The ketogenic diet is a wonderful thing, isn’t it? You get to eat until you’re satiated, consuming things that are full of fat such as steak and butter, and lose fat at an accelerated rate to boot.
The only downside is…you’re going to feel absolutely horrible for the first few weeks when you’re starting a ketogenic diet. You may feel like you have fog obscuring your thoughts, and you may blank out in situations where you really shouldn’t.
Dr. Jacob Wilson describes his most embarrassing moment as when he was just starting a ketogenic diet and he had to speak in front of a massive audience of 10,000 people. Once he got on the stage, he couldn’t remember anything he was going to say!
In addition, before you even get into ketosis, which is the state you need to be in for your body to convert your fat into ketones, you need to be in what’s called a keto adaptation phase, which usually means having the “keto flu.”
That’s a state during which you’ll be low on energy, feel irritable and weak, and your workouts and your communication skills will suffer.
The good news is, you don’t have to feel that way anymore! We actually have three ways you can avoid having to deal with the keto flu ever again. And if you’re one of these people who goes in and out of keto, you’ll never start it again without doing these three techniques.
1. Supplement Your Diet with Exogenous Ketones
The number one thing you need to do is to provide your body with exogenous ketones. Ketones are considered the fourth macronutrient, and they’re actually what your body ends up producing when it’s in a ketosis state.
By supplementing your body with exogenous ketones, you’ll be able to stay alert and focused, and the cherry on top is that your body actually prefers ketones as a fuel source, so you’ll be increasing your cognitive awareness and sharpness!
2. Supplement With Extra Salt
One of the things people notice when they start a ketogenic diet is that they tend to pee a lot more than usual. That’s because when we start a ketogenic diet, our insulin levels lower below what we’re used to.
When insulin is lower, that causes us to excrete out a lot of sodium and electrolytes, as well as making us pee more than what we’re used to. Since you’re losing electrolytes in your urine on keto, you need to be consuming more sodium than usual.
In order to increase your sodium intake, you can start by putting some extra salt on all your foods, and maybe take an electrolyte supplement. And if you’re getting a little bit cranky with the keto flu, a great way to improve that is to drink lots of water.
3. Speed Up the Keto Adaptation Process
To accelerate the keto flu period, you should do cardio in a fasted state. In general, the faster you can deplete your liver and muscle carbohydrate stores, the faster your body will start to adapt!
Starting off with quick interval fasted cardio will deplete your carb stores much faster than just doing regular cardio, and will also accelerate the adaption process. So, instead of taking 2-4 weeks to adapt to a ketogenic diet, you may adapt to it in as little as 7 days.
To sum up, you need to be taking exogenous ketones in order to supplement your diet, you should be salting all of your foods because you’re going to lose a lot of sodium while you’re low on insulin, and thirdly you should do some fasted cardio along with intermittent fasting–it’s really that simple.
We hope this article helped you learn some unique ways you can avoid the keto flu!
