I love that people are becoming more fat aware opposed to fat scared when it comes to their diet.  People are feeling rebellious as they add bacon, butter, and red meat to their caloric intake.  And feeling a ton better.  As people start adding, they start asking.  This often leads them to pick my brain about the ketogenic diet.  If you don’t know what that is, you have Google, look it up.  Ultimately, they are looking for more of an easy, lower carb transition opposed to a pure keto implementation.

Overall, I’m a fan of the ketogenic diet but I rarely recommend it.  Why I rarely recommend a pure keto diet is more about timing and sustainability.  My main client population is the busy professional, often in a service industry that requires travel, meeting on their client’s turf, while throwing a spouse and kids into the mix.

With those things in mind, I often give a ‘Keto Cheater’ option.  Here’s the basic gist in 3 easy rules.

1. Start with fat consumption in a beginning range of a minimum of 45% of calories.  Once people start being more intentional about fat consumption, they often increase to 55%+ with little effort, especially when they get their head around that saturated fat isn’t going to kill them.

2. Keep carb consumption (Paleo style eating, no wheat, no sugar) between 50-100 grams/day.  Again, for most, this is a really easy transition and they will often adapt to the lower end of that spectrum.  Some of those busy professionals that are also semi-competitive exercise racers will function better in the higher ranges of 80-90 grams.

3. Keep solid food calorie consumption in an 8-10 hour window.  Again, for ease of implementation and sustainability, I will give the green light to allow liquids (even if they have calories) in the fasting time.  Technically, this isn’t fasting but I’ve yet to be condemned for it, at least by anyone that matters to me.  If someone is working out at 5am and wants some substance so their stomach isn’t growling meeting with clients before their first solid meal, have a protein shake.

In order to make this work, you have to track everything you eat and drink. And if you take fish oil or other omegas, don’t forget to count them too. I personally use and recommend the app MyFitnessPal.  Try it out for 30 days and see what changes you notice.  If you hit a roadblock, you know how to find me.