As simple as it may seem, this is indeed what we are talking about less carbohydrates (sugars and starches) and more fat (good fats)!

Today, the Western diet consists of about 55% carbohydrates. In the ketogenic diet, this figure drops to… 5% by compensating the difference with an additional intake of quality lipids! On the protein side, nothing special; the ketogenic diet is not a hyper-protein diet, but you can also add more protein while staying in nutritional ketosis.

You may ask yourself, “What can we expect from such a revolution on the plate?” In other words, is this change in size worth it? And you are perfectly right to wonder. Changing your habits requires knowing clearly "WHY?". Motivation and success come at a price.

Here are some common examples of the benefits of a ketogenic diet:
• Weight loss (loss of fat and sparing muscle mass)
• Lower blood pressure
• Better lipid profile
• Reduced appetite
• Loss of cravings and hypoglycemia
• Rediscovered true hunger
• Stabilization of energy levels
• Better concentration and confidence
• Improved sports performance
• Strengthened immune system
• Longevity

This is a motivating list if you want to live in excellent health.
But let’s see what happens if you are affected by the disease. Rest assured, the ketogenic diet can bring you all its benefits, especially for the following pathologies:
• Cancer
• Diabetes
• Neurodegenerative diseases: Parkinson, Alzheimer’s
• Epilepsy
• Migraine
• PCOS
• Fibromyalgia
• Decrease in chronic inflammation (acne, eczema, arthritis, etc.)

With this list, we are entitled to wonder if the ketogenic diet is not too good to be effective. The explanation is straightforward: the massive consumption of carbohydrates fuels our civilization's diseases. Remove this fuel, and everything returns to normal!

You may be surprised, but the nutritional ketosis induced by a ketogenic diet is a natural metabolic state. It has accompanied man for more than 2 million years. Gradually, we have moved away from it. First, with the arrival of agriculture and sedentary settlement more than 10,000 years ago, then 200 years ago with the arrival of sugar, and finally, from the 1960s and the first drafts of nutritional guidelines hunting for fat while opening the tap of sugar! This exciting story is nothing more than our nutritional mistakes in an area not intended for us.

What have we seen since the 1960s? A global epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and diseases related to metabolic syndrome (hypertension, fatty liver disease, cardiovascular diseases, etc.). In other words, the nutritional guidelines that were supposed to protect us from diseases caused by our food choices have only accentuated them! What better example of this failure than Doctor John Warner (President of American Cardiologists) and his myocardial infarction at the national congress at the age of 52? Here’s what we can expect from the high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet proposed by cardiology specialists and funded by too many industrial lobbies: a heart attack at 52...

Unfortunately, these guidelines were based on scientific data, insufficient or falsified at best! The names of the corrupt scientists and the amounts paid have since been made public … Led by the famous Ancel Keys, who did not hesitate to hide scientific data that did not support his theories. But for what purpose?

• Mass consumption of toxic but highly profitable hydrogenated vegetable oils.

• Massively consume carbohydrates in all forms, which are also very profitable to produce and have the advantage of never filling! Eating carbs increases appetite tenfold!

The media culprit was all found: fats and, more specifically, saturated fats!

Thus, since the implementation of these directives advocating a massive consumption of carbohydrates and reduced lipids: obesity and cardiovascular risk continue to grow everywhere, and the opinion is convinced that butter, eggs, nuts, and fatty meats are the number one enemy for good health!

The idea was so simple that no effort was needed to deal with what might seem obvious: “Eating fat makes fat”! Using their authority, demonizing fat, and turning it into the public enemy #1 became child’s play with a few marketing budgets. From then on, goodbye to lard, duck fat, eggs, and other good fats that had spared our elders at the beginning of the 20th century from our modern diseases of civilization (obesity, cancers, type II diabetes). It took decades for the scientific community to accumulate thousands of publications proving all these lies and mistakes. Unfortunately, restoring the truth will take much longer than implementing the lie!

In these conditions, beware of those who gain weight by following these official recommendations; they will, at best, be accused of lack of will, of not moving enough, or, worst case, of lying about what they eat. Who did not experience this feeling of guilt (or even humiliation) in a nutritionist's office when his advice had been followed to the letter but without results?
Faced with multiple failures of official recommendations, let’s see together how to forget these bad memories.

Let’s quickly get to know insulin, the “storage hormone.” What exactly is its role?
To summarize, we must imagine the flow of carbohydrates in the bloodstream. Regular blood sugar is less than 5g of sugar for all of our 5 liters of blood. Imagine the challenge of eating 300 g or 400 g of carbohydrates consumed on average every day. Our pancreas is forced to pour vast amounts of insulin to bring our blood sugar back to normal. This is the heart of the problem!

The hormone insulin then enters into action on three levels:
1. Immediate use of glucose by our cells.

2. Storage in the form of glycogen if our stocks are low (but these energy stocks are limited to about 2,000 Kcal and are too rarely very low).

3. Storage as body fat for anything that can’t be stored as glycogen. Yes, you got it!

Eating carbohydrates and sugar makes you fat; fat is locked when the body constantly runs on carbs!
Eating many carbohydrates requires much insulin. These spikes in blood glucose and insulin production are causing brutal crashes to live through that you don’t feel well; it’s the “roller coaster” effect that everyone has experienced. The famous hypoglycemia of 11h, two h barely after a breakfast mainly composed of carbohydrates (cereals, bread, pastries, fruit juices, fresh fruit, jams, honey, spread, agave syrup, cakes with whole cereals, etc.).

Let’s not forget the postprandial fatigue, just after lunch or dinner. Because it is titanic work for the body to have to quickly manage the torrents of carbohydrates to which we subject it.
Under no circumstances can he afford to leave them in the bloodstream. All our energy is then focused on this vital emergency for the body. All other functions are paused until this glucose is fully processed and blood glucose returns to normal.

By adopting a ketogenic lifestyle, our intake of carbohydrates is limited. Automatically the insulin requirements are lowered and smoothed. The body deprived of fuel «carbohydrates» will then remember another solution: «lipids» and ketones produced by these identical lipids!

To take a simple picture, imagine our body as a hybrid vehicle. Two fuels are available to him at the pump: glucose on one side or lipids on the other.

But the brain cannot use lipids directly. He can order the conversion of these lipids into ketones that he will use as if it were glucose. It is enough that the diet is reduced to carbohydrates for this conversion to be implemented. The liver will produce those ketones that the brain needs instead of glucose. It’s transparent, and the brain loves this super fuel!

The rest of the organs (muscles, tissues) will use fat directly as energy. That is how to become a fat-burning machine, literally a fat-burning machine. One condition: keep insulin levels low to make the body understand that carbohydrates are over!

In summary: We eat a few carbohydrates, and the body uses fat massively as a source of energy without making a difference between the fat on our plates and our body fat! At the center, the insulin hormone plays a regulatory role (storage/ destocking). If we eat little carbohydrates, insulin is low, and we are in a position to destock. If the insulin is high, we’re in a storage position. To reach this «nutritional ketosis» state that we should never have left, let us see this crucial transition phase to find it again: «the keto-adaptation".