Here's Why the Ketogenic Diet Is So Effective

Even though you may have just heard about the ketogenic diet in the last few years — which makes it feel like a “fad” — doctors used it back in the 1920s to help control seizures in children with epilepsy. In fact, physicians still use ketogenic diets to help with brain conditions and injuries. As a plus, it also helps you lose weight.

 Dr. Kimberly Bolling is an experienced internist who knows how important a stable, healthy weight is to overall health. That’s why she helps women and men lose weight with support from our team in Bowie, Maryland, using the ketogenic diet as part of weight-loss management.

Here, Dr. Bolling explains what the ketogenic diet is and how it can help you attain and maintain a healthy weight.

Understanding the ketogenic diet

Our Western diet is heavy on sugar (i.e., glucose). In addition to consuming large amounts of cane sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, and other forms of sugar, we also eat a lot of processed grains, such as white flour in pasta and bread. These highly processed, simple carbohydrates quickly turn into glucose in our bodies.

When you eat too much sugar, your body uses some of it for immediate fuel. The rest of it gets stored as fat. 

In contrast, the ketogenic diet cuts out sugar and simple carbs to focus on other macros — primarily protein and healthy fats. When your body doesn’t have dietary sugar, it enters a state called “ketosis,” in which you start to burn your own body’s fat as energy.

The ketogenic diet also supplies your body with an alternate form of energy called ketone bodies, which your liver makes from your stored fat. Your brain, especially, thrives when it’s “fed” ketones.

You can’t just improvise a ketogenic diet

Since ketogenic diets emphasize protein and fats, a lot of products claim to be “keto” but are just junk food in disguise. Simply eating a lot of protein and a lot of fat could, in fact, be detrimental to your health. 

“Dirty keto” or “lazy keto” are terms that some use to describe a poorly designed ketogenic diet. Instead of focusing on healthy proteins and fats, practitioners eat any type of high-protein, high-fat food — even if it’s fast food like factory-farmed hamburgers.

Instead, we recommend a physician-developed, coach-led ketogenic diet called Ideal Protein. IdealProtein works in three phases, which use the concept of a ketogenic diet and the state of ketosis to help you lose weight and improve your health. 

Phase I: weight loss

The first phase is the one that probably interests you the most: weight loss. Instead of restricting calories arbitrarily, you cut out sugar and simple carbohydrates. 

In other words, you “drain the glucose (i.e., sugar) tank” that your body normally relies on for energy. Without this steady supply of sugar through your diet, your body then turns to burning body fat to fuel itself. You also build muscle with your extra protein intake.

Although you’re allowed some carbohydrates, such as vegetables, they only add up to about 50g a day. We also don’t recommend as much fat as some medical keto diets require.

Phase 2: weight stabilization

Once you reach your weight-loss goal through ketosis, we transition you to a stabilizing phase. Gradually, your coach helps you re-introduce certain kinds of healthy carbohydrates and adjusts the proportion of proteins, fats, and carbs you eat.

This customized eating plan is for you and you alone. Based on your body’s metabolism and your goals, your coach creates a “Macro Code” so you can make the right choices for your body at every meal.

Phase 3: weight maintenance

After you’re stable, you keep going with your Macro Code. It’s a lifelong approach to food that you adhere to with the help of Dr. Bolling and our weight-loss team.

You don’t have to worry about being hungry or having to eat tasteless foods all your life. Protein and fat are much more satisfying as your main macros, so you won’t have the hunger pangs that plagued you on a sugar-heavy diet. We also help with delicious recipes and snack options.

Once you enter ketosis, your body becomes metabolically flexible. Ideally, you should still be able to burn sugar for fuel. But, when it’s absent (and it’ll be mostly absent), you fuel yourself with ketones instead. 

Don’t worry if it sounds complicated. We’re with you every step and throughout every phase with weight-loss management support — for life. 

Are you ready to burn ketones and change your diet, body, and energy level? Meet Dr. Bolling and your weight-loss management coach today by phoning our team directly at 301-352-0090. You can also click here to fill out the online appointment form.