Intermittent Fasting and The Ketosis – Keto Diet Secrets Unlocked by Medical Weight Loss in Philadelphia
In today’s article I am going to give you the basics of intermittent fasting and ketosis. You can call it intermittent fasting and ketosis 101. But first, I would like to offer you a free consultation with our weight loss doctors if you are interested in our weight loss program. Just call us at 215-821-7336 and Lisa will gladly schedule you for your complimentary weight loss consultation with one of our medical providers.
Before I get into the basics of intermittent fasting and ketosis I do have to tell you that fasting and ketosis type diets are not meant for everyone and before you start any type of nutritional changes you should discuss it with a medical or health care provider. Various types of fasting practices and keto or ketosis type diets have been part of our worlds Global culture for decades, if not centuries. Because of this there is an abundance of information available to us for a multitude of fasting practices and Keto – ketosis diets. Some of this information is good and some of it is bad and that is why you should always consult with a medical or health care provider who is knowledgeable in these types of nutrition practices.
Now to begin with the very basics ketosis or keto diet simply means that instead of your body burning fuel for energy it’s burning ketones. Ketones are made by your body burning its own fat for fuel. Simply stated, when you stop eating sugar and foods that convert to sugar your body will burn its own body fat for fuel.
It breaks the body fat down into ketones and ketones are a superior fuel source for your body as compared to sugar. When following a keto diet, you have to make sure that you are giving your body all of the vitamins, minerals and nutrients that it needs on a daily basis to continue running at peak capacity. And that means that you have to eat quality foods loaded with great nutrition.
Intermittent fasting, simply means that you will not be eating all day long. Intermittent fasting is a protocol of eating in which you are going to eat during a set period of time in the day. The number of hours you allow yourself to eat during the day varies for different people. Some people allow themselves 8 hours to eat all of their meals and for the rest of the 16 hours of the day and night they are not eating but they are definitely drinking liquids. For most people this usually decreases the number of meals they are eating during the day.
Intermittent fasting and ketosis have a similar goal. The goal is to reduce the number of times in the day that your body is producing extra insulin. One of the reasons for this is because when your body has an increase or a spike in insulin production most of what you are eating and drinking is going to be stored as body fat.
This goal is not to totally stop our body from producing insulin. The goal is to limit the production of excess insulin. When there is continuously an excessive level of insulin in the body, the body eventually becomes insulin resistant.
Most people begin intermittent fasting with just eating three meals a day during an 8-hour period. As opposed to eating 6 to 7 meals a day. They also try not to snack during the day but if they do need to have a snack it is usually vegetables or a good healthy fat. If, a person is truly dedicated to making this lifestyle change they may even decrease their eating to 2 meals a day and a good healthy snack.
Please be aware that these types of diets do not endorse starving yourself or drastically reducing your number of calories per day. Reducing the number of meals eaten during the day does not mean to drastically reduce your calories. Personally with my diet I try to eat all of my calories and nutrients during an 8 hour period of time. Believe me, I am eating during these 8 hours. I am eating three meals a day during an 8-hour period of time and I am giving my body the total 1600 calories that it needs during this time period. It is said that this type of protocol increases growth hormone production and this helps your body burn fat and maintain your lean muscle.
For your meals, it is usually recommended that you have an adequate amount of healthy protein, lots of vegetables and some good healthy fat. I usually tell our weight loss patients that a simple basic plan is to make sure that when you are having a meal half of your plate is it loaded up with good healthy vegetables and on the other side of your plate 1/4 of your plate should be your healthy protein and the other quarter should be a healthy carbohydrate and if you are following a keto diet it should be a healthy fat, like an avocado.
Before coming to us many of our patients have decided to follow the keto diet but they have had a difficult time with getting rid of the starchy carbohydrate type foods like pasta, rice, pizza, etc… and that is perfectly normal. We just have them reduce the portion sizes of these carbohydrates over the course of time. The great thing about the body is that it adapts to this type of eating and as you continue with it, most people do not crave carbohydrates or sweets at all. The reason for this is that you’re giving the body all of the nutrition it needs in the form of good healthy protein, lots of nutrient dense vegetables and good healthy fats like olive oil and avocados.
Many people come into the office for the first time telling us that they are trying to follow a keto diet but they are just always hungry and this is usually easy to fix by just adding good healthy fats to the diet. When people first come into the office and tell us that they are constantly hungry, it usually means that they are not eating enough good healthy protein, vegetables and good healthy fats.
For years people have been afraid of eating good healthy fats because it was thought that they cause you to gain weight, but that is not the case. It’s too much insulin in your body and being insulin resistant and or weight loss resistant that is making us overweight.
So you see the keto diet and intermittent fasting, share the common goal of reducing the amount of excess insulin in the body. Excessive levels of insulin in the body can lead to many significant health problems.
Here are some symptoms to be on the lookout for to help you determine if you are insulin resistant and or weight loss resistant: you’re hungry all the time, you are depressed, irritable, grumpy, you have cravings, you have high blood pressure, you have excessive belly fat, you lack mental clarity and focus, your bad cholesterol levels are high and your memory might not be as good as it was in the past.
Many people start a keto diet in addition to intermittent fasting for the purpose of losing weight and these nutritional practices can definitely help you lose weight but they can also help improve your overall health and wellness.
I hope you found this article interesting. Again I must tell you that before beginning any type of nutritional program to speak with a doctor or a licensed healthcare provider.
If you, a friend, a loved one, family member or co-worker need help losing weight I invite you to call us and schedule a free weight loss consultation. Just call us at 215-821-7336 and we will gladly schedule your free weight loss consultation.
- Published in diet doctors, Diet Doctors in Bucks County, Diet Doctors in Philadelphia, Medical Weight Loss, Medical Weight Loss in Philadelphia PA, Medical Weight Loss Philadelphia, Philadelphia Weight Loss Doctor, Philadelphia Weight Loss Doctors, Weight Loss
Medical Weight Loss in Philadelphia Super Food Smoothies
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Today I am going to give you the recipes for 3 awesome superfood smoothies. The reason why I love smoothies so much is that they allow you to consume a large amount of vegetables in order to give your body the nutrition that it needs to sustain health and also allow you to lose weight and maintain your weight loss once it has been achieved.
Reviewing current literature, it is recommended to consume 8 servings of vegetables a day. Eating 8 servings of vegetables per day can be a bit much for some people so putting everything into a blender and making smoothies is one of the easiest ways to make sure that you are getting these 8 servings of vegetables per day.
I do recommend that you start out slowly when you first start making your smoothies and then over the course of time you can add more and more vegetables.
If this is your first time visiting our website I invite you to call and schedule your free weight loss consultation. Just call us at 215-821-7336 and we will gladly schedule your free consultation.
When you are making your smoothies, please make sure that at least 80% of your ingredients are vegetables.
Here are the recipes:
Lime Strawberry Orange Smoothie
- Peeled orange – 1 small
- Strawberries – 1/2 cup
- Peeled lime 1/2
- Kale – 1 handful
- Spinach – 1 handful
- Blend in a high powered blender.
Pink Grapefruit Dream Smoothie
- Peeled pink grapefruit – 1 small
- Fennel – 1 bulb
- Strawberries – 1 cup
- Kale – 1 handful
- Spinach – 1 handful
- Blend in a high powered blender.
Cantaloupe Boat Smoothie
- Cantaloupe – 1/4, remove the seeds and skin
- Ground ginger – 1 tsp
- Kale – 1 handful
- Bok Choy – 1 handful
- Blend in a high powered blender.
I hope you enjoy these recipes is much as I do.
If you, a loved one, friend or coworker need help losing weight I invite you to call and schedule your free weight loss consultation. Call us at 215-821-7336 and schedule your weight-loss consultation now.
Why You Can’t Lose Weight No Matter How Hard You Try? The Real Reason by Philly Diet Dr
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If you have been trying to lose weight and no matter what you do you just cannot seem to lose any pounds or inches then this article is a definite must read for you.
In today’s world most of the people are just like you. Everyone is on a diet, everyone is doing low-carb or high fat and no carbohydrates or they are doing a low-calorie diet. And then we have other people that are doing nothing but smoothies and drinking juice all day long. Other people just eat fruit. And then we have people that are vegetarians but they only eat a small amount of vegetables and most of what they eat are starchy carbohydrates like pizza, pasta and rice. In fact most of us eat more bad starchy carbohydrates than any other type of food.
Most of us are eating bread, pasta, rice and potato chips and crackers all day long. Almost all of these foods are not even food. They are products made by man and there are man-made manufactured foods. They are not natural real food. They have nothing but calories and sugar and they provide no nutritional value to you.
Instead of eating all of those potato chips, pasta, bread and pizza eat some carrots, celery, lettuce, cucumber, bell peppers and broccoli.
And the problem is the so-called nutrition experts, the authorities told us along time ago that we should be eating lots of grains. But the problem is when they made this statement and said that this is the way to true health and wellness they really did not do enough research to look into the type of effect it has on our body’s chemistry. Eating nothing but bad starchy carbohydrate type of foods does nothing but increase your blood sugar level. And when your body has excess sugar floating around in your bloodstream your insulin levels go very very high and the only thing that the body can do is to store this excessive amount of sugar ias body fat. And the reason why it does this is because the sugar is very dangerous, It causes a tremendous amount of damage to the various organs and systems of your body.
And if your hormones are not in the proper balance in your body you are just going to be sick and overweight. And honestly it’s not your fault. You were just following the guidelines that have been set forth by the so-called experts in the field of health wellness and nutrition.
So again I want to tell you that if you have been doing everything that you have been told to do and you’re not losing weight it’s not your fault. You have just been given wrong information and wrong instructions and directions. Now in order to truly be healthy you have to get your hormonal levels under control. And one of the easiest things that you can do is to control this by the foods that you are eating
One of the most important hormones in your body that will have an effect on whether you are fit and trim or overweight and fat and sick is insulin. Insulin is one of the most important hormones in your body. When your insulin levels are excessively high they put you into fat storage mode. Meaning everything that you eat is going to be stored his body fat.
This means that in order to stay fit trim and healthy you have to keep your insulin levels at a relatively normal level throughout the course of your day. And the way that you do this is to control the amount of foods that you eat that turn into sugar. And as you may have guessed the type of foods that turn into sugar are your bad starchy carbohydrates that are processed and man-made such as your bread, pasta, rice, pretzels, potato chips and all those other yummy snacks that we love to snack on.
Now of course I am a firm believer in eating good healthy food and that includes lots of vegetables, every color of vegetable and every type. Vegetables are a carbohydrate but they are nutritious healthy carbohydrates that are loaded with good nutrition and healthy fiber that will help to keep us healthy. And if we are healthy most of the time our weight will be controlled.
So for me the perfect diet would consist of lots of vegetables, a modest amount of good healthy protein, a small amount of good healthy fats and a little bit of fruit and your other starchy carbohydrates.
So you see that I am not totally against your starchy carbohydrates like bread and pasta it’s just that I believe that we should be eating much less of these types of food than we are eating in today’s society.
A few paragraphs up, I told you that hormones control your health wellness and the amount of weight fat etc. that you have on your body. And this is another key point because as we get older our amounts of hormones decrease in quantity over the period of time.
And this is the reason why most of us hit a certain age usually somewhere in the mid 30s and we start gaining weight every year. First we may start out just by gaining a couple pounds a year and then that increases to as much as 5 pounds or 10 pounds a year. Then we finally wake up and realize that we are 60 or 70 pounds overweight and we need to do something about it.
You see you when we were younger and we had an abundance of hormones; they helped burn that extra sugar out of our body. They helped keep the insulin at lower levels. But as we get older and our body’s natural hormones level decrease our body is not able to burn up that extra sugar like it did when we were younger.
This is why you are now gaining weight even though you are eating the same type of food, following the same diet plan and even exercising the same way as you did when you were much younger.
Losing weight and being fit and healthy just comes down to eating the right types of food in the proper portion sizes.
And please do not forget that calories do matter.
We have lots of people coming to us from other medical weight loss centers and they were told to eat a high-protein low-carb diet and that they could eat as much meat protein and cheese as they want.
But this is not healthy and it’s not true. Your body can only handle so much protein and process it properly. Excessive amounts of protein do you turn into sugar just like your bread and pasta.
I know some of you were probably reading this article and just shaking your heads in disbelief because if you would have been given this information long ago you would not be overweight now.
So now that you have the right information let’s get you on the right path. Let’s start developing healthy lifestyle habits. Little changes over the course of time that are going to add up to lots of pounds lost and a healthier and more fit you.
Trying to do all of these changes at once can be a little bit overwhelming so I advise you to start out slowly.
If your hormonal system is totally out of balance it’s always a good idea to work with a Weight Loss center. Especially one like ours where we have medical physicians that can assist you with the use of prescription weight-loss medication appetite suppressant medication.
The government has realized that obesity is a major health crisis in this country now. And it’s my belief that that is why the FDA has approved quite a few new weight-loss medications over the past several years.
In the past most weight loss pills were only meant to be taken for a short period of time but now we have newer weight-loss medications that are approved by the FDA for long-term usage.
So while some people may only need to be on the weight-loss medications for short period of time others may need to take them for the rest of their life because of hormonal issues. And that is why the pharmaceutical companies have spent billions of dollars in research and development of these drugs to help with this major health crisis. And that is why the FDA is now approving these weight-loss medications for long-term use.
Now there are certain qualifiers that have to be met in order for the physician to prescribe these medications for you. Some of them are your BMI, your height, your weight, your waist circumference, your pant size, your dress size, if you or family member have the following illnesses: diabetes, heart attack, stroke, cancer, high blood pressure, hypertension, hypothyroidism and sleep apnea – difficulty sleeping
The weight-loss medications to a great job of controlling the appetite and hopefully limiting your cravings but you still have to eat the right types of food to and that is why we spend quite a bit of time reviewing good healthy eating nutrition plans with our weight-loss patients. And getting some exercise – physical activity is also highly recommended.
If you need help with losing weight or just trying to improve your health and wellness give us a call and schedule a free weight loss consultation. Call 215-821-7336 and we will happy to schedule your free consultation.