Different people have adapted various diets. These are used for weight loss or gain and to maintain a healthy lifestyle by balancing other components of your body.
Every person owns different diets, according to their body requirements. Examples are a low-carb diet, vegetarianism, paleo, or ketogenic diet. But today, we shall discuss the keto diet, exclusively what happens when you cheat on the keto diet.
Keto Diet
The Keto diet (more appropriately Ketogenic Diet) is a high-fat, low-carbohydrate, and adequate-protein diet popular mainly due to its weight loss effect.
The Keto diet is so named since it encourages Ketosis, a physiological, metabolic state in which a person’s body burns fats as a primary energy source instead of carbohydrates. This diet is stringent; you may find it hard to avoid occasional high-carb food.
You may raise whether you are allowed to have cheat days while following the keto diet or whatever this will kick you out of ketosis.
Cheat Meals or Days Disrupt Ketosis
Cheat meals or cheat days are common strategies for strict diets. The former allows you to have single meals that will break your diet; the latter will enable you to cheat throughout the whole day.
The idea of having planned cheat days is to follow the diets for more extended periods while allowing yourself for a short period of favor. While cheating is permitted for different diets, this concept is far from the keto diet, mainly because the keto diet depends on your body staying in ketosis.
To remain in ketosis, you have to eat 50 grams or less of carbs per day. If you increase this carbs intake, you may kick out of ketosis. Since 50 grams of carbs is a minimal quantity, you may easily kick out ketosis if you have even a single cheat meal. Moreover, studies reveal that you can damage your blood vessels by reintroducing a high-carb meal during a keto diet.
How to Recover From Cheat Meals?
As mentioned earlier, if you take any cheat day or even a cheat meal, you may kick out of ketosis.
Once you are out of ketosis, you may need to follow a keto diet to regain ketosis strictly. This process may require several days or even a week depending upon your carbs intake, metabolism, and activities.
Here is some advice that you can follow to have your ketosis back:
- Track Your Carb Intake: Track your daily carb intake to ensure you won’t exceed.
- Try Intermittent Fasting: Combining the keto diet with intermittent fasting is good to shift your body fuel to fats from carbs.
- Exercise: Physical exercises are good to deplete your body’s glycogen reserves, and these are the body’s stored forms of carbs.
- Try Medium-Chain Triglyceride (MCT) supplements: MCT supplements are rapidly absorbed fatty acids which can be easily turned into ketones.
- Take a Short Term Fat Fast: Fat fasts (e.g., egg fasts) are good to help your body gain ketosis.
The best way to know if you are on ketosis is to measure the levels of ketones in your body. You can equip different tools to help you for that purpose, such as:
- Blood Ketone Metres
- Urine Strips
- Ketone Breath Metres
How to Avoid Cheating?
You may think that avoiding cheating may be a difficult task for you. But using different strategies can help curb the urge to cheat on the keto diet. These includes:
- Make your everyday diet enjoyable: Try varying other keto-friendly diets in your diet to make it more enjoyable and delicious.
- Plan out your meals before snacks: You may need a solid dietary plan to make you less likely to get hungry during the day.
- Keep tempting high-carb food away from you: You may get distracted after looking at delicious high-carb foods. Therefore you may need to get away from such foods.
- Practice Mindfulness: This process involves paying attention to your body, which may help you resist emotional eating and cravings.
Conclusion
Having a proper diet is necessary to keep up a healthy lifestyle. No matter the keto diet or any other type, it is crucial to take it seriously. You may vary the needs of different compounds in your body. Therefore, getting advice from an expert is necessary. To have a good diet plan, you can visit MARHAM.PK to consult the best Nutritionist.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1- When should we consult a doctor while following a keto diet?
If you feel any symptoms such as stomach upset, dizziness, or decreased energy, stop your keto diet and approach your doctor immediately.
2- How long should I have to follow the keto diet?
Your nutritionist suggests the exact duration; however, most nutritionists recommend sticking to a keto diet for about three to six months.
3- Is it normal to gain weight during a keto diet first?
You may gain weight if you consume more than the required calories. Therefore, it doesn’t matter if you are following a keto diet or not; you may have to take the exact calories needed to maintain your body weight.
4- Is eating coffee allowed on a keto diet?
Plain coffee or coffee with unsweetened cream is usually allowed.
