How to Speed Keto Dieting: The Top 5 Ways to Optimize Your Keto Timeline

The keto diet is already one of the fastest and most effective ways to safely lose weight, including dangerous abdominal fat that crowds our vital organs. By eating the high-fat, low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet, you can train the body to burn fat as its primary source of fuel instead of using the easy sugar in carbohydrates and enter the metabolic state known as ketosis. This targets the fat stored on your body for swift use, and coupled with a rigorous workout routine, it could put you in the fittest condition of your life. If you’re anxious to see these benefits when starting ketosis, you may not want to spend a couple of days battling keto flu symptoms only to find yourself at a keto plateau. Check out the following tips to help you speed keto dieting and get into a state of ketosis faster.

Keto Key Features

The keto diet plan was originally designed to treat epileptic children without the use of drugs. Far from your average fad diet, eating a low-carb diet not only helped those children, but also revealed a secondary metabolism shared by migrating birds and hibernating animals: we are designed to use body fat as an energy source in times of famine or harsh conditions. 

This underlying metabolism is important in a modern world where body weight is often too high, creating health problems like obesity and type 2 diabetes. A state of ketosis was always there to help save your life in extreme moments of survival, and it can do so still by facilitating real and long-lasting weight loss.

The health benefits of the keto diet don’t just stop at fat loss. By training yourself to eat healthy foods and veggies and reduce your net carb intake thanks to keto recipes, you’re improving your blood sugar levels, your energy levels, and even your brain function. The ketone bodies used to replace glucose (sugar) energy are the ones preferred by your brain, and they’re able to cross the blood-brain barrier and deliver more fuel for your thoughts far more quickly.

With so many upsides to keto dieting, it’s all the more important to achieve ketosis ASAP and stay there for as long as possible. 

The Top 5 Tips to Speed Keto Dieting

Follow these steps to get into ketosis faster.

1. Try Intermittent Fasting

Intermittent fasting isn’t as intimidating as many people think. What sets this type of fasting apart from others is the “intermittent” part of the phrase. You self-select certain days or hours when you deny your body regular access to food, forcing it to turn to fat sources a lot faster. 

Not only can fasting every other day or for most of the day until dinner help you reach ketosis quicker, but it can also make the keto diet easier to follow. And you can use hacks like keto coffee to stay energized and avoid feelings of hunger.

By taking away the guesswork and meal prep time…even intermittently…keto beginners may find that it’s easier to control their carb intake. For example, if you piggyback off the time spent asleep (we all fast while we sleep) and continue fasting for another 8 to 12 hours, you don’t have to worry about what’s keto and low-calorie for breakfast or for lunch. You just have to portion out your dinner, saving you time, stress, and worry. 

Far from being an extra challenge on top of changing your diet, intermittent fasting may well be easier for you than trying to take old eating habits and make them keto.

2. Adjust Your Macronutrients

If you find that you’re in the keto flu stage for too long, it may be time to adjust your macronutrient ratios. The general place to start with keto is to get about 75% of your calories from healthy fats, 20% from protein, and 5% or less from carbs. 

If you can, try cutting even more carbs from your diet for a week or two, as is done in the earliest stages of the Atkins diet. You may think you’ve done all the carb-cutting possible, but there are always more carbs to be found. We suggest reviewing which fruits and vegetables are highest and lowest in carbs to see if there isn’t room to eliminate a few more carb contributors.

Likewise when it comes to your macros, consider replacing the carbs you edge out with more protein, especially if you’re focused on building muscle while on keto. Working out with insufficient protein and the amino acids that protein foods provide could create the counterintuitive side effect of catabolism: a destructive metabolism wherein your body cannibalizes the muscles you already have to feed the demand for new muscle creation. 

Getting your protein from grass-fed beef and other high-quality animal products in your keto meal plans can also contribute to your healthy fat macros, and when it comes to keto, it’s almost always beneficial to increase your fat intake. You can do this with high-fat foods like avocados, avocado oil, olive oil, fatty meats, egg yolks, ghee or dairy butter, nut butters, or coconut oil and its concentrated form, MCT oil. By feeding the body nutritious fats, you better train it to access the fat stores on your body.

For adjusting your macros, we suggest you use convenient keto macro apps to help you keep track of what works and what doesn’t until you find your perfect, personalized ratio.

3. Consume Exogenous Ketones

There are two kinds of ketones you can use for energy: endogenous ketones that are made exclusively inside your body from fat burned, and exogenous ketones that come from outside the body in the form of products like MCT oil (medium-chain triglyceride fatty acids), BHB oil, and certain supplemental combos that can help bridge the gap to ketosis and keep you burning the right kind of fuel even when fasting. 

Sugar energy is easier and faster to access, and the body will always want to revert back to doing things the easy way. If you ever overeat on carbs, feel that your energy levels are flagging, or experience an unwelcome plateau or pause in your diet’s progress, consuming some exogenous ketone supplements can increase your blood ketone levels and get you through those setbacks quickly. 

4. Get Extra Exercise 

Whether you schedule more days at the gym, add other supplemental physical activities around your usual workouts, or increase the intensity of your exercise by trying a HIIT workout, once you pass the early days of keto and are working to speed up your results, exercise is key. 

New workout regimens won’t help much at the very beginning of keto, because first you need access to your new fuel source. However, once you enter ketosis (which you can confirm by using ketone test strips), fat burning is tied to how much energy you demand of your body. If you eat a keto diet but otherwise maintain a sedentary lifestyle, your body may not need to access very much stored fat for extra energy. On the other hand, working out more, or even a few brisk evening walks each week, can help make demands your body must answer by depleting your glycogen stores (stored glucose energy) and then supplying more energy from fat.

5. Prepare to Adapt

One of the culprits in slowing down keto speed is that when it’s time to eat, you don’t always know what’s perfectly keto, and have to make a fast decision that could ultimately kick you out of ketosis or keep you in transition longer. 

Start by keeping easy keto snacks on hand by buying or (better yet) making your own keto fat bombs. Create a list of keto-friendly, easy-to-access foods you know you can find in a pinch like string cheese, certain nuts, or keto Starbucks orders. 

Along those lines, when it comes to eating out, be ready to adapt when there’s nothing on the menu that’s totally carb free. You can order a burger and remove the bun, you can ask for a salad without dressing (since they’re often full of sugars and carbs unless you make your own keto salad dressings), and be sure to specify unsweetened beverages.

Quickly Enter Ketosis

By utilizing these tips, you can speed up your journey to ketosis and quickly refine it so that your diet best suits your body and your schedule. Once you enter ketosis, some of these same tips will help you stay there indefinitely, losing weight, toning muscle, and enjoying the superior energy of ketones for your mind and body.