How To Get Into Ketosis

Here’s how to get into ketosis and why you want to if your goal is to lose body fat quickly and healthily.

All you need to do is slash your carbohydrate intake down to the bare bones or you can fast.  I don’t like fasting because I hate being hungry.  And fasting doesn’t make me feel all that good.

Recently I decided to follow a simple diet of just eating bacon and eggs.  Nothing else.  This is basically an almost zero carb diet.

I was desperate to get back into fat loss and I knew that getting into ketosis was going to be my ticket to fast weight loss.  You can read about my personal experiment with this diet here.

You don’t have to cut out the carbs completely to get into ketosis. But you do have to make a drastic change from a regular Standard American Diet.

In the Standard American Diet (SAD) our bodies have become used to being fueled mostly by sugar.  I'm talking about the sugar found in fruits, vegetables, baked goods, sweets, etc., basically all carbohydrates.  That sugar gets broken down into glucose which is used as an immediate fuel.  Or it gets stored in the liver and muscle tissue as glycogen.

When we take carbohydrates (sugar) out of our diet, the body still needs to be fueled.  So it will continue to seek sugar/glucose and will tap into its stores of glycogen.  When that's all used up the liver starts to make ketones from fats that are being broken down.  You are now in a state of ketosis.

The liver makes ketones from fatty acids in your diet or it gets them from your own fat stores.  If you've got excess fat on you, and you cut your carbs right back and you don’t add too much extra fat to your food, your body will munch on your fat stores for fuel!  And guess what?  You lose body fat.  You lose weight. You lose inches.  You’re in ketosis.

Cutting your carbs right back is how to get into ketosis.
Not adding extra fat to your food
further ensures better weight loss results.

If you add too much extra fat to your low carb diet, your body will consume that fat before it will tap into your body fat stores.  You'll still be in ketosis but you won't lose your fat.  You'll just stall.

So, don’t go crazy adding loads of fat to salads and coffee and so on.  But don’t be afraid of eating chicken skin and the fat off a steak.

On a very low carb diet, most people transition from being sugar burners to fat burners in about 3-7 days.  A fun way to check if you're in ketosis (burning fat and producing ketones) is to check for ketones in your urine with Ketostix.  You just pee on the little test strip and watch it turn pink or deep purple.  If you see the test strip turn anywhere from pink to purple...even just a little pink, you're in ketosis.  Congrats!

One of the best diets to follow is the original Atkins Induction Phase.  It’s much more liberal than just bacon and eggs and it’s extremely effective to get you into fat burning mode.

That, my friends, is how to get into ketosis to lose body fat.

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