Keto Diet: What are the Benefits?

What are the benefits of a ketogenic diet and how can ketogenic diets help weight loss, cancer, and even the treatment of Alzheimer's disease? Basically, a ketogenic diet puts your body into “ketosis,” which means your body is burning fat for energy rather than carbohydrates. Your body will burn its own body fat or fat that you're consuming dietarily for its overall energy production. This is very effective. In fact, there are medical studies now showing that the ketogenic diet is an effective treatment for cancer, for Alzheimer's disease, and effective for very fast weight loss. In fact some medical and holistic professionals believe that the ketogenic diet is quite possibly the best diet for very fast fat loss.

How Long Should You Do The Keto Diet? 

The ketogenic should NOT be done for typically periods more than three to six months. After that, you do want to add some good carbohydrates back in. If your goal is especially fat loss, the ketogenic diet is the perfect diet. The reason why it works so effectively is that when your body goes into ketosis and starts burning fat for energy, your body is burning up its own body fat. Your body also stops feeding on sugar.

Keto Diet an Effective Cancer Treatment? 

We know that cancer cells feed off of sugar. When you restrict your body, a ketogenic diet is essentially a diet that is made up of around typically 80% fat, 10% carbohydrates, and 10% protein or maybe even let's say 70% fat, 20% protein, and 10% carbohydrates. The carbohydrates are very, very minimal. Again, you can see your body is really burning fat for energy. The reason why the ketogenic diet is effective in cancer treatment is that the cancer cells are being starved. They have no sugar to feed off of, and so the cancer cells starve to death. That's why the ketogenic diet is effective in cancer treatment.

Keto Diet for Weight Loss 

The second thing a ketogenic diet is effective for is weight loss. The reason being, again, your body starts burning its own body fat for energy. Think about this, your body will also then continue to burn fat even while you're sleeping at night. Your body is burning fat 24/7. It's not just burning the fat you consume. It's burning your own body fat. That's why it's the most effective way to burn fat fast.

Keto Diet and Alzheimers 

Last but not least, the ketogenic diet is effective for Alzheimer's disease. In fact, there is a female medical doctor in Florida who treated her husband who had dementia and Alzheimer's with what she called "The Coconut Ketogenic Diet" and said it cured his symptoms completely. The reason why it would be effective is we know that part of what happens in dementia and Alzheimer's is the degeneration of the nerve system in the brain. You need to support the brain nerve system. A diet that has around 70% healthy fats will help the brain. With ketosis, your body is able to burn fat for energy or utilize fatty acids, and this is critical for the brain and for the natural treatment of dementia.

Now, if you want to know what a diet would look like on a keto diet, specifically you want to add three types of healthy fats in your diet:

Healthy saturated fats from things like coconut oil and high fat dairy like butter. Coconut oil and grass fed butter or ghee are some of the most effective healthy fats you want to be consuming as part of a keto diet.

Omega-3 fatty acids are things like salmon, chia seeds and flaxseeds.

Healthy fatty acids from things that are omega-9 fats that are going to be found like in olive oil, avocados, and almonds, so sprouted nuts and seeds.

If you can follow a ketogenic diet, we recommend it. It is beneficial, but we only recommend it for about a three to six month period of time. You don't want to do it longer than that because actually your body does need carbohydrates long-term to function at its absolute best. 

Want to Start a Keto Diet? 

If you’re ready to make significant lifestyle changes for your health, or you just want an easier way to try the keto diet without trying to figure out the menu for yourself, we've created 5-Day Keto meal plans completely prepared for you! All you have to do is order them and have them delivered to your door. Our 5 Day Keto Plans are a great, and easy, way to guarantee you are getting the Keto specific foods you need. If we aren’t local to you, connect with a nutritionist for recommendations on how to start making big changes (and ask about local meal services if you want an easier way to start doing it).