The keto diet has become popular all over the world for its health and weight loss benefits. However, many people complain that keto is a very strict nutritional plan and hard to stick to for a long time. However, keto has its evolution, like any successful diet. Now speed keto is becoming popular. It promises amazing weight loss results but is an even more strict nutritional plan. So what is speed keto?
Speed keto is a combination of the keto diet and intermittent fasting. The goal of this nutritional plan is to bring you to one meal a day. Moreover, this meal should contain exact keto proportions. Such a diet helps quickly get rid of excess weight and get some benefits.
How does speed keto work? Can speed keto help you lose weight? What are the disadvantages of this type of diet? This article will clear all the details of this trendy nutrition plan. Stay with us to find out more!
What Is Speed Keto?
The main function of the keto diet is to reduce insulin surges in your blood. Insulin reacts to any food you eat, but carbs provoke an especially bright reaction. Frequent bursts of insulin usually lead to obesity and diabetes. The keto diet forbids carbs, thus reducing blood insulin spikes and promoting weight loss [1].
Speed keto is a simple combination of a low-carb diet and intermittent fasting. Thus, reducing meals per day and having a fasting window positively affect reducing insulin spikes. Speed keto means cutting your food window as much as possible per day. For example, you can use 18 hours of fasting and 6 hours of eating. However, speed keto aims for one meal per day (OMAD) [2].
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What’s more, that one meal should be exactly keto-friendly and contain 80% healthy fats, 15% protein, and up to 5% carbs from vegetables. This ratio of nutrients will help you maintain ketosis and break down fat throughout the fasting window. Long-term fasting will increase ketosis without the feeling of hunger because the right keto food will fill you up for a long time. In addition, during one meal, you are not limited in the amount of food. However, you should not overeat and try to force the daily calorie intake into one dinner.
Can Speed Keto Help You Lose Weight?
Yes, speed keto can help you lose weight because it combines two of the most successful weight loss plans. However, this weight loss tool has a significant drawback – it is an even more strict nutritional plan than the keto diet.
To achieve sustainable weight loss results, you need to stick to the chosen diet for quite a long time. However, if speed keto seems too strict for you, you should combine it with a regular keto diet [3]. Basically, you don’t need to change your diet and metabolism to alternate between speed keto and regular keto. Therefore, I recommend that you switch to speed keto in some cases for maximum benefits.
The Main Benefits of Speed Keto
- You can use speed keto if your weight loss on regular keto has slowed down and stopped. In this case, speed keto will be the necessary beneficial stress for your body to help you continue with your weight loss.
- Also, speed keto will be a great solution for your last extra pounds. Unfortunately, these last 3-5 pounds are the hardest to lose. Speed keto will give you several ways to solve the problem at once – clear keto proportions, calorie restriction, and a long time of fasting to break down fats.
- Speed keto will help you get back into ketosis quickly if you’ve broken your diet and overeaten carbs. Intermittent fasting recycles your muscle glycogen stores, and getting the right amount of fat helps you start using fat for fuel.
- If you can’t control your appetite and often overeat due to some kind of eating disorder, speed keto can help you solve this problem. Eating plenty of healthy fats will fill you up for a long time and allow you to abstain from food until the next day.
You don’t have to stick to speed keto for a long time as it’s a very strict nutritional plan. All of these options involve using speed keto as an additional tool to a regular low-carb diet. With it, you can enhance your weight loss results.
Contraindications to Speed Keto
Speed keto is not for everyone because even such a healthy nutritional plan has contraindications. They refer more to fasting than to the keto diet itself. So, you should not do speed keto if you have problems with the gastrointestinal system (gastritis, ulcers, etc.), type 1 diabetes, or hypotension. But with arthritis, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis [4], and hypertension, fasting can play rather a positive role. It is also beneficial for treating type 2 diabetes [5].
The list of contraindications for fasting includes cholelithiasis, anemia, thrombophlebitis, and hypoglycemia. Also, you should not practice fasting for pregnant women, nursing mothers, and children.
It should be borne in mind that when fasting for more than a day, the body begins to break down excess fats and the necessary proteins with amino acids. Therefore, you need to choose the right food for your one meal a day. Your body should receive a serving of healthy food every day, including various vitamins and minerals.
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Keep in mind that speed keto is a fairly complex yet effective nutritional plan [6]. You should definitely consult with your doctor before trying this diet.
Conclusion
Summing up, we can conclude that a speed keto diet is a useful tool for weight loss. This nutritional plan combines regular keto and intermittent fasting, allowing you to have a deeper state of ketosis. Speed keto aims for one meal a day, also called OMAD.
This kind of keto diet is very strict and may seem hard to follow. And while healthy fats fill you up for a long time, it can be hard to wait 24 hours before your next meal. So I recommend combining speed keto days with regular keto days to boost your ketosis and speed up your weight loss.
Sources:
- Sukkar, S. G., & Muscaritoli, M. (2021). A Clinical Perspective of Low Carbohydrate Ketogenic Diets: A Narrative Review. Frontiers in nutrition, 8, 642628. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2021.642628
- Stote, K. S., Baer, D. J., Spears, K., Paul, D. R., Harris, G. K., Rumpler, W. V., Strycula, P., Najjar, S. S., Ferrucci, L., Ingram, D. K., Longo, D. L., & Mattson, M. P. (2007). A controlled trial of reduced meal frequency without caloric restriction in healthy, normal-weight, middle-aged adults. The American journal of clinical nutrition, 85(4), 981–988. https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/85.4.981
- Peeke, P. M., Greenway, F. L., Billes, S. K., Zhang, D., & Fujioka, K. (2021). Effect of time restricted eating on body weight and fasting glucose in participants with obesity: results of a randomized, controlled, virtual clinical trial. Nutrition & diabetes, 11(1), 6. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41387-021-00149-0
- Bahr, L. S., Bock, M., Liebscher, D., Bellmann-Strobl, J., Franz, L., Prüß, A., Schumann, D., Piper, S. K., Kessler, C. S., Steckhan, N., Michalsen, A., Paul, F., & Mähler, A. (2020). Ketogenic diet and fasting diet as Nutritional Approaches in Multiple Sclerosis (NAMS): protocol of a randomized controlled study. Trials, 21(1), 3. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13063-019-3928-9
- Lichtash, C., Fung, J., Ostoich, K. C., & Ramos, M. (2020). Therapeutic use of intermittent fasting and ketogenic diet as an alternative treatment for type 2 diabetes in a normal weight woman: a 14-month case study. BMJ case reports, 13(7), e234223. https://doi.org/10.1136/bcr-2019-234223
- Batch, J. T., Lamsal, S. P., Adkins, M., Sultan, S., & Ramirez, M. N. (2020). Advantages and Disadvantages of the Ketogenic Diet: A Review Article. Cureus, 12(8), e9639. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.9639
