Let’s talk about fat, protein, and carbs on keto. There’s a lot of incorrect advice out there on this topic that is likely hindering your body recomposition goals.
The first problem is that most advice for keto is based on a standard ketogenic diet, which was more so used to help treat childhood epilepsy in the 1920s. This version of the ketogenic diet is very high in fat, low in protein, and extremely low in carbs.
Here’s the thing. This version of keto is good for increasing ketones into the therapeutic range, but not so good for body recomposition. Its purpose was to minimize brain seizures and neurological disorders, not to maintain lean mass. Overall health was not the priority here, and so doctors were forced to choose the lesser of two bad outcomes.
If you really want to lose body fat and maintain or gain muscle, focusing on dietary fat isn’t an optimal strategy. What you really need is protein. This shift in keto macros lies at the core of the Ketogains philosophy. Tyler and I have seen it help thousands of people achieve fat loss, improve their body composition, and other health goals on keto.
We aren’t against fat, of course. With carbs mostly out of the picture, fat must account for a good chunk of your caloric load. But our focus is protein, the king of macros. Most people don’t eat enough protein-rich foods! Then they wonder why they aren’t losing fat and getting stronger on keto.
To recap, protein is the goal, while fat is, in a way, a “lever” that you can adjust depending on your current goals. And carbs are a “limit” on keto, though some people can tolerate more carbs than others. This article will be a deep dive into our philosophy about macros. Let’s start with the fundamentals.
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