Are you overweight/obese and trying to burn fat?

Read this helpful article to learn how to quickly lose weight, and what happens to your body if you restrict your carbohydrate intake to approximately (25) grams a day for four days. I tried to make it as simple and concise, without much biochemistry and biochemical terms. Enjoy.

Our normal daily food is composed of mostly carbohydrates. Our body converts the carbohydrate into glucose for which it uses for energy. Excess of the glucose gets converted to fats and become stored in our adipose tissue.

Keys to Keto: Foods to Eat, and Foods to Avoid

There are lots of metabolic changes that takes place in the human body when carbohydrate consumption is significantly reduced. These changes are necessary as our body needs to be provided with energy consistently. So the body must derive its energy from non-carbohydrate sources. This makes your body transition to burning fat as energy.

The transition period depends on a few factors:

how strictly you limit your carbohydrate intake

how much energy you expend day-to-day

how much energy in the form of glucose and glycogen you have stored in your body currently.

A typical transition period takes (3) days, it could be more or less.

Day 1: This is an easy day. Your blood is still filled with circulating glucose, and any deficit will be taken from the glycogen in your liver to be converted to glucose. You may feel hunger pangs by the afternoon, and a small dip in insulin, which will feel normal to you because this is what happens every day on a normal diet and you are used to it.

Day 2: This is an easy day, too. Your body is happily pulling glycogen from your liver, converting it to glucose, and all is well. Any small amount of carbs that you consume are burned away, nothing is being stored. You may feel the typical afternoon slowdown and hunger, as on day 1.

Day 3: Hard day. Your body has been (or is nearly) depleted of glucose and glycogen. The small amount of carbs that you consume are not enough to fuel your brain. You have a feeling of satiety from all the fat you are consuming, but you may feel achy, have headaches, and feel sluggish. Your body is alerting you to the lack of glucose and glycogen. It will turn to your fat stores shortly, and begin using ketones for its fuel. You have to make it through this day, otherwise you will “relapse” and never achieve ketosis.

Day 4: KETOSIS! Congratulations. The fat you consume will continue to impart feelings of satiety. Feelings of hunger will diminish significantly. When you are hungry, you will not feel “hunger panic”. Your energy levels will be the same throughout the day, because your body has a huge reservoir of fat (hips, thighs, belly, etc) from which to pull ketones, and therefore your insulin will remain level without any spikes. Any aches, headaches, sluggishness, etc, should dissipate completely.

NOTE: You must drink huge amounts of water from now until the day you die (or stop being in ketosis). There is a scientific reason. Normally, when glucose is converted to glycogen in the liver it will bond with water molecules resulting in a generally more “hydrated” body. However, fat does not bond with water, which means when you are in a state of ketosis your body will not be retaining water the same way and your body will be less hydrated. YOU NEED WATER for all of the processes in your body, including breaking down fat molecules into their usable and discarded parts. Do not undermine all of your efforts by drinking too little water. Shoot for 90-100 oz per day