Keto diet and intermittent fasting are often said in the same breath. The popularity of the keto diet has brought with it the renaissance of intermittent fasting. They exist as separate entities but they also complement each other very well.
Both the keto diet and intermittent fasting aim to get your body in ketosis. But, there are a lot of nuances around the two. For example, intermittent fasting on its own might not get you into ketosis, especially if you eat a high-carb diet. And just eating keto-approved foods doesn’t mean you’re automatically in ketosis.
What is Intermittent Fasting?
It sounds more complicated than it is. All it means is that you eat all your meals in a confined amount of time. And for the remainder of your day, you refrain from any food, no snacks or anything. There are several ways you can go about it.
8:16
You eat all your meals within 8 hours and your digestive system takes a break for the next 16. The thing is, when you reduce the amount of time you spend eating, you inevitably cut back on the number of meals per day. Within this timeframe, you probably can’t fit more than two meals. And there’s ongoing research that is trying to see how that affects metabolism and energy expenditure.
One Meal per Day (OMAD)
Some people choose to consume all of their calories in one sitting. It requires you to fit your full daily calorie intake at once, which sounds impossible. But, if you opt for nutrient-dense foods, that doesn’t mean eating a pile of food. Also, a lot of people prefer this because it relieves them from having to worry about what to eat more than once a day.
Alternate-Day Fasting
This is another practical way of implementing intermittent fasting in your routine. You choose one or two days per week to refrain from eating and the other days you eat when you like. Intermittent fasting can get you into ketosis quicker because your body consumes glycogen stores and then starts using fat as fuel.
Keto Diet and Intermittent Fasting
One of the things keto diet and intermittent fasting have in common is that they help your body utilize resources better. Using fat as a primary fuel for your body is supposed to optimize the distribution of energy by making it less explosive and more durable.
Science indicates that intermittent fasting allows the cells in your body to stay younger and more efficient. That process is called autophagy and the research that led to that discovery was Nobel Prize-worthy. Some of the most prominent benefits of autophagy are:
- Better memory
- Decreased mental “fog”
- Alzheimer’s disease and epilepsy prevention
The keto diet has shown some success in hunger management, and it often leads to consuming fewer calories. Consuming fewer carbs and more fat makes you feel satiated longer, which makes it easier to incorporate intermittent fasting. There’s no strict rule on how to go about it. It depends on what time of day do you prefer to eat and eating is more than just fueling your body.
