While the Keto Diet has been gaining popularity for some time, not everyone finds they can stick to the strict diet. However, many practitioners of the Keto Diet initially started out by practicing the “Lazy Keto Diet,” or “Lazy Keto.” This way of practicing the Keto Diet helps dieters to gain control of their eating habits, without having to worry about counting calories or other macronutrients that practitioners of the Keto Diet usually track. With these three tips for beginners on how to practice the Lazy Keto Diet, you will be well on your way to achieving your weight loss goals, and on track for making the Keto Diet a way of life.
1) Count Carbs, Not Calories
If you are just starting on a Keto Diet journey, keeping the diet simple is key to success. While experienced practitioners of the Keto Diet often count the calories they eat during the day, this is usually a challenging process for beginners. With Lazy Keto, you don’t have to worry about counting calories right away. Ease yourself into the diet by watching your carbohydrate intake instead of counting calories. With Lazy Keto, it is more important to be concerned about how many carbs you are eating than how many calories because controlling your carbohydrate intake can have a significant impact on your waistline. Depending on your weight loss goals, many practitioners recommend that you eat between 20-50 grams of carbohydrates per day, which is often significantly less than most adults eat in an average day.
When you no longer fill your stomach with carbs, your body has to look elsewhere for energy. That’s where ketosis comes in. When your body depletes its glycogen stores (uses up all the sugar in your bloodstream), the liver steps in and starts to produce ketones from the fat deposits in your body. That is what leads to the fat loss on the Keto Diet. For beginner practitioners, it is more important to lower their overall carb intake so that their body can start to use fat for energy, instead of sugar. When you count your carbs, you may end up eating fewer calories anyway as even the Lazy Keto Diet recommends that practitioners up their fat and protein intake while decreasing their carb intake. And as fat and protein take longer to digest than carbs, your body feels full longer, which means you may end up eating less.
2) Drink More Water
When you eat a typical, high-carb diet, your muscles store glycogen in water, which means as your body depletes its glycogen stores, you retain less fluid. While this will help practitioners of Lazy Keto lose water weight, it also means that you will have less water in your body as a result. Combat this by drinking more water than usual when practicing Lazy Keto. The last thing you want is to be dehydrated as this can lead to a bevy of health problems, in addition to slowing down your weight loss. Another bonus to drinking a lot of water is that you will feel fuller, longer. Many people mistake chronic dehydration for hunger and, as a response, eat more food to combat the “hungry” feeling, which is dehydration.
While eating low carb is essential for Lazy Keto, drinking water will also help you to naturally curb cravings and keep your calorie intake lower, which may also promote weight loss. When doing Lazy Keto, remember that drinking more water will also flush the salt and electrolytes out of your body. Consequently, you may experience “Keto flu,” a situation where you feel groggy and tired, almost as though you were coming down with the flu. You can help to keep this from happening by ensuring that you have enough salt in your diet as well as potassium and magnesium. You can add a small amount of salt to your water as you drink throughout the day, and take magnesium and potassium supplements if lacking they’re in your diet.
3) Increase Your Fat Intake, Decrease Your Carb Intake
One of the more challenging aspects of practicing Lazy Keto is getting used to the idea that fat doesn’t have to be bad for your body. Because Lazy Keto uses fat and protein for energy, instead of carbohydrates and sugar, fat is necessary on a diet. For many years, traditional diets encouraged practitioners to eat low-fat, low-calorie diets. While calories can be an essential part of any diet, low-fat foods often contain extra sugar because, once you remove the fat from a food item, the taste suffers. The added sugar gives the food item back some missing taste but also means that you’re ingesting more sugar and, therefore, more carbs. Carbs are converted to fat when eaten in excess, which is where Lazy Keto comes into play. By eliminating the carbs, your body will be forced to use stored fat as an energy source, but you need to keep yourself full as well.
Many Keto diets encourage practitioners to get at least 60-80% of their total caloric intake from fat, leaving protein and carbs to make up the rest of the calories in your diet. That may sound like a lot of fat, but most adults are very unaware of what they are putting in their bodies on a daily basis. Not only are many people eating high-fat diets already, but their regimen is also high-calorie and high-sugar, which means their body has to work extra hard to eliminate all the sugar and carbs. The excess calories from sugar often get stored as fat, which can lead to obesity in adults. Once you can cut out the sugar and carbs, the weight may be able to slide off as your body will be better able to maintain itself without the bombardment of sugar and carbohydrates.
While the Keto Diet can seem challenging to new practitioners, Lazy Keto helps to set practitioners up for success by getting them ready for the Keto Diet process, without some common complaints of the strict form of the diet. As with any lifestyle change, be sure to talk to your doctor or a trained healthcare practitioner before any significant diet change, especially if you have any health issues. Lazy Keto may be able to help practitioners become used to the Keto Diet and could help set you up on the path to weight loss.