How to Start Paleo-Ketogenic Diet

Whether you are on the paleo or ketogenic diet, you will still need an effective strategy to start a Paleo-Ketogenic diet.  It requires not only changing of what you eat, but also when and how much. Ratios of fats to proteins are especially important, as part of the diet’s success relies on staying in constant ketosis.

You will battle cravings, experience withdrawals from your favorite carbs or keto friendly snacks, and even have digestive intolerance to higher amount of fat in your diet. First few weeks are rough, but the results come fast, and they will propel you to keep going. 

If you are on medication, you should talk to your doctor before taking the plunge into this way of eating. Your doctor might have to monitor you and adjust your medication.  

START PALEO-KETOGENIC DIET

That said let’s get to the “how to” part to start your Paleo-Ketogenic diet. You can watch my YouTube video below and/or keep on reading.

GET RID OF FOOD ADDICTIONS IN PHASES

If you are a coffee lover, sweets or cheese addict, start removing your favorites in phases, so that the transition isn’t a pure torture. Decide which group of foods you want to remove first, and do it for a couple of weeks, or until you feel the major craving for that food is gone. 

If you are able to get rid of foods that aren’t part of the diet from home, it will be very helpful. I have a small child, so this wasn’t entirely possible, and, in the moments of weakness, I had some of the things that my son eats, and the major take away was the toddler gummies give me flare ups (ha).

I started by removing tea, dairy and nightshades vegetables. Surprisingly, these three were relatively easy to eliminate.

When I got to coffee, the real challenges started, and it took me good couple of months before I could confidently say that I was free from the coffee addiction. You can read about it here: add link. 

During this time, I continued to eat nuts, fruit and some vegetables.  After handling of the coffee addiction, I eliminated them as well. 

GET FAT-PROTEIN RATIO TO BE 2:1 TO STAY IN KETOSIS

Fat and meat should make up 70-80% of your daily calories. You want to aim for a ratio of fat-protein to be 2:1 (by dry matter in grams). I don’t actually weigh my food; I sort of do it intuitively. You can look at a slice of fatty bacon, and it will give you pretty accurate visual of what you are aiming for. For example, if you get ground beef and it has 80% of lean proteins, you will need to add a couple table spoons of tallow to get to the ratio.   

I also, use an application, MyFitnessPal, to track my macros. As soon as I hit 80% of calories from fat, within two days, I will be in ketosis over 1.5 mmol/L.

At this stage, remaining 20% of my calories, come from animal proteins. I eat no fruit, or vegetables as I saw fastest results when eliminating plants completely.

MAINTAIN KETOSIS at 2mmol/L

Keeping your ratios of fat-protein at 2:1 and 80% of calories from fat will ensure you stay in ketosis, the sweet spot is 2 mmol/L. If you go above 2, it’s all good, but according the Paleomedicina, they didn’t observe any more benefits by increasing ketosis.

It’s a great idea to use blood ketone strips to measure your ketones.  I use this this one:

A very inexpensive option are urine ketone strips, they will give you a sense of direction, but they are less accurate. It depends how much fluids you take in a day, if you don’t drink enough, the concentration of ketones in the urine will be higher.

GET A VARIETY OF ANIMAL FATS FOR YOUR DIET

Animal fats are little more popular in recent years, but they always have been staples in traditional cultures and their cuisines. 

Even if this I your first time trying them, you will quickly get to enjoy them, as they in higher temperatures and the food tastes better. Most importantly, animal fats play an important role in normalizing your gut permeability. 

Tallow is beef fat; it has a very neutral flavor and is excellent for frying.

When I’m short on my fat macros and the day is coming to an end, I take a spoonful of tallow with warm water; it tastes fine, and no burping. I tried other fats this way, and I didn’t like the taste or burping. 

Lard is pig fat. Also, really great for frying.  I tried taking it by spoon, but the experience was less than pleasant.

Finally, you can add duck fat, also good for frying, less annoying when taken by spoon than lard, but also causes mild burping.

As for butter, see if your body is fine with it. Many people react to even traceable amounts of lactose in it.  I use it, because I put my autoimmune symptoms into remission, before I got to eliminating of butter.

ADD ORGAN MEATS TO YOUR DIET

Most people don’t eat organ meats. Most people I talk to, can’t stand the idea of eating liver or kidneys. But they have a very important role of providing many needed micronutrients not found in the muscle meats. You should have a serving of organ meats once a week. 

Start by getting beef or chicken livers.  They have a milder flavor and are easy to make. It really takes a few minutes of frying in lard, and it’s ready to serve (salt it after frying)

Other option is to grate the liver and add it to other meats such as ground beef.

ROOT VEGETABLES AND FRUIT IF YOU CARBOHYDRATE

Healthy gut will extract nutrients and discard plant toxins. If you deal with autoimmunity and gut issues, often times plant toxins such as oxalates, lectins, etc. will make it to your blood stream and cause immune response. Root vegetables and fruit, generally speaking, have fewer of these toxins and are easier on the gut. 

I chose not to eat vegetables or fruit, because I felt exponential improvements in my symptoms when I cut out all carbs. Also, I can’t have ¼ of an apple and be done, the entire apple will be gone plus some extra. It’s kind of all or nothing for me.

EAT ONLY WHEN YOU ARE HUNGRY, NO SNACKING

When you get into ketosis, and the timing of it vary by person, your hunger will be less, and the need for snacking should go away. 

I will admit, I struggled with snacking for quite some time. It wasn’t my thing until I gave birth to my son, and continued breastfeeding for 18 months. During that time, I was always hungry, and paranoid that I would lose my milk supply, so I ate and snacked all the time.  As a result, I developed a pretty bad eating habit.  I can water fast for days, I do intermittent fasting, but when I get to my eating window, all hell breaks loose. 

It took months to get rid of the habit of snacking and even now, If I am not disciplined, I will slip right back to it.

It’s important to eliminate snacking, because one of the healing properties of the diet is to limit insulin spikes, and these happen any time you eat, even if it’s fat. 

It took a while, but when I got the Paleo-Ketogenic diet right, it took just 10 days, and I saw about 85% reduction in my autoimmune symptoms!  I couldn’t believe it! I was actually jumping to prove that I can do it without feeling a massive pain in my feet. And, indeed the pain was gone.

In my opinion, since the start of my Paleo-Ketogenic diet, I am symptom free because I removed foods that were bad for my gut, rather than my gut permeability being normalized. I based this on the fact that when I tried to add back some of the foods, the flare ups came back, just much milder. For now, I am staying on the Paleo-Ketogenic diet!

Big City Mom