Jumping into high-fat, low-carb eating? Here’s what you need to know to sidestep challenges and set yourself up for success.
The ketogenic diet — a high-fat and very low carb eating plan — can be tough to start. After all, it’s likely a radical departure from the way you’re eating now (a typical standard American diet is high in carbohydrates and processed foods). But many people are trying the keto diet, which puts your body in a state of ketosis.
That’s what happens when your body’s carb-burning switch flips to a fat-burning one, a change that can influence everything from weight loss to type 2 diabetes — although scientists caution that much more research is needed on the health effects of keto diets in general. (1)
How do you make practical preparations in stocking your fridge and preparing mentally for the big change to come? Consider this your step-by-step guide.
1. Know What Foods You’ll Eat and Avoid on the Ketogenic Diet
In following a keto meal plan, you’ll be severely limiting carbs. Start off with between 20 and 30 grams (g) of carbohydrates per day, says the New York City–based dietitian Kristen Mancinelli, RD, author of The Ketogenic Diet: A Scientifically Proven Approach to Fast, Healthy Weight Loss.
Also make sure that you know what foods have mostly carbs, fat, and protein, so you can make the right choices. For instance, it’s not just bread, pasta, chips, cookies, candy, and ice cream that contain carbs. Beans may contain protein, but they’re also very high in carbohydrates. Fruit and veggies also mostly contain carbs. The only foods that don’t contain carbs are meat (protein) and pure fats like butter and olive oil.
2. Examine Your Relationship With Fat — Keto Involves Lots of It!
“People are afraid of fat because they’ve been told that it’ll kill them,” says Mancinelli. What is confusing is that research today remains mixed. Some studies suggest that replacing saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat (and avoiding unhealthy trans fat) is important for mitigating heart disease risk, while others suggest that total fat and types of fat weren’t associated with cardiovascular problems. Deciding exactly how to eat then becomes confusing. What is helpful, the authors of one study noted, is to remember that food is more than a single nutrient, and it’s the overall quality of the diet that counts. (2) (They do say that high-fat, low-carb diets still need more research to assess their long-term health benefits and risks.)
To prepare for a high-fat diet, which can be uncomfortable at first, start making small adjustments to what you eat every day, she suggests, like ordering a burger on lettuce leaves and subbing green veggies for fries.
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