In this video, I’m gonna show you how to
get started on the keto diet properly. Because there’s definitely a right way and
a wrong way to do it. This is the exact same approach that one of
my students did when she was just getting started. At the time, she was limited to what she could
do for exercise. So she just did a lot of walking and some
bodyweight exercises. After 6 months, she dropped a mind blowing
6 dress sizes and lost 25 pounds of fat. So you know it works. Before we get started… First things first.. Let’s quickly define what the keto diet
is. A keto diet in its very essence is a very
low carb, moderate protein, and high fat diet. You have to severely limit your carb intake,
and you have to be getting most of your calories from fat to trigger a metabolic switch, or
it’s not a keto diet. There’s usually two ways that people take
to get started.

You can ease your way into it and do it gradually. Or, you can violently force your body into
this new way of eating. You go from 0 to 100. Or for this instance, 100 to zero carbs. You deprive your body of glucose and just
force it to become ketonic which can be extremely hard on your body. Your body is literally gonna freak out which
can trigger some nasty side effects. Based on my experience of coaching hundreds
of students, people usually take the latter approach. They stumble their way into keto. More likely than not, they experience the
dreaded keto flu. They get headaches and experience massive
cravings. Their bodies are literally going through carb
withdrawals. Which often makes people quit before their
body is fully fat adapted which roughly takes anywhere from 3 to 6 weeks. And then they say keto is just a fad and they
go back to their old ways. If you eat the standard American Diet which
is high carb and low fat.

The opposite of the keto diet. You’re easily getting a mind bending 300-500
grams of highly processed, insulinogenic (fat promoting) carbs every day. And then you see a friend who loses a ton
of weight on keto. Maybe you read a book on it or watched one
of my videos. You’re motivated and you immediately wanna
cut your carbs to zero. That’s almost offensive to your current
way of eating. Physiologically speaking, it’s too drastic
of a change to your brain that’s been expecting glucose every 3 hours basically your entire
life. Instead, you’re pulling a fast one on it
and say you’re not gonna get your steady supply of glucose moving forward. Again, your body responds to this with the
dreaded keto flu because you haven’t built up the metabolic machinery because you’ve
been carb dependent this entire time.

Whether you’re willing to stick it out or
not during this keto flu process is anybody’s guess. Because you’re not a light switch. You’re more like a knob. There are levels. Imagine being in a basement with no windows. But it’s well lit so you can see properly. If somebody flips the light switch and all
of a sudden it’s pitch black, you’re probably not gonna do very well finding your way around
the room.

Your most likely gonna stumble your way around. Now think about one of those fancy dimmable
lights. If you dim the lights a little, you can still
see. And then you can just gradually adjust it
all the way down to the lowest setting. I highly recommend that you take this similar
gentler approach. You kinda wanna ease your way into it. Especially if you plan on doing it for the
rest of your life. What’s the rush? You build your metabolic machinery by slowly
teaching your body to become good at burning fat first.

Don’t ditch all carbs right away. Not all carbs are bad. They really only become problematic when they
disrupt homeostasis. This is why I always say that what you stop
eating has far more impact to your health than what you start eating. Just start by getting rid of the most offensive
ones like cookies, candy, cereal, chips, granola bars, bread, pasta, designer coffee, and the
likes. Then you wanna replace them with a wide variety
of vegetables. Feel free to eat as much vegetables as you’d
like until you’re satiated. You can have some fruit, maybe some tubers,
high quality dairy like greek yogurt and cheese if you can tolerate it, and some nuts.

That dietary switch sends a signal to your
brain that there’s not always gonna be a steady supply of glucose coming every meal. And with that, the body starts to adapt because
the body is an adaptation machine. It starts to become good at burning fat. Fat get released from storage. Because insulin, the storing hormone, stays
moderated which allows your stored energy to be utilized and get burned for energy.

Because again, you’re not eating insulinogenic
foods in the form of processed carbs and sugar. What you’ll also find is because you’re
eating nutrient dense foods, you actually feel satiated from your meals. Which is a completely foreign feeling for
a lot of people. Which then eliminates one of the worst eating
habits we’ve developed. Snacking. When you ditch the most offensive carbs and
replace them with a variety of vegetables, you’ll usually land in the 100 gram range. When you get to point when you’re reasonably
fat adapted, usually around 3 weeks, and you’ll know because you feel good and you don’t
have these crazy energy and mood swings. Probably for the first time in a long time. Now it just becomes a question of can you
find another 50 grams of carbs that you can gracefully cut out. Some people can get away with more especially
if they’re really active. But generally speaking, 50 grams of carbs
in total or less is almost guaranteed to put the average person in a state of nutritional
ketosis.

Maybe you eat less sweet potato and more cauliflower. Maybe you just limit your fruit intake to
avocados and berries. If you cut out snacks and just eat two to
three meals, you’ll usually land in that 50 gram ball park. Then it becomes this nice and comfortable
transition. The liver ramps up the production of ketones,
which is a clean burning fuel compared to carbs, and you gracefully become keto adapted. The key is to find vegetables you enjoy eating. If you don’t find them enjoyable, I’d
argue that you just don’t know how to prepare them properly. No, you don’t need to be a Top Chef. If you have access to an oven, just put that
thing to use. Leafy greens and cruciferous vegetables are
usually your best options like broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, broccolini, as
well as mushrooms and squash. Just pick a few you enjoy eating. Also, make sure to cook your vegetables to
make the nutrients more bioavailable. You don’t really need to count the carb
content of non starchy vegetables. They’re almost negligible because they also
contain fibre. For example, half an avocado has 8.5 grams
of carbs but also contains 6.7 grams of fibre.

You get a net carb count of 1.8 grams which
is nothing. We’re talking maybe 10-15 grams of net carbs
in total per meal if you eat non-starchy vegetables. Buy the highest quality meat and animal products
you can afford. To make the math stupid simple, try to eat
one gram per pound of ideal body weight. If your ideal body weight is 150 pounds, try
to get close to 150 grams of protein. You also wanna make sure you eat at least
30-50 grams of protein per meal to trigger muscle protein synthesis. The keto diet is known to be muscle sparring
but you also wanna make it muscle promoting. That’s how you do it. Because having a lot of lean muscle mass is
the key driver of your metabolism. It’s the largest site for glucose disposal. It’s your metabolic currency. But that’s all the keto diet is. That’s why I don’t like diet labels because
people become so dogmatic about it. The ket diet allows you rise out of the ashes
of metabolic inflexibility, from being carb dependent, and you become metabolically flexible
again. Which is your natural factory setting as a
human being.

It also pairs perfectly with intermittent
fasting which basically turbo charges all the benefits of the keto diet. Don’t worry about exogenous ketones and
ketone esters which are really expensive. You don’t need them. Just focus on eating real food. I used to date a vegetarian and I always made
a joke that I eat more vegetables than her being on a keto diet. Also, here’s a very underrated tip. Because there’s this adaptation process,
make sure you’re in a good place in your life when you’re making this dietary switch.

Meaning, you’re not stressed. If you’re having relationship problems or
you’re stressed out of mind at work, it might not be a good time to start a new diet. The cool thing is once you’ve built this
metabolic machinery, your body is comfortable producing ketones and burning it for energy,
you become metabolically efficient. You can have the occasional day that kicks
you out of ketosis temporarily. If you go for sushi and dessert, that’s
fine. You don’t feel bad about. That’s the point of metabolic flexibility. You wanna live in that space. To me, that’s part of living a radical life..