The keto diet, also popularly known as the ketogenic diet, is a diet low in carbohydrates, high in fat with a moderate protein intake that involves intensely reducing carbohydrate intake and replacing it with healthy fats.
This reduction of carbs puts your body in a metabolic state called ketosis. Ketosis changes how your body produces energy. Instead of relying on glycogen produced by the liver from carbohydrates and sugar, your body starts to burn fat in exchange for energy.
Thus, burning through the body's fat stores resulting in weight loss.
Weight Loss is perhaps the most obvious benefit of a keto diet but it's most definitely not the sole benefit.
Others include
- Increased Mental Focus
By cutting carbs and sugars from your diet you will no longer experience the exhausting boom and bust cycle created by spikes in glucose in your brain. Reducing sugar spikes and stabilising the brain's energy source with the Keto diet has been shown to benefit a number of neurological disorders from Epilepsy to Alzheimer's disease.
- Lower Cholesterol/Blood Pressure
Eating more fat and decreasing carb intake will reduce your blood cholesterol. Although that can sound counterintuitive, high cholesterol is actually not the result of eating fats. It’s carbohydrates and the highly processed sugar, in particular, that causes inflammation. The keto diet has been proven to lower “bad” cholesterol levels in the body. As far as lowering blood pressure, when you eliminate sugar and starch and reduce the level of insulin in your blood on the keto diet, your weight and blood pressure both decrease.