Losing weight with fat thanks to keto power

You have been trying to lose weight for ages, you fry everything in water only, you save every drop of oil wherever possible, no butter, nothing but light products and in general… fat does not come into your house, because you want to lose fat, don’t you? Then we have a statement for you: if you want to lose weight, you have to stop doing without fat!

Fat is not evil. Fat is not your enemy. You can lose weight with fat too. Fat is an essential nutrient that is vital for your body. It is an important source of energy and of great importance for your health. Did you know that your brain is made up of 60 per cent fat? Your cell membranes contain fatty acids too, and cholesterol is the basis for important hormones.

There certainly are fatty acids we should avoid as far as possible. These include inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids (for example from sunflower oil) and trans fatty acids (for example from margarine). High quality fats, on the other hand, should play a big role in your diet. Polyunsaturated fatty acids are important here, such as the omega-3 fatty acids from salmon, or monounsaturated fatty acids such as the oleic acid from olive oil. Saturated fatty acids (for example from grass fed butter or coconut oil) are a valuable source of energy as well, and the fewer carbohydrates you eat, the more energy from fat you need.

One way of eating in which good fats play a big role is the ketogenic diet.

The ketogenic diet is a special form of carbohydrate reduced (low carb) eating. This way of eating is defined by the fact that special molecules are formed in the body: ketone bodies.

The decisive criteria for ketogenic nutrition are:

• it is very low in carbohydrates
• insulin secretion is minimal
• fat burning is strongly increased
• the liver produces ketone bodies from fatty acids

Even though the word “diet” is in the name, that means nothing more than “way of eating”. A diet is not always a slimming cure. There can also be medical diets. The ketogenic diet, for example, is used to treat epilepsy in childhood. More than 100 years ago the ketogenic diet was developed for exactly this purpose. And even though the word “diet” does not always mean “slimming cure”: one advantage of ketogenic nutrition is that it makes losing weight very easy.

No, the ketogenic diet is not a newfangled phenomenon for losing weight. It is not a crash diet and not a passing trend. The ketogenic diet has been used for almost a hundred years to treat epilepsy in childhood and adolescence. In 1921 the American doctor Russell M Wilder carried out a ketogenic diet on patients in childhood and adolescence for the first time. Ketogenic nutrition successfully leads to a reduction in epileptic seizures.

With the development of new antiepileptic medicines, ketogenic nutrition moved into the background again. Also because, to be honest, the recipes of that time were really dreadful. It was said that you cannot stick to keto nutrition anyway. As you can see from our Foodpunk keto recipes, that is no longer the case today. We make keto varied, tasty and rich in nutrients.

Ketogenic nutrition is also used therapeutically for other diseases of the brain, for example for neurodegenerative conditions such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s.

The official definition of ketosis is: “a metabolic state in which the concentration of ketone bodies in the blood is raised above the normal value”.

That does not tell us very much yet. So what is the normal value? It is the value that an average everyday eater has when they are not fasting for a longer period or doing without carbohydrates.

Our average everyday eater probably had a cheese roll an hour ago and a chocolate bar just now. They eat around 3 to 6 times a day and they even fast every day, namely while they are asleep.

An average everyday eater like this has a ketone body concentration in the blood of less than 0.1 mmol per litre. So that is the normal value, and if you have this value in your blood then you are not in ketosis. When a person is in ketosis the values are usually between 2 and 5 mmol/L. This is completely physiological, in other words a healthy state. By the way, mol and mmol are a unit of measurement for chemists, much like kg and g for the cook.

Ketone bodies are small molecules that supply organs with energy.

In medicine, three compounds are called ketone bodies: acetoacetate, β-hydroxybutyrate and acetone. Ketone bodies are formed when you fast or eat very few carbohydrates, for example as part of a ketogenic diet.

The small ketone bodies are energy rich molecules and they are formed from fat. Their advantage is that they are water soluble and can therefore be transported easily through the blood. The brain can use these ketone bodies as a source of energy too. Fat, by contrast, cannot be used directly by the brain as a source of energy. That is why the liver first converts the fat into small ketone bodies. Ketosis and ketone bodies are a completely normal part of our human metabolism. In evolution, ketone bodies were important so that the brain could be well supplied during longer phases without food.

By the way: did you know that breast milk is very rich in fat and that babies even come into the world in ketosis?

Of course every person is individual. That is why, for the Foodpunk nutrition programme, we work out your values individually on the basis of your answers in the questionnaire. You can adjust your questionnaire afresh every month, so we take into account your new weight, your changed activity and your changed goal, for example.

You can also try out ketogenic eating for yourself in the first month and then switch to more carbohydrates in the questionnaire for the second month. The Foodpunk nutrition programme adapts to you month by month.

These are 10 reasons why you should give keto nutrition a try:

1. You have fewer blood sugar fluctuations
2. Your insulin level is lower and insulin resistance can improve
3. Your fat burning gets incredibly well trained
4. This is exciting for athletes: your endurance performance improves after 30 days
5. Ketone bodies are a very good source of energy for the brain and have a protective effect against neurodegenerative diseases
6. You have fewer food cravings and feel full for longer, because ketone bodies act on the satiety centre in the brain
7. You can concentrate better, because your brain is supplied with energy from ketone bodies around the clock
8. You slow down signs of ageing, because the molecules in your blood and in your skin are not damaged so much by sugar
9. You reduce water retention and look fresher
10. If you are overweight you can lose weight very well and without the yo-yo effect

We recommend following ketogenic nutrition as fat metabolism training for 30 to 90 days and then building in a little more carbohydrate again.

Fruit is forbidden on keto? Or: fruit with more than 5 / 10 g of carbohydrate per 100 g is generally off limits? That is not true. It is just that the more carbohydrate rich the variety of fruit, the less of it you can eat.

Make sure you always eat the fruit as a dessert after a meal and not on its own in between. That way the influence on blood sugar levels is smaller. Depending on the variety of fruit, the amount you can eat of that variety to reach 5 g or 10 g of carbohydrate is different. Certain varieties, such as berries, are very well suited to keto nutrition. Carbohydrate rich fruits, on the other hand, are rather less suitable, because who gets any fun out of 25 g of banana or 40 g of pineapple?

You can find out more in the article “This much fruit you can eat on the keto diet“!

In a ketogenic diet you lower the amount of carbohydrate to under 30 g (or under 15 to 20 g in stricter forms). With 3 meals a day, one meal can still contain at least 5 g of carbohydrate. Anyone who only eats a fried egg or a “bulletproof coffee” in the morning can happily eat 10 g of carbohydrate from vegetables in the two remaining meals.

Other foods contain carbohydrates in small amounts too, for example eggs and nuts as well as dairy products. At the beginning of ketogenic nutrition we recommend consuming rather fewer dairy products and getting the carbohydrates above all from nutrient rich vegetables. That way you can easily eat 600 to 900 g of vegetables per day. You can do without dairy products with no hesitation if you cover your calcium needs with calcium rich vegetables such as kale, rocket or spinach. 100 g of kale contains almost twice as much calcium as 100 ml of milk.

Anyone who goes about ketogenic nutrition properly actually eats MORE vegetables than on an average diet. With ketogenic nutrition, vegetables form the basis of every meal and replace potatoes, rice and pasta as the “filling side dish”. The result is a much greater variety of nutrients on the plate.

A study was also published on this last year, presenting the finding that a well composed LCHF diet (low carb high fat), in other words keto, supplies all the necessary micronutrients. ¹

In cold, wet weather there is nothing better than warming soups, is there? And if they also push your metabolism through ketosis… all the better!

1. Vegetable soup with prawns
2. Cauliflower and coconut soup with spinach and a strawberry shake
3. Fennel soup with beetroot and a halloumi skewer
4. Creamy onion soup with bacon
5. Cheese and leek soup with mince
6. Creamy leek soup with poached eggs
7. Oven roasted tomato and strawberry soup with Parmesan croutons
8. Cream of Brussels sprout soup with cheddar
9. Vegetable soup with semolina dumplings

You will find all the recipes as part of the nutrition programmes in the Foodpunk app, provided they can be calculated to your nutritional values. Either under “Personal recipes” or on the marketplace.

Ketogenic nutrition also makes sense for the fat distribution disorder lipedema.

1. Water retention is reduced: with keto nutrition very few carbohydrates are eaten. The body therefore stores less water. Circumferences go down and pressure pain eases.
2. Ketogenic nutrition has an anti-inflammatory effect. At cell level the protein NF-κB, which is responsible for inflammation, is blocked. The nerves in the lipedema area are then irritated less strongly and the sensation of pain decreases.
3. Non-lipedema fat can be broken down very well. Ketogenic nutrition promotes fat burning and works particularly well when insulin resistance and obesity are present. So if overweight or obesity is present in addition to lipedema, the “normal” non-lipedema fat tissue can be broken down very well.

You can also find out more in the article “Easing lipedema through ketogenic nutrition“