The Beginner’s Guide to the Keto Diet

We help our coaching clients completely overhaul their nutrition, including going low-carb, and today we’ll give you everything you need to start a Ketogenic Diet. 

The Ketogenic diet, or Keto diet, is a food strategy in which you drastically reduce your carbohydrate intake and replace it with fat in order to get your metabolism to a state called ketosis.

In ketosis, your body converts fat to fuel to burn for energy like Tony Stark burns Captain America for being uptight.

Get it?

Because Captain America is a square.

Don’t worry, the jokes will only get worse from here.

When you’re in ketosis, your body is burning fat for fuel, and this can help create a series of big wins for you in the “get healthy, lose weight, look good naked” department.

In order for ketosis to happen, the body needs to be absent its preferred fuel source: glucose (sugar!).

This can happen in one of TWO ways:

• Fasting: by not eating at all, your body will burn through your glucose stores and be forced to start converting fat to ketones for fuel.
• Eating in a “Keto” way: essentially, only fueling your body with fat and avoiding consumption of foods that can be readily converted to sugar.

Where does that sugar usually come from? Generally speaking, carbs.

And boy do we love carbs.

A typical American diet is more than 50% carbs. And more than 60% of our country is overweight. Is one causing the other? Or are they just correlated?

I’d argue both.

And I’m the nerd writing this.

So, there.

Eat carbs, burn carbs, store sugars, lather, rinse, repeat. Very little fat-burning is taking place – and you’re adding to your body’s sugar storehouse, and that’s what eventually winds up packing the fat onto your body!

So what happens if you get rid of those carbs and replace them with another fuel source? That’s when you start burning fat.

Compare a typical carb-heavy American diet to somebody who is “Keto” – they eat a diet very high in fat, with moderate amounts of protein and minimal amounts of carbohydrates.

Still with me?

Great.

• Less than 50g of carbs
• Less than 20g of net carbs
• 5% of your total calorie intake

Which one is for you? We’ll get to that. Just know that everybody is a unique snowflake, and everybody will be different when it comes to entering ketosis and staying in ketosis.

There’s no hard and fast rule to which “Keto Diet” strategy you need to follow, but it helps to start with one to get the ball rolling.

In short, you’ll need to pick the one that puts you into ketosis, which requires you to pay attention, track your results, and act like a scientist.

When you’re in ketosis, this can lead to ramped-up weight loss for some, and increased physical potential, lower insulin levels, increased brain function, and other awesomeness for others.

Will I lose Weight on the Keto Diet? What are the Other Benefits of Keto?

Great question.

The answer: Probably.

One of the tenets of the Nerd Fitness Rebellion is “You can’t outrun your fork,” which means we believe nutrition is 80-90% of the “lose weight” battle.

So let’s dig into how the Keto Diet factors in here.

When your body is consistently in the process of breaking down fat into ketones, you enter ketosis.

Imagine you have a pile of coal (stored fat) for the winter – when you shovel some of the pile into the furnace for heat (energy), your pile of coal gets smaller. In ketosis, YOU are getting smaller.

You can find study after study after study in which people on a Keto Diet lost weight and improved tons of health markers.

And what foods are primarily made up of carbohydrates? Bread. Pasta. Candy. Soda. Chips. Bagels. Fruit smoothies. These are calorically dense, nutritionally deficient foods that people tend to overeat.

When you eliminate all of these bad foods in a restrictive diet like Keto, you’re going to consume fewer calories overall.

And when you burn more calories than you consume, day in day out, for weeks or months at a time, you’re likely to lose weight.

This is why most calorie-restricted diets result in weight loss regardless of the composition of the food consumed.

Note this ignores the concept of quality of food, muscle synthesis, body composition, etc. and JUST focuses on a smaller number on the scale.

Anecdotally, once some people become keto-adapted, they feel satiated on fewer calories – which results in easier weight loss.

And yes, the opposite is true: one can ALSO overeat on Keto in order to GAIN weight. So don’t expect to eat 6000 calories of butter, avocados, and bacon and lose weight.

“Steve, I want all the potential benefits and potential good-looking side effects of going Keto. I also want a million dollars. But for now, I’ll settle for the benefits of Keto. How do I do it?“

In my opinion, there are two reasons why somebody wants to go Keto, and that should dictate your level of dedication to the Keto cause:

• If you are just trying to lose weight, it doesn’t really matter whether or not you’re actually in ketosis – provided you are consuming fewer calories on average compared to how you were eating before. This can be aided by minimizing carbs and upping your fat intake.
• If you are treating this as an experiment and are tracking your ketosis compliance, then you need to be more diligent in your tracking and actually make sure you’re in ketosis.

I imagine most people fall into Group A, but we’ll cover both Group A and Group B moving forward – and tracking your results is the best way to make progress.

So let’s say you’re “going Keto.” This can be a few different things depending on your situation:

• Tracking net carbs: 20 net grams per day or less
• Tracking regular carbs: 50 grams per day or less
• As a percentage: 5% of daily calories

Although people adjust their ratio of protein and fats, the hard and fast rule tends to be around the severely restricted consumption of carbohydrates.

Ruled.Me has a fantastic Ketogenic Macro Calculator that simplifies the heck out of this process, but I’ll also show you the math if you want to nerd out:

#1: Determine your total calorie intake goal. Calculate your “basal metabolic rate” (how many calories you burn per day). I am 6’0″, 185 lbs, and my BMR is roughly 1814 calories. I am active, so I’m multiplying this number by 1.375 to get to my active daily calorie burn: 2814 – let’s make this an even 2800.

#2: Take 5% of that number for your total amount of carbs. Divide by 4 (there are 4 calories per gram of carbohydrate). Some people stick to a rule of “Less than 50 grams total” or “20 net carbs total.”

I have 140 calories for carbs, divided by 4, equals 35 grams of carbs. That’s a nice round number so we’ll stick to that.

#3: Next, calculate your protein requirements. If you are active, Target 0.8-1.2 g of protein per pound of weight. This is a simplified version of a complex calculation you can do, which is dependent on your lean body mass, how active you are, etc. If you have a lot of weight to lose, you’ll want to adjust this number down to more like 0.5-.6g per pound. You can multiply this by 4 to see how many calories total that would be.

I’ll again keep it simple and make it 180g for me. 180 x 4 = 720 cal. Which means so far I have used up roughly 860 calories of my 2800 calories, so I have 1940 calories remaining.

#4: What’s leftover? Fat! There are 9 calories per gram of fat. So divide your remaining calorie count by 9 to see how many grams of fat you should eat per day.

In my example, I have 1940 calories remaining, divided by 9, which means I need to consume 215g of fats per day. Yup. This is a lot of fat.

#5: Put it all together, write it down, start tracking your food, sucka! I’m sorry for calling you a sucka, I didn’t mean it. In my example, I’m looking at 215g of fat, 180g of protein, and 35g of carbs.

This should be a good STARTING point. You’ll need to adjust along the way based on how your body responds, but it can get you going.

Next, you’ll create a meal strategy of sorts – examples later in the article – that pick the foods in the previous section and combine them in a way that fits your particular strategy to enter ketosis.

And that means you gotta know your food!

Here’s a look at the things you should primarily be eating on Keto:

• Meat. This includes red meat (like steak) as well as pork products (sausage and bacon and ham) and white meat (like chicken and turkey). Fatty meats can be helpful in a Keto Diet.
• Fish. Look for high-fat fish, like tuna and salmon.
• Eggs and dairy. If you think there’s nothing better than butter and cheese, you’re in luck! Eggs, butter, and cheese are all a big part of eating Keto. You’ll want to make sure your items are as unprocessed as possible, so stick to cheeses like cheddar, mozzarella, and blue, and look for butter and egg products that are organic or come from free-range animals.
• Healthy fats. Nuts, seeds, and avocados are your keys here. Almonds, macadamia nuts, Brazil nuts, and nut butters.
• Dressings and oils. Greek dressing, caesar dressing (though check the ingredients), ranch, aioli. When you need an oil, stick to extra-virgin olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil.
• Veggies. Cruciferous greens like spinach, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, that sort of thing.
• Meatless proteins. Tempeh, tofu, and seitan can take the place of meats in a vegetarian or vegan Keto Diet. Not as optimal in this nerd’s opinion, but you do you, boo.

Now let’s cover all of the foods you should avoid while eating Keto:

• Sugars. This can include desserts like cake and ice cream and cookies. And don’t forget to watch out for hidden sugars in things like ketchup! Your body LOVES to burn sugars, and if it has those, it’s not going to create ketones out of fat to burn.
  Liquid calories. Soda, juices, smoothies, and any beverages that contain carbs and sugar.
• Starches. This means pasta, potatoes, sweet potatoes, rice, bread, cereals, and anything made with wheat or cornflour. They’re big sources of carbs, and once again, they’ll stop your body from entering ketosis. It also means corn, which is a grain, not a vegetable.
• Diet foods. We told you to avoid sugars, but “diet” foods are big red flags on Keto as well (and on most healthy eating plans!) They’re heavily processed and high in sugar and tend to wreak havoc on your body.
• Fruits. What, no fruit? Fruits tend to be high in fructose (a sugar). High sugar = no ketosis. (I feel like maybe I’ve said that already). A few berries can be OK, but only if you’ve planned for their net-carb intake into your daily total.
• Beans. Wait, what? Steve, I thought beans and legumes were healthy! You even eat them as part of your Paleo-ish diet! They can be, but they’re also higher in carbs and can potentially cause inflammation that works against weight loss.
• Unhealthy fats. Healthy fats, like those in olive oil and nuts, are great. But that big glob of mayonnaise in your tuna, or the canola oil you’re frying in? Stay away from them on Keto.