The DEFINITIVE Guide to the Keto Diet… for Entrepreneurs (or REALLY ambitious people)

Hey guys, so let’s go. Here is every single important thing that you need to know about the keto diet Now, just a quick preface, I’m passionate about keto for so many reasons other than just weight loss. Although ideal body composition is definitely part of the equation. In an average day, I do three hours of walking on a treadmill, two hours of salsa, one hour of gym training and upwards of 12 hours of work; and so my reasons, and my perspective on keto are all based on optimizing all of that. I also care about my insides, and I want to live to a very old age, and so, for all of that and more, not only do I do keto, but I truly don’t see any other viable option if I want to be performing at the highest level possible.

So if you’re interested in keto from just a purely look good, lose weight, type perspective, this video probably isn’t for you. If you’re interested in a healthy ketogenic diet from the perspective of optimizing all aspects of your well-being keep watching. Now, I’ve spent hundreds of hours reviewing every book, video, podcast, lab tests; I’m an obsessive kind of person. And what I’m about to give you is all of the important key takeaways. So let’s get into it. So first the basics; A keto diet is one that consists of roughly 75% fats, 20% protein, and I could say 5% carbs, but really you just want to keep your net daily carbs below approximately 30 grams. That’s going to vary based on the individual. So how it works is this: when you heavily restrict carbs, again less than roughly 30 net carbs per day, and you consume about 75% fats, your body will actually switch from using carbs for fuel to using fat for fuel Now to put that into perspective, on average, we eat somewhere in the range of 250 to 450 grams of carbs per day. Now, it’s called the ketogenic diet because by using fat for energy, what’s happening is that your body is converting fat into what are called ketones, through a process called ketosis.

Just think of ketones as the energy source. So, if your body has carbs present, it’s going to prefer to use that for energy since that energy can be used the fastest. So when you restrict carbs, again, less than 30 net carbs per day, and you up your fats, your body will actually shift to using fat as a fuel source. And, whereas carbs are broken down into glucose for energy, fat is broken down into ketones for energy. Now, here’s the thing about ketones: they are a much more efficient and plentiful form of energy. So when you’re in a state of ketosis, it’s almost like you have superpowers. A lot of people like to describe this as it’s like running on jet fuel, instead of just regular gasoline. Your body loves ketones. So let’s talk about all the benefits of a keto diet. Now first off is mental clarity. This one is a big one. For as much as your body loves ketones, your brain also loves ketones as a fuel source.

So the improved mental clarity and focus that I feel personally while in ketosis is like night and day, and for me that’s actually the most important aspect of ketosis. Again, I do a lot of stuff, so… I need my brain to be firing on all cylinders. Improved energy. A ketogenic diet will give you high energy that’s consistent throughout the entire day. Two reasons why. First, on a traditional diet when you eat a meal with carbs, what happens is your insulin goes up, and when it comes down you feel tired. You could even say that there’s a bit of a crash. You know what I’m talking about. Now, when you eat something that has an extremely high glycemic load, like cake, your insulin goes up even more and then you crash even harder.

Now, fat, on the other hand, doesn’t spike insulin, so that means no crash and consistent energy. Reason two: Fats, specifically ketones, are just a more efficient source of energy. In fact according to some studies, it’s almost two times as efficient as glucose. So again, it’s like using jet fuel instead of just regular gasoline. Weight loss and weight maintenance. Now, the big thing to understand when it comes to the ketogenic diet and weight loss is Insulin, a.k.a. the fat storage hormone And now, I don’t want to over complicate this, so just understand this. When you eat carbs, your body produces insulin as a response, which basically tells your body to store fat.

When you eat fat, your body doesn’t produce insulin, and so you don’t store fat. Guys, there’s obviously more to it than that but bear with me, I’m trying to keep things as simple as possible here and that’s as simple as it gets. Again, eat carbs, body produces insulin, store fats. Eat fat, don’t produce insulin, don’t store fats. Now, if you’re like me, you’ve probably gone your whole life believing, without a shred of a doubt that calories in equals calories out. if you want to lose weight, you just have to eat less or not eat. And, believe it or not, there’s more and more scientific evidence that refutes that, Using the insulin argument as the cornerstone. There are actually a bunch of people on youtube that are on low-carb diets that have tested the whole calories in-calories out theory by massively increasing their calorie intake to as much as four to five thousand calories per day. and they’ve actually in most cases either maintained or lost weight. so to put that into perspective, 4000 calories is the equivalent of, like 55 eggs. There’s actually a book “Why we get fat” written by Gary Taubes This talks all about insulin, calories in-calories out, and basically this is an argument against that.

My personal experience has absolutely been the same. I always used to count calories, I always used to restrict eating, even when I first started the keto diet. I stopped counting calories months ago, so some days I eat more, some days i eat a lot less. And my weight has roughly stayed the same. What it comes down to is that how much I eat just depends on what my body is telling me.

I used to fight cravings and now i embrace them. and that’s another thing too. On a carb diet, I think your body can and does lie to you. It’ll tell you to eat more when you definitely shouldn’t. On a keto diet, I feel like my body is actually honest with me. So if I’m more active, i tend to be more hungry. If I’m less active I tend to be less hungry Now what I’m about, to say is gonna sound absolute batshit crazy, but for the last month or so, I’ve actually started eating a lot more, and I’ve actually put on muscle and lost fat, and overall I’m actually down one pound, despite eating a lot more, a lot more. I’ll talk about that in another video. Anyway, point is that I don’t count my calories, I just listen to my body and I’m the leanest that i’ve ever been and it’s seriously effortless.

I just make sure that every meal is roughly 3/4 fat, 1/4 of protein and as low-carb as possible. it’s not that hard. Also another reason why people lose weight so fast when they first go onto ketogenic diet; this is a big one, when you’re in ketosis, your appetite actually declines big-time. So when I ate carbs, I used to think about food all the time, like all the time. which that in itself, I think can make you fat, because that creates stress, which spikes cortisol, which also makes your body produce insulin… Anyway, now that I’m using the ketogenic diet, i’d literally have to remind myself sometimes to eat. Improved body composition. So, when you eat carbs, you’re ging to retain more water weight, and on keto you’re actually gonna shed that water weight and you also avoid bloating.

In fact, that’s the main reason that, for the first week or two, people in ketosis often report huge weight losses. They’re shedding all that water weight. And that’s not a knock on the weight loss. I mean if you’re holding less water weight, you’re going to look leaner, you’re going to feel less bloated, and who doesn’t want that? Me personally, I used to always feel bloated whenever I ate carbs. The ketogenic diet is also what’s called a protein sparing diet, which in non-scientific terms, basically means two things: First thing: You have less muscle breakdown, meaning that if you lose weight you’re going to lose more fat and less muscle. Second thing: You have better protein synthesis, which means you actually need much less protein to build muscle. Again on a keto diet, protein is going to be about 20 to 25 percent of your daily consumption. So, if you work out a lot, you want to try to keep the protein a little higher, so maybe closer to 25 percent, and if you don’t, you can keep things closer to 20 percent or even 15.

You can play around with this one for yourself. Now in my personal experience, it really doesn’t matter that much. This was extremely hard for me to wrap my head around, since I’ve always been told that i needed massive quantities of protein to put on muscle . In fact, one of the biggest mistakes that people make on the keto diet, and this is a mistake that I was definitely guilty of when i first started keto, is that if you eat too much protein, your body will actually start to use protein for energy through a process called gluconeogenesis. Which will actually kick you out of ketosis and also make you feel a complete shit. Curative benefits. So ketogenic diets are good for your heart, they decrease inflammation they improve digestion and kidney function, and they can prevent and cure diabetes, obesity, cancer, and various neurological diseases. Now, me personally, before I started keto I suffered from some body inflammation, I had body aches, I had low testosterone and sex drive And I had horrible digestion.

I’m very happy to report that all of those are now not only non issues, but have dramatically improved. I just feel much better. There’s also a ton of warranted speculation as to the longetivity benefits of keto. I say warranted speculation because, well there aren’t a lot of clinical studies testing this specifically just yet, Just look at the blood test, or all of the diseases that keto can not only prevent but cure, and also just look at guys like Dom D’Agostino, and Jeff Bullock. Right, these are two of the most formed up, these are two of the foremost keto researchers who remain in nutritional ketosis for most of the year. They look like they haven’t aged in the last 10 years. Jacob Wilson is another one. He’s 38 now and he literally looks like he’s 15. What to eat and what not to eat. So, here’s where people have the most questions on keto, and again, I’m going to keep this real simple. I’m also going to describe a healthy keto diet so, technically there’s a lot of artificially sweetened, low-carb ice cream-type crap that you can squeeze into the diet, but that stuff is garbage.

So if you want that information just go somewhere else. So let’s start with the stuff that you have to completely avoid, starting with the obvious. Grains. So, that includes bread, pasta, quinoa, oatmeal, cookies; You’ve got to avoid these things at all costs. Now, the less obvious. Starchy vegetables, so those are things like potatoes, yams, off-the-menu. milk. So not only is milk generally not healthy, but it’s also surprisingly high in carbs. One exception here is full fat milk, which if you are going to drink, just do it in small quantities. Legumes. This includes all beans, chickpeas, lentils, Not only are they high in carbs, but they’re also notoriously very bad for digestion.

So what about fruits? Guys, I hate to tell you, but those are off the menu as well. So no bananas, apples, mangos, nada. One exception here is berries, which are moderate carbs, so if you do eat them, very small quantities. Beer, wine, cocktails. Notice that I didn’t say alcohol, because technically, hard alcohol is empty calories, meaning there’s no carbs, no fat, no protein; so you can get away with it, but in moderation. When I go out, my go-to is a mojito without sugar or just a straight whiskey. Also worth noting that when you’re in keto, you’re going to catch a buzz much faster. I don’t drink a lot, but when I do, if I have two drinks in one or two hours I’m pretty intoxicated. Beer and wine are very high carb, and 99% of cocktails are…- they’re just garbage, but they’re also loaded with sugar, they’re high carb as well, so you just have to avoid them.

Now, the following foods are not going to knock you out of ketosis, but again, my focus is healthy ketosis so you should just try to avoid them. Artificial sweeteners. So you will never kick your sweet tooth if you’re loading up on garbage like splenda, which is just loaded with chemical bullshit. If you need a sweetener just stick to something natural like stevia, or monkfruit. Now, you should also avoid refined fats, so these are mostly oils, like sunflower, corn, canola, soybean and grapeseed oils. Also margarine. To avoid these, just generally speaking avoid fast-food. Ok, so what should you eat. First up remember, once again, every meal you want to be aiming for roughly 3/4 healthy fats,1/4 protein and as few carbs as possible. So let’s start with the healthy fats. My absolute favorites for cooking are coconut oil, grass-fed butter, and ghee, and sometimes leftover grease from cooking certain meats like bacon. For salads, definitely olive oil. And for my coffee, I like to add MCT oil, which is actually a more refined version of coconut oil, and again ghee.

Adding healthy fats to your coffee on a keto diet is not only normal, but it’s delicious. It something called bulletproof coffee, you probably heard of it before. We’ll talk more about that in another video. Now when it comes to vegetables, you actually have to be careful here as well. You want to focus on leafy, non starchy, above the ground type vegetables. My personal favorites are spinach, lettuce, kale, radishes, squash, zucchini, cauliflower, broccoli, tomatoes, asparagus, bell peppers, bean sprouts, and arugula I also love carrots and onions, but those are actually higher carb and so if you do eat them you have to eat them in small quantities. When it comes to protein, what you want to do is you want to focus on higher-fat type meats and fish. Some of my favorite includes salmon, steak and ground beef. Now, with ground beef make sure not to go lean here, I usually go with the 80/20 which has about a 50/50 fat-to-protein ratio.

Now, you can also eat things like chicken and pork chops, I certainly do, but just keep in mind that they’re very low in fat and so if you do eat somethign like that, you want to eat it with more fat in conjunction. So if I’m eating chicken, I’ll just eat more avocado or some macadamia nuts to compensate. As for my favorite protein on keto, definitely eggs.

They are delicious, nutrient-dense and very, very, very convenient. Also if you like to count macros, eggs are just going to make your life so much easier; because they’re roughly six grams of fat and six grams of protein. it’s pretty easy to add up. When selecting your proteins, I always try to buy stuff that’s free-range, grass-fed, hormone-free, cage-free, in the case of eggs, just try to buy as natural as you can. It makes a huge difference. Alright so, now let’s talk about The avocado This is an absolute must on a keto diet. It’s also technically a fruit, but I didn’t mention it earlier because, like, come on, Who thinks of an avocado as a fruit? So when I order my groceries, I literally order like 15 at a time and I pretty much eat an avocado, sometimes even two, with every single meal Good thing I live in Colombia, because avocados are aplenty here. So a bunch of reasons that I feel like avocado is not only something that you should eat, but it’s actually essential. So the most obvious is, it’s just delicious.

And it mixes so well with any protein. The second reason is micronutrients. And this is probably the most important reason. The keto diet is notorious for being deficient in three key minerals: sodium, potassium, and magnesium. So when people say that they feel like crap on keto, it’s usually because they’re deficient in one of those three things. So as fate would have it, avocados are actually rich in magnesium and potassium, and to get around the sodium issue, just make sure to sprinkle a little colored salt. I like Himalayan pink salt onto everything, not just the avocado. I sprinkle it onto everything. And not only does salt make the avocado more delicious, but when you eat an avocado with colored salt you’re going to cover those three most important micronutrient bases right there. Last up, let’s talk nuts.

Nuts are keto friendly, although not all nuts are created equal. Now the absolute best nuts on keto are the ones that are highest in fats and lowest in carbs, obviously, which are going to include macadamia pecan brazil and walnuts. Almonds are moderate carbs, so you can eat them but you want to try to limit them. My favorite overall thing to eat on keto is almond butter, which I recommend you make yourself since when you get it in a store it’s really hard to find sugar-free almond butter and also they tend to use low-grade oil.

So, it’s super easy to make at home. All you have to do is just roast some almonds, blend them in a high-power blender with coconut oil and you have a delicious snack. Now, nuts to avoid. Pistachio, cashew, that’s a big one, and chestnuts, are all very high in carbs and so, you want to avoid these pretty much at all costs. Generally speaking, also try not to go crazy with nuts. I had a bad habit of overeating nuts just because they’re so tasty and they’re so convenient, but, like, a big handful of nuts can be as much as 700 calories, so…- Overeating nuts will definitely make you fat, and not to mention nuts have a lot of omega-6, which is highly inflammatory when consumed in excess. I eat nuts every day, but I definitely feel my best when I limit the amount of nuts that I eat to roughly a small handful per day.

How to measure your food. If you’re just starting out, you’ve got to measure your food. My recommendation for measuring your food is to use myfitnesspal.com Don’t focus on calories, instead just focus on making sure that your meals are roughly following that 3/4 fat 1/4 protein formula. Now, here’s an example of a typical breakfast for me: one tablespoon of coconut oil, 50 grams of cauliflower rice, 50 grams of zucchini, three eggs 125 grams of avocado. Now, as you can see on the screen, when you put that all into myfitsnesspal, my ratios of fat-to-protein are roughly 3 to 1, Perfect. Now if you paid attention to what you just show on the screen, you may have noticed that the total carbs looks pretty high. It’s 24 grams. And that 125 grams of avocado looks to be loaded with carbs. However, when it comes to carbs, you actually only want to count net carbs. So net carbs is total carbs minus dietary fiber minus sugar alcohols. So that 125 grams of avocado actually has about 10 grams of dietary fiber, so just subtract that from 15, and you get roughly five net carbs. Thankfully, myfitnesspal actually does this for you.

Pretty much all vegetables are going to have a good amount of fiber. As for sugar alcohols, if you look at most of the keto snacks on the market, they tend to be loaded with sugar alcohols, which is how they get away with being so sweet while also being keto friendly. Again, i just avoid most of that stuff, because it’s crap. And I just love myself too much. How to get into ketosis. So when you first start a ketogenic diet, there is an initial adaptation phase, which is going to last an average of one to two weeks. During this time your body is really confused because it suddenly isn’t getting carbs for fuel, and so a lot of people report what’s called the keto flu, or you’re basically going to feel tired, exhausted, until your body fully switches over to using fats for fuel. Now, people like to freak out about this, don’t. You’re going to feel a little tired, just drink some coffee.

Mark Sossin recommends you start out with something like a paleo diet, which is moderate in carbs, and then switch over to keto, instead of just going straight into keto, but I think that’s completely unnecessary. Now if you do want to speed up the adaptation phase, there are a few little tricks, a few things that you can do. Full body exercise. Without getting too technical, your muscles store what’s called the glycogen and when you deplete that glycogen and you don’t replenish it with more carbs, you’re going to speed up the process of your body having to find a new fuel source, i.e. fats. Number 2, fasting. You can choose to do intermittent fasting or full-day fasts to speed things up a bit, putting your body into a fasted state will naturally result in your body having to produce ketones for energy on any diet So it makes sense that this would help speed up an adaptation when switching to a ketogenic diet.

Tim Ferriss recommends full day fasts, and then also going for long walks, which, again, is going to help you to deplete glycogen. He also recommends supplementing with what are called exogenous ketones, which sounds fancy and technical, but basically these are just ketones that are produced exogenously, like, outside of your body, like in a laboratory. So you can actually buy these on amazon, and with the recent popularity of the keto diet, there’s basically a new exogenous ketone supplement every day. Eat More Fat, so while you’re fat adapting, I would even recommend eating closer to 85 or 90% fats. It will definitely speed things up, and then you can always just shift back to your normal macro ratios once you’re on the other side. Personally, when I went through my keto adaptation, I did not fast, I did not test exogenous ketones, but i was already relatively low-carb, and I did eat closer to 90% fats. My initial adaptation took around five days. Yeah, I was tired, but again, I just drank some coffee. How to test if you’re in ketosis. So when you’re ketosis, you’re generally speaking you’re going to feel it.

But the easiest way to test is pee strips . There are different types of ketones and the pee strips test for acetoacetate, which is less accurate, especially if you’re keto adapted, since your body is gonna become more efficient at using acetoacetate. And those trips are gonna show lower levels. Now, I do still recommend this method, as it’s very cheap and it’s very, very, very easy, and at the very least it’ll just tell you if you’re in ketosis or not You just pee into some kind of container, you dip the strip in very quickly, you wait about 60 seconds, that strips gonna change color, and depending on the color intensity, in most cases, that’s going to indicate how deep you are to ketosis.

Again, it’s not super accurate, so I wouldn’t rely too much on using the strip’s just to tell you how deep you are into ketosis. But they can at least just tell you if you’re in ketosis. If you want a much more accurate way of testing your ketone levels, no doubt that you’d want to use a blood meter. So where pee strips test for acetoacetate, blood tests tests for beta-hydroxybutyrate.

Now, me personally, I use a precision extra from abbott labs. This is considered the gold standard when it comes to testing your blood’s ketone levels. This will run you 40 bucks on Amazon. You’ll see a lot of videos talking about how expensive the strips are. When I first started buying them, they were about five to six bucks each, but very recently, they’ve become much cheaper. I find them on Amazon for close to a buck each depending on how many you buy I think that’s it probably in response to so many new keto blood test products coming on to the market. And this is also actually extremely easy to test. You just put the strip in, prick your finger with a lancet that comes with any ketone blood testing device, put some blood on the strip, wait about 10 seconds, and then you’ll see your ketone level. What should your ketone levels be? Ketone levels are measured in milimolar, and nutritional ketosis is considered anywhere from 0.5, to mmol. Now, your ketone levels are going to fluctuate throughout the day, so don’t worry too much about trying to have the highest possible ketone levels.

The important thing is that you’re in that range. If you’re not, you screwed up somewhere, so maybe you had too many carbs, or too much protein, and you need to figure out what happened and fix it. Now, a lot of people fixate on trying to get their ketone levels as high as possible i do personally, definitely notice that I’m much sharper mentally and overall I just feel much better at higher levels, but seriously, don’t worry about this too much. Just make sure that you’re in that nutritional ketosis range of 0.5, to 1.5. So what else do you need to know? There’s a couple of other things I’m going to address here very, very, very quickly.

First up is cheat meals. I think that cheat meals on keto are very, very stupid, although some people do do them. the initial adaptation, like i said, takes about a week to two weeks, however if you look at pioneers in ketogenic diet research, like Stephen Phinney and Jeff Bullock, these guys have published studies showing that our bodies are still making adaptations to the ketogenic diet as far as six months and longer.

I’m seven months in, personally, and i still feel like my body is adapting. So I don’t recommend cheat meals because they kick you out of ketosis and you’re not gonna get that long term adaptation benefit. Eating out. So eating out could definitely be challenging, you have to be very careful with the sort of sauces and crap that comes with your food. My personal go-to’s if I eat out, a cheese burger without the bun, without any sauces, bacon, bacon cheeseburger. Also, if it’s available, I’ll just grab a salad with some sort of protein and lots of avocado, eggs, bacon, just get creative here. And guys, the last thing I want to say keto is…- i said keto diet, ketogenic diet many times in this video but, Keto is definitely a lifestyle. It is a lifestyle. And so, if you want to just use keto to lose weight, and then you go back to a carb based diet, you’re going to gain that weight back. If you want to use keto, try to use it for the right reasons.

I listed out all the health benefits, Of course, the body stuff is fantastic, I love it. Who doesn’t want to walk around with a six-pack all day? i was never…- I’ve always been pretty strict, and a carb diet for me honestly was just it was torturous. I was always thinking about food, my weight levels would always fluctuate, my energy levels would always fluctuate, and my blood tests weren’t that great. as I mentioned my test levels were low, my sex drive was low. The keto diet, the keto lifestyle has completely fixed all of these things for me. i feel incredible. I’m able to, I can have a very active life. I’m a very ambitious person. And without this ketogenic lifestyle, I just definitely wouldn’t be able to accomplish what I am now able to accomplish. So if you’re going to go keto, it’s a commitment. Think about it a lot before you make the decision, and when you do make the decision, stay for a minute.

Good luck guys, I really hope this video was helpful. I put a lot of thought and time into making it as informational as possible, without going too extreme in any particular individual theme, and yeah. I hope this was just really, really, really helpful. Also one more thing. If you did enjoy this video, please give me a like. And I highly encourage you to subscribe to my channel. Not only am I making a lot of keto videos from the perspective of just a really ambitious person. So if you’re an ambitious person, definitely subscribe to my stuff. But I also have a vlog that we’re doing right now we’re doing two episodes a week? ketogenic diet is definitely a focus in addition to my occupational stuff, my workout stuff, my expressive salsa stuff. I got a lot going on, I think it’s pretty interesting. I think you guys will enjoy it, and If you want to check it out, please do, and definitely give me a subscribe. I would love if you did that. Thanks and I’ll see you guys in the next video. .