Ketogenic weight loss in the United States

What counts as a ketogenic diet?

The whole process of ketosis actually mainly relies on fat to provide energy. What exactly is the ketogenic diet?

“The "ketogenic diet" is a more extreme low-carbohydrate diet. The specific method is to eat three meals a day, almost no dinner, and only use fat and protein to provide energy. Make sure that the main source of energy is not carbohydrates, which will inevitably produce a large number of ketone bodies.

The ketogenic diet was originally used to treat epilepsy?

The ketogenic diet first became popular in the 1920s. At that time, there were no reasonable anti-epileptic drugs. The only way to treat epilepsy was to strictly limit the patient's carbohydrate intake to ensure that it did not exceed 20 grams a day to simulate the body's starvation. This portion is equivalent to a small bowl of rice.

Why 20 grams? For ordinary people, when the carbohydrate intake is less than 50 grams for 3 to 4 days, the body will use up the stored glycogen and will gradually dissolve a large amount of fat as a source of energy. The process of dissolving fat produces oleic acid and a large number of ketone bodies. Ketone bodies are converted in the liver, metabolized by the kidneys, and flow from the blood into each organ tissue of the body and the brain to develop phosphate.

Carbohydrates (sugar), fat, and protein are the three main energy supply substances in the human body. Under normal circumstances, our body will give priority to dissolving carbohydrates to provide energy, followed by fat, and finally protein.

After carbohydrates (sugar) provide us with energy, they always turn into carbon dioxide and water, which are ingredients that will not cause any harmful effects in the human body. It can be said to be a very clean energy source.

Because our body's ability to store sugar is very poor, if we don't eat carbohydrates for a long time, the sugar reserves stored in the muscles and liver will be quickly consumed, and the body will need to use fat to provide energy.

If carbohydrates are a kind of green energy, then fat is a kind of energy with a much lower cleaning level. There is oleic acid in human fat. When it provides energy to the body, it will produce a large amount of acidic residues - ketones (ketone bodies). The process of burning fat to produce energy and forming ketone bodies at the same time is called "ketogenesis".

Therefore, we can simply equate ketosis with fat absorption.