Who wouldn’t want to be healthier, more physically fit, and more productive?
To many people this sounds like a “wouldn’t it be nice” variety of pipe dream, but what if the key to making these life-enhancing changes is as simple as changing your diet?
To make the first, but most important step on your keto journey, you need to start calculating your macros. Actually, you can use a simple calculator to find out how many calories, carbs, proteins, and fats you should be eating per day on a keto regime.
Today we’ll explore six reasons why the ketogenic diet is the ultimate productivity secret weapon and how you can do more with it.
First, let’s take a quick look at the Keto diet and how to do it properly…
What is the Keto Diet?
The average person’s body burns glucose to provide its energy. This isn’t particularly good or stable; it creates a never-ending series of sugar “highs” and sugar crashes. What’s more, this system causes the body to store fat in an unhealthy manner and increases blood pressure.
The Keto Diet flips the standard glucose-burning method on its head. By taking in lots of (healthy) fat, moderate protein, and very few carbohydrates, you can “re-wire” your metabolic system to burn fat as your primary energy source. Your body turns the fat into “ketones,” which lend this powerful diet its name.
Through techniques like intermittent fasting (skipping meals), you can take control of your body and use food to create your ideal state of mind: focused, energetic, and not constantly hungry.
How can Keto provide all of these productivity benefits? Allow us to explain…
1. Providing Stable Energy for Your Body
Energy is one of the biggest components of productivity; the two go hand-in-hand. Sadly, most people are sabotaging their energy levels without even knowing it.
Many people gulp down coffee and energy drinks all day–heck, some of them even chew caffeine gum in their endless quest for energy. If your body is running on ketones, it doesn’t have these blood sugar rollercoasters anymore.
Why does this work? Because fat is a far more stable energy source for your body. Your blood sugar is not jumping up and down like a yo-yo. In ketosis, your days of the “3 P.M. drowsiness” will become a distant memory, because you’ll be on an even keel all day.
2. Improved Mental Clarity and Focus
Step two in becoming a more productive you is to boost your mental clarity. There’s no getting around the fact that people’s attention spans are getting shorter. While this can be attributed somewhat to our increased consumption of media, diet plays a huge role in one’s mental clarity.
If your focus and clarity could use a boost, you owe it to yourself to try going keto. Even people previously diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder have found their mental state improving after a few days of Keto.
Once your body is keto-adapted meaning it is using fat as the main source of energy, you will experience a mental clarity and improved focus like no other before. There’s no going back after that. It’s easier to focus on a single task while ignoring social media.
3. Intermittent Fasting Increases Free Time
In your quest for optimized productivity, you’ve no doubt noticed that time management is a huge component. Unfortunately, many people cut time from sleep, family time, or enjoyable leisure activities to become more productive. What about cutting down your meal times? That’s a huge benefit of a ketogenic diet.
Countless diets are based around eating smaller meals throughout the day to stave off hunger. However, here’s the thing: humans did not evolve to eat all day long. As hunter-gatherers, our ancestors spent long portions of the day searching for food. They feasted once they had collected enough food and then started the process all over again.
There are many benefits combining keto and intermittent fasting. It will free up more time, burn more fat and have additional mental benefits. In addition, it helps with appetite control, making weight loss, muscle-building, and life in general much easier.
4. Sleep Improvements
Even a “well-oiled”, perfectly-functioning body needs its rest. Without proper sleep, your body and brain cannot heal themselves, let alone make improvements like building muscle or losing weight. The glucose-burning diet of most people can create sleep disorders and sometimes even prevents individuals from feeling fully-rested when they awake.
One of the positive additional side effects of ketosis is better and deeper sleep. You will fall asleep faster and have deeper sleep. Of course, right sleeping habits, not eating too late and avoiding stress are also mandatory for proper sleep.
5. Lowered Blood Pressure
While many ketogenic benefits are almost immediate, this diet can also improve your health in the long-term. Elevated blood pressure is one of the primary causes of heart disease, kidney disease, and even dementia.
Because the Keto diet lowers your blood pressure, you can lower your risks of developing serious illnesses. While there are some special considerations people on the Keto diet might need to make (“alkalizing” the body to offset the acidic effects of meat consumption, for instance), these changes are simple to implement with the right knowledge.
Keto is an awesome tool to optimize your blood pressure and increase the good type of cholesterol.
6. Boosting Self-Confidence
Strong self-confidence and a sense of self-worth is the last pillar of personal productivity. While self-confidence might seem like a primarily mental attribute, your physical health and sense of well-being contribute greatly.
Bad moods and even mild forms of depression can be related to a person’s blood sugar levels. By stabilizing blood sugar, you can always feel your best. In addition, weight loss and improved physical fitness can help with other self-confidence issues, including an insecure, slumped posture.
One of the reasons why keto is so popular is that it really is effective and if following the diet correctly, you can see results pretty fast. This will add additional motivation and boost your self-confidence. Which in turn has a positive effect in all areas of your life. If you feel better and are confident, then you will achieve more and be happier during the process.
Is Keto Right for You?
The benefits of the Ketogenic diet are pretty incredible; it has helped many people reclaim their physical and mental health, leading to far-reaching life changes.
If you’re as intrigued by these benefits as we are, you should do further research on Keto and intermittent fasting.
Keto is an effective tool to manage your weight, but there are more benefits than a merely fat loss. One of the main arguments, when it comes to keto is the mental performance boost.
Once in ketosis, you will have enhanced cognitive abilities and the mental fog is gone. This can be effective especially during stressful times when you need to deliver that piece at school or at work.
Whatever is your goal, keto lifestyle is something worth looking into, if you want to take charge of your body and life again.
Author’s Bio: An author and health enthusiast Alex Reed, started Bodyketosis.com with a mission to help you to take charge of your weight and health using the keto lifestyle. Through personal experience and extensive research, he offers insightful tips for everything keto.