What Are The Advantages Of Keto Over Traditional Diets?

If you have been trying to lose weight without success, you may find that the Keto diet offers a new and more successful route by altering your metabolism to burn fat in a way that conventional diets will never do.

Dieting can be a very fraught business. Millions want to do it and many more ought to. This is shown by the latest UK government figures:

·       In 2023-24, 64.5 per cent of British adults were overweight or obese

·       This figure was up 0.5 per cent on a year earlier and 3.3 per cent up on the figure in 2015-2016

·       Obesity is linked to social factors, with the problem being worse in more deprived areas

The last of these factors may be related to the poorer diets people have in deprived areas, with more processed food and unhealthy habits, as well as less access to resources such as gym memberships.

However, even for those who can pay for a gym membership and shop for healthier foods, losing weight can often seem to be a challenge too far. You may go for low-fat this, half-fat that and sugar-free items whenever you can, yet still find the waistline isn’t shrinking much.

Why Does Your Body’s Metabolism Make Dieting Hard?

Research has shown this is not all about willpower. There are metabolic reasons that cause diets to fail:

·       Restricting calories lowers your metabolism and prompts the generation of the hunger hormone ghrelin

·       It also reduces the production of leptin, which helps you to feel full

·       The brain’s reward centre becomes more active when stimulated by high-calorie foods

The worst metabolic element of all concerns fat cells, which have a memory of an obese state. This changes how they behave in response to calories, making them more likely to act in a way that stores more fat than the equivalent cells of someone who was always in shape.

As a result, your own cells are working against you to restore the previous obese state, which makes it more likely that dieters will soon put the weight back on.

Faced with this metabolic problem, it is little surprise most diets fail. But what if you could make your metabolism an asset instead of a liability? And what if the kind of healthy food you nibble on when you feel peckish included high-protein, low-calorie snacks?

How Does A Keto Diet Make Your Metabolism Work Differently?

This is exactly what the Keto diet offers. The basis may seem counterintuitive: You consume a lot of fat and a moderate amount of protein while cutting down heavily on carbohydrates.

What this does is alter your metabolism to a state known as ketosis. Normally, your body focuses on burning carbs rather than fats for energy. Deprived of carbs and given lots of fats, it switches to burning fat instead.

In this situation, your body becomes so much better at converting fat into energy that it counteracts the metabolic problems posed by fat cells, since the fat is being so readily burned to make energy that they won’t have the extra stores to build up.

What Is The Role Of Protein In A Keto Diet?

The role of protein is partly to provide the right balance, but it is an important part of your diet in its own right.

In a typical diet, protein content can range from ten to 35 per cent and should not drop below ten per cent because that would cause significant health problems, such as poor muscle health, fatigue, brittle hair and irritability.

In a Keto diet, the figure is kept more consistent at around 25 per cent protein to maintain balance. This is where high-protein snacks with few calories can be very useful in maintaining this balance, as some Keto diet foods have much more protein than others.

High protein foods will include:

·       Meat

·       Eggs

·       Cheese

However, some other foods you might eat a lot of in a Keto diet are lower in protein, such as bell peppers and leafy greens, which are high in fibre but low in carbs, making them ideal to help your digestive system flourish while on the Keto diet.

Therefore, the role that protein snacks will play is in keeping your protein levels up while avoiding sources of protein that are also high in carbs, such as milk, breaded meats and legumes.

It also means that you can eat something that helps you feel full while not adding many calories, which is an ideal thing in any diet.

Maintaining a Keto diet means getting the balance of fats, carbs and proteins right and it does take a lot of dedication and precision. But the discipline can be extremely worthwhile because your metabolism will then work with you instead of fighting against you.