Keto versus intermittent fasting. what is Keto? what is intermittent fasting? when should you do one or the other or could you even do them together? in this video we're going to explore these ideas so that you can make the best decisions for your health goals and you can do it in a healthy way coming right up I'm Dr. Ekberg I'm a holistic doctor and a former Olympian if you want to truly master health and performance by understanding how the body really works make sure that you subscribe and hit that notification bell so that you don't miss anything both ketogenic diets and intermittent fasting have gotten a lot of headlines lately and the reason is they get results for people why do they work so well for all sorts of health problems because most health problems are due to insulin resistance whether it's obesity or pre-diabetes or full-blown diabetes insulin is the central component and insulin resistance is the result of getting this system out of balance so the ketogenic diet is when you reduce carbohydrates so much that your body has no choice but to start burning fat because most people have trained their bodies into relying on carbohydrates so their bodies don't know how to use fat and the only way to get the body to start using that fat again is to reduce the carbs so much that the body really has no choice and then as the body learns to burn fat you become fat adapted and a byproduct of fat burning is ketones so cutting carbs low enough to produce ketones is called a ketogenic diet and it's a measurable physiological state you can do a urine test you can do a blood test and you can see if you have ketones to a significant degree then you know that at that point you're burning fat so that's a good thing and once you start burning fat instead of carbs and you lower the carbs there's less need for insulin so you reverse insulin resistance same thing with intermittent fasting because the only thing that cuts carbohydrates more than the ketogenic diet is fasting meaning you don't eat at all for a period of time so these two concepts really go hand-in-hand and it's a very good idea to use the two together so let's look a little bit about how this mechanism in the body works where does the problem start and and how do we improve it so if you eat food any kind of food then your body gets more resources and it can use the resources for fuel or it can store some of them for later use or if you eat something that has building blocks your body can build a new tissue so the most blood sugar the most insulin response you can get is by eating carbohydrates any food you eat will give you some insulin response but carbohydrates give you the most because carbs are absorbed very quickly they raise blood sugar quickly and when blood sugar goes up very quickly then we need insulin to lower the blood sugar again so we get a large spike of insulin the more blood sugar Rises the bigger the spike of insulin and of course this happens more the more refined the carbohydrate is so the the worst would be pure glucose and pure sugar and refined grains refined starches because when they refine they're broken down to smaller particles smaller components so it's very very quick for the body to absorb them and that's a problem fast absorption causes high insulin spikes and insulin is a storage hormone it's an anabolic hormone why do we have it because the body goes through periods of feast and famine sometimes there's plenty sometimes there's not so much so when there's plenty it's a good idea to put some away for the times where we don't have so much so when you have plenty your body first says let's build and repair the stuff that needs repairing and the second says second thing it says is let's put some away for another day so that means when there is plenty of food and you get a big insulin spike the tendency to store is much greater than the tendency to use and when you develop insulin resistance now the cells get so much that they start saying no we can't handle any more fuels you gave us all this sugar we converted it to glycogen as much as we could then we turn the rest into fat but now we just have no place to put it and at that point the cells start to put up a defense they become resistant to insulin and at this point when insulin is high then we don't have access to use it anymore all those stores we put away the body doesn't release them freely under the influence of a lot of insulin so what happens then once we custom the body to this carbohydrate metabolism to the habit of relying on carbohydrates for energy is we get hungry very quickly if you get hungry quickly you have to eat more meals and you get cravings for more carbs and so on and so on so what's the problem with frequent meals we hear that so much they tell us oh you should eat small meals frequently why is that a good idea or a bad idea no it's a terrible idea every time you eat anything it's to some degree a mess to trigger insulin and to increase storage and if you do that six times a day you're telling the body to store fat six times a day and then you get more and more cravings and what do you crave you crave carbohydrates because they're absorbed the fastest they can get your blood sugar back up the fastest and now you get stuck in a loop where you're storing more and more you're using you're burning less and less you're eating more frequent meals you're telling your body often several times a day four five six times a day to store more carbs as fat on the other hand if we eat a different kind of food if we eat fat and protein if we eat fatty meats and non starchy vegetables and butter and full fat dairy and fish then this food is absorbed much much slower whereas carbohydrates can start getting into the bloodstream basically within seconds or maybe a few minutes fat and protein going take hours after you eat a big steak with some fat then it might be three four hours before that has any impact on your blood sugar or a significant impact so it's a very slow absorption which means that there is a very small insulin response and that means that with this kind of food there's a balance between storage and usage we eat we have plenty the body puts some of it away but because the insulin isn't so high we have access to the storage so if you go for a few hours between meals then it's not a problem you feel full much longer so the tendency becomes to eat fewer meals I have people all the time we put them on a program in the clinic and they start eating fewer carbs they start cutting back on the bread and the pasta and the cookies they start eating a little bit more fat they start eating real food and all of a sudden they say do I have to eat three times a day can I can I skip breakfast I'm not really hungry in the morning and this is what happens when your body gets into balance we're not designed we're not required to eat three to six times a day that's a modern idea based on carbohydrate dependency once we eat whole food we start to eat fewer meals your body is totally satisfied with having at first three and then eventually two and in some cases maybe just one meal a day and because of this because you have a balance between the storage and the usage you put some away and then you use it when you need it instead of getting cravings you get balance so this system is much much easier to maintain it is easier on on the mind it's easier on the hunger because you're balanced you don't get out of control you don't have blood sugar swings so keto and intermittent fasting fits right into both of these systems and what I would suggest is you do this gradually because it's not that you can't do it fast it's not that you don't get great results but if you truly want to make long-lasting changes if you want to do things that you can continue for the rest of your life and why wouldn't you if something gets you healthy then of course you want to do it the rest of your life then you want to create habits around this you want to take out one type of food and create a habit around a healthier type of food until that becomes the norm until it doesn't feel strange and if you do it gradually then in a matter of a few months you will have all new habits and your body wasn't shocked and you grew into that new lifestyle so it's not a strain or a stress so if you do keto you start by cutting down the carbs by increasing the fat and the protein depending on how much protein you eat protein shouldn't be too high because that also triggers insulin but different people do well on different amounts of protein so some people who are very insulin resistance they might want to cut their protein down quite a bit maybe in the 15-20 percent range where others who are maybe leaning more toward a carnivore diet if they do well on that they might go a little bit higher on the protein and intermittent fasting fits right into this as well because intermittent fasting is when you go longer between meals so the opposite of intermittent fasting is six meals a day when you eat every time you get a chance you top off your blood sugar a little bit your body never gets a chance to recover from that insulin resistance with intermittent fasting most people I would recommend is you start cutting carbs increase fat and skip snacks then you probably are at three meals a day and then when you don't feel the need for three meals a day you skip one of them typically a lot of people have no problem skipping breakfast but everyone's different so play with it then you're at two meals a day so now maybe you eat at in the morning and at night so you have a nine hour feeding window and the rest is a fasting window it's a 15 hour fasting window then you move it up and you eat at lunch and you eat at now you have an 18 hour fasting window then you might push it another couple hours you eat at and at now you have a 20 hour fasting window so depending on what you need to do you can push the window even further and some people go into 24 hours 36 hours etc and there's some benefits to that but play with it and see what works for you see where you feel the best so the best way to do this of course then is to combine the low-carbohydrate with the few meals some people can get away with medium to high carb and few meals so I did a video on ohm add one meal a day on a keto diet versus a diet with more carbohydrates and some people can do that and feel great on it so there's no hard and fast rule that says this is the way it is I think for most people it's probably a whole lot easier to skip meals the less carbs you eat because the better fat adapted you become the easier it's going to be to stretch that fasting window but again everyone is different and I've had people comment and say oh yeah I had to do it with keto or no I feel much better when I when I do it with some carbohydrates for most people I think the low-carb version is better it's going to be easier but if you really want to and the car a little bit more carb works for you then that's still powerful because even if you're not keto you are utilizing the principle of intermittent fasting anytime you don't eat you don't produce insulin and you allow your body to become more insulin sensitive the worst of course is as always the official guidelines to eat high carb to eat bread and pasta and whole grains and to eat six times a day that is a terrible idea if you are insulin resistant if you're young and active and you're not insulin resistant if your body is still functioning really well then you can get away with that type of lifestyle at least for a good long while maybe decades but for most people on that diet they're going to develop insulin resistance after a while and if you have insulin resistance already then it's a terrible idea then you need to go and use one or more of these tools to reverse insulin resistance so both keto and intermittent fasting are tools to reverse insulin resistance you can use both or you can use one at a time I would probably recommend that you do both because it just makes good sense you get your results faster and one kind of really feeds into the other it makes it very very easy to do.
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