ketogenic diet and if you have a highly active job or if you have hobbies that
require a lot of physical activity and energy requirements then you can still
eat and supply those energy requirements so these become obviously the the
drawbacks of the fasting that it is not sustainable that you will experience
some hunger because you're not eating it's typically not as bad as people
think because your body sort of you get hungry for a few minutes you drink a cup
of tea and then you're good for half a day so it's not as bad as people think
but you will have some hunger when you're fasting it is not sustainable
indefinitely obviously because at some point you run out of fuel you cannot
build muscle on auto Fiji because you're not adding any protein with with fasting
and etaf adji the protein in the body is fixed you will lose some because the
recycling isn't a hundred percent perfect so you can't build muscle and
eventually even though the auto Fujii and the high growth hormone will
maintain muscle as much as possible it will burn the fat first and spare the
muscle eventually if you go on a fast long enough then there will be a certain
percentage protein that's lost and you're not
adding any new so you will lose some muscle also if you require high activity
then fasting might be a little bit hard to do that because the etaf adji the
fasting is a little bit stressful it's so focused on healing and recycling it
may not be able to generate a lot of energy in the long run for a physically
demanding lifestyle so that's how they are similar and that's how they're
different that's some advantages and drawbacks so let's just kind of pull it
together and consider who might want to use this and when so the question is if
you're trying to lose weight how much do you have left to lose so if you have
hundreds of pounds left then no problem you can go on quite a long fast you can
extend it for a good bit thirty days and maybe more or you can do the 30 days and
then go keto intermittent fasting for a while and then do another 30 days and if
you have to lock a lot stored to burn then you can do that if you're thin like
myself then you can't go very long I still do a fast once in a while I've
done two fasts recently this year in the last year of four days and that gives me
a tremendous amount of auto Fujii my ketones went sky-high and I get some of
these benefits but I can't go much longer because then I quickly start
losing too much weight so that's the main factor of how long you can go is
how much do you have to lose next consideration is how insulin-resistant
are you and you don't want to measure this by blood glucose so some people who
are type-2 diabetic they push their body into that state for four decades they
might have a glucose of 300 and still not be as insulin resistant as some
people with a much lower glucose some people who are full-blown type 2
medics they just cut out the soda and their body starts reversing because they
even though they had pushed their body quite far they hadn't really sort of
destroyed the body they didn't have a predisposition for it necessarily
whereas someone else who might have done ketones might have been in ketosis for
months or years and who for some reason cannot seem to lose a lot of weight they
might still have a lot of insulin resistance and how do you figure this
out you do it by measuring fasting insulin not the fasting glucose because
glucose changes all the time fasting insulin is going to give you the
best picture of how insulin resistance you are because if you cut back your
carbs and your insulin stays high then you're very insulin resistant and if
that's the case then even if your blood sugar is normal you might have to go for
a good bit longer you might have to go for a week or more before your body
really makes a dent in that insulin level next consideration is how active
are you if your lifestyle requires a lot of physical activity either through your
job or through hobbies then you may not be able to do a whole lot of fasting but
if on the other hand you have more of a desk job a sedentary job you don't have
a whole lot of physical activities you might do an occasional like very very
brief hit exercise or just enjoy leisurely walks then there's no reason
why you shouldn't be able to fast quite extended ly because you even though you
don't put a lot of calories in your body your mental focus is typically better on
both keto and fasting than it is on most standard diets so a lot of people they
start fasting or doing keto they'll actually notice better mental clarity
better focus another consideration is how quickly do you want this to happen
so just like we talked about fasting does basically everything Quito does but
it does it quicker so if you're in a hurry if you really really want this to
happen quickly or if you just want to give yourself sort of a jump start if
you're a type 2 diabetic and you want to get out of the starting blocks running
then it might be a really good idea to start off with an extended fast maybe 7
1014 days so how do you do the fasting how do you get into it well most of us
already are fasting 12 hours every day if you have your last meal at 8 p.m. and
you eat breakfast at 8 then there's 12 hours during the night where you are
fasting you're not putting anything caloric and your nutrition into your
body and then all you have to do is push your breakfast a couple of hours later
and put your dinner a couple of hours earlier and you have gone to a 16 hour
fasting window and that is how I would recommend for for most people to do this
okay you start where you are and then you just nudge the Border's you nudge
the limits a little bit and you teach your body gradually to get used to it
then you slowly become fat adapted you teach your body that there's a longer
period without food and it figures out what to do then and then you can push
this maybe all the way to 20 or 24 hours which is called one meal a day and a lot
of people find it very convenient and very simple to do one meal a day and
once your body has gotten to that point now you can try and skip a day so you do
36 hours and then 48 hours and so on and once you've tried that and you know what
your body feels like how it reacts how you feel now you can go 3 4 5 days and
you're gonna be perfectly fine your body is going to be stable just pay attention
just notice how you feel and if you don't feel good then
something and if you notice that you can do several days and do fine or maybe
even a week then if you're still feeling fantastic like a lot of people will at
that point you could go up to thirty days I wouldn't recommend going very
very long unless you have medical supervision someone who can monitor
closely who has some experience with that but if you just increase it
gradually and you pay attention to how you feel then you should be perfectly
fine I would however strongly recommend with both the ketogenic diet and
intermittent fasting that you monitor that you measure your glucose and you
measure your ketones so that you know where they are because glucose should go
down and ketones should go up and if they don't if glucose goes down but
you're not making any ketones there's something wrong alright so if you don't
get these expected changes then you want to kind of back off and regroup and try
it again maybe consult with some people and see why aren't these changes
happening so if you fit into one of these four if you have a lot to lose if
you're very insulin resistance if you're very if you're not so active and if you
want to lose it quickly then I would suggest that you experiment with some
longer fasts if you don't have any of those four then you probably just want
to do a combination of keto and intermittent fasting maybe throw in a
two or three day fast a few times a year to get the autophagy benefits but you
probably are going to find that the keto plus intermittent fasting is going to
get you to your goals and you're going to find it a very comfortable very
doable lifestyle if you enjoyed this video make sure you take a look at that
one thank you so much for watching I'll see you in the next video