It may please some of you to find out that one of the most important benefits of keto eating is that it gets you off sugar! A lot of people try the keto diet, and some individuals end up liking it, but many people struggle to continue because the diet can be quite restrictive. The keto diet focuses on a high fat diet while restricting sugars and carbohydrates in meals. You may ask yourself; isn’t all that fat bad for my heart? Is this the best way to eat forever? Is the keto zone diet plan even healthy? How can the keto diet improve heart health?
You may be surprised but the average American is addicted to sugar and most of us don’t even realize it. We are oblivious to the associated consequences of our high sugar diets. Unfortunately, America is the fattest country on the planet with the highest rates of diabetes. Some people are willing to change their eating lifestyle and ignore the food advertisements to make sensible, health-promoting choices for themselves.
There are foods with good quality fats, as it applies in the keto zone diet. The keto diet feeds your brain with quality nutrients. Many people don’t know this, but the brain is the fattiest organ in your body and relies on fats to function.
About 60% of your brain consists of fat!
Personally, I have experimented with the ketogenic plan a couple of times in the past years for a few months at a time to experiment with muscle gain. A study showed that eating keto can sustain focused thinking for writing and improve listening skills. Quite frankly I believe the diet itself helps to discipline your thoughts and control your eating habits. This is because sugar is a short-burning fuel, where many people go through high bouts of sugar rush or energy for a small amount of time. The healthy fats are a long-burning fuel that will provide a steady stream of energy for over 8-10 hours, where sugar and refined carbs can only last up to 2 hours. This shows that a high fat diet helps with energy levels which accordingly affects our ability to think and function more optimally.
Certainly, we may all know that eating a high-carb meal can make you feel hungry sooner than a meal that has more high-quality fats. For sure, I have experienced this a lot of times. That being said, let’s get into what exactly is the keto zone diet and how the CareClinic app can help to keep track your goals, intakes, medications, and much more!
What is the Keto Zone Diet?
The keto zone diet is a low carb, high fat diet where it involves reducing the carbohydrate intake and replacing it with healthy fats. This reduction of carbs in your body changes the metabolic state of the body into state called ketosis.
When this type of diet occurs, you body can go through many changes. The most incredible change is your body can burn fat for energy efficiently and it turns fat into ketones in the liver.
Ketones are chemicals that are produced by the liver when it breaks down the fats. Many people don’t realize your body uses ketones for energy such as during long periods of exercise, fasting, and can supply energy for the brain. However, a person who has diabetes needs to be careful because having too many ketones can cause several symptoms of ketone build up in a diabetic patient.
Generally, the keto zone diet helps to significantly reduce blood sugar and insulin levels. Maintaining a moderate number of ketones can have some health benefits.
How does it work? Or Does it work?
Firstly, choosing an eating plan for ketosis can be very personal. Everybody’s body, tastes and background are unique to their own desire. The main approach is to figure out the best food intake that matches your social and cultural preference. Some people are already knowledgeable about food intakes that are healthy. For people who want guidance, it is recommended you consult with a registered dietitian.
The goal of this keto zone diet is dropping pounds and burning more calories. Based on researchers, they have noticed it has helped to reduce hunger, manage diabetes, treat drug resistant epilepsy, improve blood pressure, and lower cholesterol. Surprisingly, few people reported it has improved concentration as well.
What do you eat?
Your probably thinking keto diet has such a high fat requirement; so how are we going to maintain weight loss and other possible health benefits. It really depends on how much food intake you take in a day. For those who are working out to be a bodybuilder, they would need more protein compared to a person who exercises moderately. For example, a 2,000-calorie diet in a day might look like 165 grams of fat, 40 grams of carbs, and 75 grams of protein. This relates to healthy unsaturated fats on the keto idea such as:
- Nuts (Almonds, Walnuts, Pistachios)
- Seeds (Chia, Flax, Hemp)
- Tofu
- Olive oil
- Greens & Vegetables (Collard, Kale, Spinach, Avocados, Celery, Eggplant, Mushrooms)
Moreover, protein is part of the keto diet and its focused between lean protein foods and protein sources high in saturated fat such as:
- Beef
- Pork
- Bacon
- Grilled chicken breast
- Fatty Fish (Salmon, Sardines, Mackerel)
- Shellfish (Crab, Lobster, Mussels, Shrimp)
What about fruits?
All fruits are excellent source in carbs, but you can only have certain fruits. Mostly it is berries in small portions. Some berries can include in the keto zone diet plan are:
- Blackberries
- Raspberries
- Blueberries
- Cranberries
- Strawberries
Some may believe the idea of a keto zone diet seems inherently unhealthy as you are loading up on fats. It seems crazy because we have grown up in a society where fat has always been something we were taught to avoid.
There is something called “dirty keto” where individuals think loading up on fatty fast food options by ordering without without buns or fries is okay. However, it is important to note that the keto diet is specific to healthy fats!
The purpose of the keto zone diet is to plan accordingly to your routine and see improvements to not only your health but overall behavior. Here is an example of what a person eats in a day and tries to contain no more than 30 grams of net carbs:
| Breakfast | ½ cup coconut yogurt
⅛ cup hemp hearts ¼ cup blueberries Green tea with 2 teaspoons MCT oil |
3.5 g
0 g 4.5 g 0 g
|
| Lunch | Grilled chicken and avocado | 7g |
| Snack | ¼ cup olives with olive oil and lemon juice | 2g |
| Dinner | Sautéed greens such as chard, I cup cauliflower rice, and a salmon burger on salad | 10g |
| Total net carbs for the day: | 27g | |
Check out possible keto diet plans here to help you set and achieve your goals.
Benefits of Keto Beyond Weight Loss
Everyone believes the keto zone diet is the most popular for its weight loss benefits. Don’t get me wrong the keto zone diet is probably one of the best to lose weight. Just by browsing the internet you can see thousands of physical transformations after embracing the keto lifestyle.
For those who don’t know, there are several benefits of the keto zone diet plan. Some benefits include:
- Significantly decreases inflammation. Some of them include:
- Joint pain
- Acne
- Arthritis
- Helps with sleep quality and improves energy levels
- Enhances brain function
- Preserves muscle and increases endurance
- May defend against some cancers
- Improves digestion
- Prevents diabetes and obesity
- May help with kidney function
Keto Diet Heart Health
The keto zone diet can be very effective in treating and supporting weight loss. Many people don’t realize that losing a moderate amount of weight can help lessen cardiovascular risk factors. This is a great alternative for those who are obese or have high blood pressure. The diet also helps to against heart disease. By simply intaking keto-friendly foods, it can make a huge difference to your lifestyle and possibly your behavior. From these healthy fats, it helps to absorb the good nutrients for your body to behave, interact, and perform gracefully. However, for those who are already experiencing heart disease or any other heart health risks, keto zone diet should be restrictive.
The keto zone diet is much more than a weight loss treatment. The keto diet is great for heart health. Plus, with all the new science studies on how healthy the keto zone diet can be; this way of eating has gained the attention of several people in the nutrition industry. (R)
Keto Zone Risks – Proceed With Care
As a beginner to the keto zone diet, there needs to be a guide or plan on how you will be adopting to a new eating lifestyle. Many people start by cutting important nutrients from their daily intake just to live up to the “keto diet”, which is completely wrong. Others would probably starve themselves or even skip the process of a beginner to become keto-adapted. People tend to become weight obsessed and abuse the keto diet plan by not supporting their body with the necessary nutrients. Even having too much saturated fats, no more than 7% of your daily calories can link to heart disease. This is because keto zone diet can increase in “bad” LDL cholesterol, which means having too much LDL cholesterol in your blood. Some other potential keto risks include these:
- Nutrient deficiency
- Kidney Problems
- Liver Problems
- Constipation
- Blurry thinking and mood swings
Long-Term Side Effects
Be aware of staying on the keto zone diet for long-term because it can have adverse side effects on your health. As well, there are some expected side effects when your body is moving into ketosis. Many people may know it as the “keto flu” and these are some of potential side effects:
- Low blood sugar
- Headaches
- Vomiting
- Fatigue
- Low tolerance for exercise
Mainly, these symptoms are common in the beginning stages of the keto zone diet because a lot of people are adjusting to new energy sources and developing a new eating style. It is important that people who are starting the keto zone diet should seek consultation with a doctor to check if they have diabetes, heart disease or any other health conditions. This is to ensure that the keto zone diet is safe to initiate and perform over a certain period.
Dr. Brenda Hemmelgarn from Alberta Health services stated that anyone who thinks of going on a keto zone diet is to: “Keep food in perspective. It’s a gift. It’s how we nourish ourselves”.
How to Start a Keto Zone Diet? – Meet the CareClinic App
For those who would like to start the keto zone diet for the upcoming new year, you have found the right guide and the best health app to track your progress. It is highly important to keep track of your daily nutrition. Within your hands, you can track your diet right to your phone. It’s that simple! Download the CareClinic app free on either the App store or Play store to get you started right away. This enables you to track, input and review anywhere on the go!
Once you prepare to start a new eating plan, you can start by inputting all your meal plans in the CareClinic app to organize, remind, and maintain this new diet plan. Also, with several other unique features in the app, you can apply, edit, and review your daily goals.
Track Your Diet
Most people start out their new diet plan with full force of commitment and energy but lose the consistency of applying it every day. One of the important steps of starting a new diet plan is tracking your nutrition. By using the CareClinic app it is simple app to input all types of food, combinations of fat, protein, and carbs. It is not difficult to track your intake when CareClinic can simplify a track log on your daily diet plan. This way you can appreciate yourself on keto eating and notice the difference with a new eating style. You will notice a difference by tracking your keto diet on heart health.
Activity Plan
Plus, to maintain a healthy keto zone diet plan. CareClinic includes an activity plan to review and track your daily exercises. For instance, it can help you to track your eating plan and your workout goals a lot more efficiently and effectively at the same time. Additionally, in the activity plan the exercise library is a great feature to recognize, track, and perform different types of exercise for each muscle group. Especially, for beginners who are starting to workout for their new keto zone diet plan, the exercise library feature has images of movements on the types of exercises and description for each muscle group. This a great visual presentation on the app for people to start their new workout schedule and maintain a new keto diet plan or any other diet plan.
Setting Diary Entries
Likewise, look out for the diary feature in the CareClinic app. Take advantage of this feature for any type of diet plan. The diary feature is a great use for taking notes and providing feedback based on your goals. This is not just for diet plans but can be used to note down symptoms, medications, supplements and much more!
Being able to note down your process or every step to achieve your diet goals cannot only benefit your health but the mentality of knowing where you have started and completed.
Self-Evaluations
Another great feature in the CareClinic is called measurements. This feature enables individuals to input their lifestyle measurements such as current weight, calories consumed, and calories burned. Recording these measurements can benefit greatly for any type of diet plans and being able track your body fat, blood pressure, energy levels, waist circumstance and much more.
Together We Are One– Care Team
The journey of initiating something new like a nutrition plan, fitness goals, therapy sessions, or simply interacting with a new health app can be intimidating, however CareClinic app offers to connect with your Care Team and discuss to help monitor your progress. Additionally, not only can you connect with health professionals, but this feature allows you to add your family members and friends to work together on achieving one purpose. The CareClinic app will get you one step closer by keep track of your keto diet heart heath.
