When does keto start working?

If you are one of the many people whose goal is to lose weight to look and feel better, you may be considering trying keto. Undoubtedly, you may have read other people’s success stories with keto and you want to be next. 

However, prior to starting keto, it’s important to understand what it really is and the results you can expect. Just like with any diet or fitness program, you must have realistic expectations of the results that you can achieve and your timeline.

Let’s take a closer look at what happens during keto, what it takes to become fat-adapted, as well as how you can tell that you’ve become fat-adapted as you go through your keto journey. It’s also important to note a few potential pitfalls of the keto diet.

What Happens During Keto? 

During keto, your intake of carbohydrates is greatly reduced, which ultimately decreases the amount of glucose in your body from that particular source. Therefore, after three or four days, once the stored glucose is depleted, the body begins to use fat as fuel.

However, in order to do that, ketone bodies are produced from fat, which will then be used as a source of fuel.

Therefore, as you get further into your keto journey, your body no longer relies on sugars that come from carbohydrates as your main energy source. This is exactly how you go from using sugar, or glucose, as fuel to using stored fat instead.

What Does It Take To Become Fat-adapted?

1. TIME

Unfortunately, many people who start the keto diet underestimate the amount of time it takes to become fat-adapted. 

In order to see results from the keto diet, you must follow it long enough to allow your body to use stored fat as fuel without experiencing ketoacidosis, which happens when there is an extremely excessive amount of ketones in the blood.

The keto diet, when done properly, allows your body to produce just enough ketones to use up your stored fat without putting you at risk for ketoacidosis. In order to become fat-adapted, you must enter ketosis and that process takes a different amount of time for each person, particularly when you take age, gender, metabolism, hormones, activity levels as well as genetic differences between individuals into account.

2. PHYSICAL ACTIVITY

Therefore, some people can become fat-adapted sooner than others. It’s also important to note that exercising more will help you enter ketosis sooner, especially if you are doing cardiovascular exercises such as running. As you may know, running longer or doing high-intensity interval training will help you burn through your glycogen stores faster.

Although you may lose some weight at the beginning of your keto journey, a lot of that weight could be water weight as opposed to fat. Therefore, it is not unusual to not become fat-adapted until you’ve been following the keto diet for at least four weeks.

In fact, it can take up to three months for some people. With that in mind, you will most likely not see a significant amount of weight loss within those first four weeks as your body is still going through the process of changing its main energy source.

Although you may start to produce and burn ketones within the first three days of starting the keto diet, it takes a lot longer to see substantial results, which is why it is important that you stick with it long enough for you to do so.

How To Tell That You’ve Become Fat-adapted?

1. Feel More Energy

Once you’ve become fat-adapted, you will notice some changes in your body and how you feel throughout the day. First, you will notice that your fasted morning cardio sessions become a lot easier and you won’t feel like you are about to die from the lack of energy.

2. Don’t Feel Hungry

Additionally, you will notice that you don’t feel as hungry throughout the day even if you do not eat as much as you used to before starting your keto journey. You will also notice that your cravings for foods that are rich in carbohydrates and sugars will be greatly reduced.

3. Stay awake longer

Furthermore, you will not feel like taking a nap after every meal and you will generally feel like you have more energy. Once your body has adapted to using fat as its’ primary source of fuel, you will also notice that you have an increased capacity for exercise and an improvement in your ability to recover from your workouts.

4. Better Sleep at night

You will also be able to sleep through the whole night without having to get up to urinate. Not having to get up to urinate will ensure that you have a more restful sleep, which will also allow you to have more energy the next day. With more energy, you will be able to do more workouts and workout harder, which will further help accelerate your weight loss journey.

Possible Pitfalls Of The Keto Diet

Although the keto diet has been proven to be an effective way to lose weight, it is important to do it properly so that you reduce your risk of encountering some of the pitfalls of the keto diet.

One of the biggest pitfalls is that you may quit before you see any substantial results because, unfortunately, it takes time before you notice a difference in your body composition.

Also, when you first start to reduce your carbohydrate intake at the beginning of your keto journey, you may experience some feelings of discomfort, such as hunger, irritability, fatigue, headaches, and even mood swings.

Over time, these feelings will subside but pushing through them, in the beginning, will feel challenging. When things get difficult, you may feel like quitting, which is why it’s important to be aware that such feelings are temporary.

You must also enter ketosis without the risk of ketoacidosis, which means that there is an optimal amount of ketone bodies in your system that you must maintain while doing the keto diet properly.

Conclusion

As you can see, it’s important to give your body time to adapt to the keto diet in order to see results. The keto diet starts working when you become fat-adapted and begin to use fat as your primary source of fuel. When done correctly, the keto diet will help you lose weight over a period of time. 

If you still have any questions, concerns, or a personal story about the Keto, feel free to comment your thoughts down below.

You also may like to read about Keto Side Effects or How to Avoid Losing Muscle on a Keto Diet.