How To Become A Fat-Burning Machine With The Ketogenic Diet

Perhaps the most immediate and dramatic benefit of ketogenic eating is the opportunity for quick and efficient reduction of excess body fat. This also means easy, long-term maintenance of your ideal body composition. Ketogenic eating can make you an efficient fat-burning machine. When you are in full-blown keto, you enjoy complete dietary satisfaction, rarely feel hungry (even if you skip meals!), and never have to struggle, suffer, restrict calories, or force strenuous workouts in order to burn extra calories. Instead, you allow your body to naturally calibrate you to a healthy composition and weight.

The scientists, medical professionals, and athletes on the ground floor of the keto movement can barely contain their excitement over its power to reliably reduce excess body fat, enhance neurological function, protect against diseases of cognitive decline, and slow the rate of inflammation and oxidative damage that are the essence of the (accelerated) aging process. Research has suggested it's also able to help prevent seizures, halt the growth of cancerous tumors, and improve athletic performance for all types of athletes.1

On the other hand, the high-carb, high-insulin-producing Standard American Diet (SAD) causes you to burn glucose (also known as sugar), which has been the primary human fuel since the cultivation of grains and the consequent advent of civilization around 10,000 years ago. Glucose burns quickly and easily, but it also burns dirty via the excessive production of free radicals.3 Free radicals are the driving force behind inflammation, cancer, and accelerated aging. They are an inevitable by-product of living life—burning calories, breathing air, or absorbing sunlight—so you can’t avoid them, but concerns arise when free radical production is excessive. This happens when you introduce stressors like high-carbohydrate eating, excessive exercise, or adverse lifestyle behaviors such as smoking, alcohol or drug use, or having stressful personal relationships.

The ultimate objective of the step-by-step plan I’ve developed in my new book The Keto Reset Diet is to build what I like to call metabolic efficiency or metabolic flexibility—being adept at burning stored energy in the form of fat and ketones instead of relying primarily on the carbohydrates you consume at regularly timed meals. The first step in the process is the 21-Day Metabolism Reset to kick your dependence on dietary carbohydrates (which is the essence of metabolic inflexibility) and boost your fat-burning metabolism.

You will likely notice immediate weight loss, largely due to a reduction in inflammation (and the ensuing fluid retention in cells throughout the body) and also because you will unlock stored body fat to burn for energy around the clock. It’s not uncommon for devoted enthusiasts to drop 10 to 15 pounds total, including 3 to 6 pounds of excess body fat, during a 21-Day Metabolism Reset.

Then, you’ll go keto, dropping your carb consumption to less than 50 grams a day and also likely lowering your protein to less than you typically consume, while also emphasizing nutritious, natural fats as your main calorie source. Your journey into nutritional ketosis should last for at least six weeks. Then, with your newly minted degree in fat- and keto-adaptation, you can consider and experiment with assorted long-term options, including going back into nutritional ketosis any time in the future to shed excess fat, protect against disease, and enhance cognitive and athletic performance.