By now, you’ve probably heard a lot about the ketogenic diet and its benefits for weight loss and overall health. It sounds simple enough – minimize your carbohydrates intake while increasing your fat intake to teach your body to burn fat for energy rather than glucose.
However, it’s easier said than done. Adjusting your whole body’s energy production process is tough and takes a lot of determination. A reason why we created the Keto Cleanse is to help people transition into this new eating style smoothly and with minimal side effects. Still, with the popularity of this diet, there are confusing and sometimes contradicting information online that could hinder you from reaching your health goals. To help keep you on the right track, we’re going to address a few trending terms associated with Keto.
Is Keto Cycling different from the Ketogenic Diet?
A ketogenic diet dictates what you can eat and in what quantity with regards to your daily caloric intake. Keto cycling is following the ketogenic diet for a few days a week and then taking a break for one or two days. To put it simply, keto cycling is part of following the ketogenic diet. It’s an eating pattern followed to battle the potential negative effects of going keto.
Keto Cycling is NOT Carbohydrate Cycling
It’s a common misconception that keto cycling is the same thing as carbs cycling. This misunderstanding stems from the fact that when you cycle keto, you technically increase your carbs intake. When cycling carbs, you increase your carbs intake on days when you expend more energy through exercise or more physical activity, then go back to minimizing carbs on idle days. So if you only go to the gym once a week, then you only increase your carbs intake on that day.
Keto cycling, on the other hand, gives you a sort of “break” from following a ketogenic diet. This could be a day or two per week, sometimes longer. When you go on this keto break, you only slightly increase your carbs intake by lowering the percentage of your fat intake.
While both are similar, their greatest difference lies in their effect on how the body produces energy. When carbs cycling, your body still uses glucose from carbohydrates as energy. But with keto cycling, your body is mostly fat adapted, which means it uses your excess fats and the fats you eat to fuel you.
What are Keto “Cheat Days”?
The keto cycling “off” days are sometimes referred to as “cheat days”, which is a misnomer. Real “cheat days” involve overindulging on foods that have little to no health benefit for you. This is when you eat slices of super sweet cake or guzzle a whole liter of soda on your “off” day.
On the other hand, keto cycling “off” days are necessary to help you overcome some of the road bumps you could encounter while doing the diet. Proper cycle off days involves maintaining “clean” eating, which means consuming healthy carbs like more veggies, whole grains, or low glycemic index fruits to increase your carb intake.
When you sign up for our Keto Cleanse program, you’ll get in-depth information about eating right on your keto “off” days.
Advantages of Cycling Keto
Why should you do keto cycling? We’ve mentioned that having breaks once a week has benefits, and here are some of them:
- Prevents kidney stone formation
- Balances blood acidity
- Helps maintain muscle mass
- Doesn’t leave you feeling trapped
When you go into ketosis, your body adapts to a whole new fueling process. To do this, your body has to adjust its hormones production to make an ideal environment for this new process. This adjustment can have negative by-products like kidney stones, acidic blood, and muscle loss. The break that Keto Cycling offers mitigates these risks. At the same time, since Keto is a pretty strict diet to follow, this break helps you normalize for a day or two, which will help motivate you to keep on going later.
Potential Disadvantages of Cycling Keto
Of course, all things have downsides. Here are some of keto cycling’s cons:
- Kicks you out of ketosis
- Retain water
- Difficult to get back on track
It’s necessary to keep your carbs intake very low in order to get to and maintain ketosis. When we increase this intake, we give our bodies enough glucose to burn again. One of the results of this uptick in glucose supply is water retention, so don’t freak out when the number on your scale goes up on your off days. It’s just water, not fat, gain.
Another thing: the length of time to get into ketosis is different per person. It can take somewhere between two to fourteen days to do so. Taking a day off means waiting for your body to get back into ketosis again, and it could take a few days depending on your constitution. But as long as you keep your breaks short, this wouldn’t be a problem.
How to stay in the Keto game
Maintaining ketosis and reaping its benefits isn’t easy even though it may sound simple. That’s why we developed the Keto Cleanse program – to help you deal with these confusing changes easily and with proper guidance.
When you sign up for Keto Cleanse, you’ll not only receive professional-grade supplements that will help prep your body for its new lifestyle. You’ll also have access to a portal that contains all you need to know to do Keto the right way – grocery lists, recipes, video tutorials, scientific research, and an in-depth Q&A that discusses things like how to prevent the Keto Flu.
It’s always important to not fall for fad terms when following a diet. We want you to always be armed with the right information when deciding about your health. To get all of this knowledge in one place, sign up for our Keto Cleanse program to get access to your own personal portal and begin a smoother Keto journey today!