Let’s discuss the different kinds of diets. We hear a lot of things. It can be kind of confusing. Keto, paleo, low carb, plant-based, Mediterranean. The list goes on and on. A lot of these plans have different strengths and they have studies behind them. But we want to get to the bottom of it.
My understanding of the Mediterranean diet comes from a book written years ago about this topic. There were certain areas in the world where the people lived to very ripe old ages. One of those places was, I think, Aria Greece. People are living and working until they’re a hundred years old. That’s one of the reasons it’s been studied. There’s also very low incidence of heart disease, dementia, cancer, the things that people are getting in this part of the world.
The Mediterranean diet is based in vegetables and good healthy fats, like olive oil. That’s one of the keys. It also has a lot of fats from fish, which is considered brain food. These are considered very healthy diets.
Keto and Paleo Diets
With keto right now, no carbs. It’s more high fats, high protein greens. You’re mixing your vegetables, but in moderation. You’re eating them as a certain percentage of your plate. There’s a system to doing keto correctly or paleo correctly. Just because the box says “keto brownies”, that does not mean it’s something you should be having.
I had a conversation with a person — I don’t know what they had going on. I think it was diabetes. And that’s why they were doing the keto Diet. They were eating a good amount of fat. Let’s break it down a little bit.
The word “keto” comes from ketones. So, here’s the idea with ketones. Our brains run everything in the body. Now, the brain need to be energized and it needs to have energy and the energy for the brains can come from a couple of sources. The first one is sugar. When we eat something, generally carbs, it breaks down into sugar. Carbs break down into sugar that goes up to the brain, that feeds the brain, that gives us energy to handle our life functions.
So, there’s another source that can feed the brain, and it’s called ketones. Ketones are released when sugar has been used up, has been depleted as a source of fuel. People want to get into this ketogenic state, a state whereby their brains are being fed by these ketones. That’s breaking down fat in the body. So that’s how it works. And oddly enough, fat is the fuel that people will eat instead of carbs. We’ve been told that fat is not good for us and that’s not true.
Doing Keto Correctly
There is a certain amount of macros, which means macronutrients, that each individual should be having. Your macros might be different than mine. Macronutrients are your proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. So those are the larger nutrients. There are also the micronutrients, the smaller ones, the ones that kind of feed your cells. There’s an introductory phase, where you are omitting certain foods and then introducing them back. So by maintaining it and then gradually building on what one should be having daily and meeting those macros, you should be in a constant state of fat burning.
Keto & Inflammation
One of the problems with keto diet is that it doesn’t always distinguish between the foods and between what’s quality and what’s not. As an example, take the person who’s eating the bacon all the time. The problem with pork products is that they are inflammatory for a lot of people. They do cause inflammation in the body. So, can you do a keto diet and have a lot of bacon all the time? It’s not that saturated fats in and of themselves are necessarily bad, but certain sources are better than others. Avocado is considered a saturated fat.
But I would suggest also that there are certain foods that you can have in abundance on a keto plan, depending on the plan and a lot of them are “good foods”. But if you don’t identify which foods are not so good for you, that’s the thing. Everyone has a different threshold.
Everyone can handle something differently. And that’s why when we convert from the detox phase to more of a regular lifestyle phase. We always want to test foods out. Nuts are very common triggers. Dairy is a common trigger for people. Almonds can be a trigger for people as well. They have a lot of good things in them, but they can also cause inflammation.
It turns out everything in the animal and vegetable kingdom is trying to survive. There are certain kind of plant-based things that we consider food that have chemicals that protect them. An example of this is nuts. Nuts commonly have chemicals called lectins. Lectins are able to protect them from animals who want to eat them. And in the case of humans, these lectins can cause inflammation. So that’s the problem with lectins. And lectins could be found in nuts. It could be found in soy, it could be found in nightshade vegetables. So it’s really important to test it out.
Paleo Diet
The paleolithic diet, paleo diet or caveman diet, even considered stone age diet, is a modern fat diet consisting of foods eaten by humans during the Paleolithic era. So that is a diet based on types of food presumed to have been eaten by early humans consistently chiefly of meat, fish, vegetables and fruit excluding dairy or grain products and processed foods.
On a keto diet, most of your calories come from fat whereas on the paleo diet, most of them come from protein. The main difficulty with a paleo diet is having more wild game meats and proteins.
Our Premier Program!
Doing our premier program was one of the only things that worked for me that I wish I found sooner because I was able to really identify what is “healthy” but not healthy for me. And that’s the difference.
When people do our program, we always start out with a detox. We have to clean up the accumulation of gunk that unfortunately gets inside the body. We’re able to clean that up. Once we transition from that detox and we raise calories, we start introducing new foods. There is a category of foods that we consider cautionary foods. And we define those as foods that may be hidden triggers for weight gain.
For an approach to weight loss with proven results contact ThinTech Weight Loss & Wellness at (908) 276-4393 or book online.
