Starting Keto - Where Do I Start?

You’ve done a little research and you want to start keto BUT, you’re finding all sorts of conflicting information and now you aren’t sure how to just start. Well, you’ve come to the right place! I’m going to give you some simple steps so that you can get started easily.

First off, take a deep breath and relax. It’s not complicated I promise. When I started, I simply just started removing things I knew were not keto-friendly. I left the all-or-nothing diet mentality at the door. Each meal was a new opportunity to do better. No beating myself up if I ate something I shouldn’t have. Just do better next time and eventually it becomes second nature and you don’t really have to think about it.

Starting Keto - How Does It Work?

Let’s talk about how keto works so you know why you want to remove certain foods. When we consume carbohydrates and sugar, it’s an easy fuel source so our bodies use it first. If you only had fat and protein available, your body would convert the fat to ketones to use as its primary fuel source and switch to sugar burning when it was available. Most people consume an abundance of carbohydrates so their bodies never switch to fat burning. We’ve lost that ability with all the highly processed and palatable convenience foods on the market today. But we can get that ability back by switching things up and eating a high fat, moderate protein, and low carbohydrate diet.

The goal is to lower our carbohydrate intake far enough to cause our bodies to switch to burning fat for fuel instead of glucose. Too many critics say that keto eliminates all carbs which isn’t completely true. You do want to significantly lower your carbohydrate intake. The carbs you do eat, should be coming from non-starchy veggies, nuts, and seeds, not from bread, cookies, pasta, etc. Some women may need to carb-cycle (using whole foods) during certain times of the month.

Starting Keto - Remember The Basics

Basic ketogenic macros are 70% fat, 25% protein, and 5% carbs but you can simply start by removing all added sugar in your diet and taking it one step at a time. You can find a list of hidden sugars here so you know what to look for on labels. There are many free apps available to track macros, my favourite is Cronometer and the free version is just fine.

So there you have it, an easy way to slowly step into a low carb ketogenic lifestyle without all the overwhelm and confusion. You’ve got this!