Supercharge Ketogenic Results With This Powerful Supplement
If you’d told me in 2015 that I’d be telling most of my patients to eat mostly fat, some protein and very little carbohydrates to improve their health I would have been skeptical.
While I’ve been a proponent of high intake of high-quality fats for sometime, I’ve evolved in the past few years and I now endorse a ketogenic diet for the treatment of many common ailments and conditions.
The ketogenic diet is a simple diet. Eat high amounts of fat (65-75% of your caloric intake should be from fat), little protein (20-30% of your diet should be protein) and few carbs (5-10% of your total calories can be carbs).
I have a specific protocol called the Ketox Method where I advocate a balance of 70% fat, 25% protein and 5% carbs.
But if you’re not following it, you can adhere to the ratios mentioned above.
As I said, the ketogenic diet is simple.
However, just because it’s simple doesn’t mean if you switch to eating keto you’re instantly going to become well and lose weight.
Let me explain.
Why The Ketogenic Diet Doesn’t Work Instantly
There’s a common misconception about the ketogenic diet that can hinder your ability to experience all the benefits provided by the ketogenic diet.
In order to fall into a steady state of ketosis (where your body uses fat ketones as its primary energy source) you must become fat adapted. Fat adaptation is where your body makes a metabolic switch from using carbohydrates as fuel and relying solely on fat. Unless you become fat adapted your body will not use ketones as fuel.
Unfortunately many people struggle to become fat adapted in a timely manner. For some it could take weeks, even months to become fat adapted. And that slow progress has frustrated more than one of my patients and lead to some of them giving up on the ketogenic diet altogether.
Various factors are at play when it comes to the slowness of fat adaption; from age, to the amount of adipose tissue stored in your body to medications you might be taking, there’s no telling when it will happen for you.
I suppose not becoming fat adapted quick enough could be a non-starter for those of you who have tried the ketogenic diet without results and are thinking about doing it again… or, are on the fence about this diet in the first place.
While the slow shift to becoming fat adapted may seem like an issue, there is good news.
A powerful, all-natural supplement can help you quickly become fat adapted and subsequently fall into ketosis.
Your Body Makes It Already…
Here’s How Supplementing It Gets You Into Ketosis Faster
Most of the time when you’re purchasing a supplement you’re buying something that isn’t already made by your body.
You’re ‘supplementing’ your diet with something additional.
In the case of advancing the process of fat adaption you actually use something already produced in your body to help.
That supplement is L-carnitine.
L-carnitine is an amino acid that your body makes and it’s essential for a variety of processes.
The National Institute For Health writes this about L-carnitine.
“Carnitine plays a critical role in energy production. It transports long-chain fatty acids into the mitochondria so they can be oxidized (“burned”) to produce energy. It also transports the toxic compounds generated out of this cellular organelle to prevent their accumulation. Given these key functions, carnitine is concentrated in tissues like skeletal and cardiac muscle that utilize fatty acids as a dietary fuel.”
If you’ll notice at the end it talks about how L-carnitine is concentrated in muscles that utilize fatty acids as dietary fuel.
This is why if you want to get your body to become fat adapted it’s a great idea to add L-carnitine to your diet.
Here’s How L-Carnitine Can Accelerate Fat Loss
The vast majority of people have perfectly normal L-carnitine levels.
And that’s fine… if your goal isn’t to use the ketogenic diet to lose weight and to improve health in various other ways.
It’s because many people take longer than they’d like to become fat adapted that I recommend L-carnitine.
When you supplement with L-carnitine this essential amino acid stores up inside of your body’s muscles with excess amounts of L-carnitine. As you’re eating more and more fat and fewer carbs the stored L-carnitine goes to work and helps your body break down that fat for fuel. As it helps to break down the fat your body will make a quicker transition from using carbs as fuel to fat for fuel.
And once that happens your body should become fat adapted at a quicker rate.
Even better is once you become fat adapted you don’t need to keep taking L-carnitine for the purpose of losing weight. L-carnitine simply “kickstarts” the process of becoming fat adapted.
Now that being said there are still tremendous benefits associated with L-carnitine supplementation:
- Shown to improve energy levels and slow aging
- Can help boost feelings of happiness and well being
- Helps the brain to function at peak levels
- Shown to help with healthy sexual function
- Increases sleep quality
- Helps to increase insulin sensitivity
This is why I recommend it for many people.
Now there are a few ways to supplement with L-carnitine.
One of the easiest, and most enjoyable is to increase your intake of animal proteins, especially red meat.
Now that comes with a caveat. You can’t eat too much animal protein as it is high in protein (funny how that happens) and high-levels of protein could drive you out of ketosis.
It’s for this reason I recommend a high-quality supplement like NOW Foods L-Carnitine.
My recommended dose is 500mg – 1000mg two times a day until you’ve become fully fat adapted. You’ll know you’re fat adapted when your ketone levels begin to rise and you don’t have a strong desire to snack on sugary/starchy foods.
As part of our Ketox Method we offer NOW Foods L-Carnitine to our patients in our clinic’s store.
If you’d rather get it from us online you can click here or on the image below to pick up your own supply. One bottle ought to be enough to help you become fat adapted while following a ketogenic diet.
Oh, I forgot to mention. If you ever “fall off the wagon” and fall out of ketosis then keeping some L-carnitine on hand is a good idea if you want to get back into ketosis faster. Consider it a healthy way to accelerate fat loss while also supporting other various aspects of health.
Follow this link or click the image below to get your NOW Foods L-Carnitine today.
* There are some side effects associated with L-carnitine. I don’t recommend it for those who are hypothyroid unless they’ve had a consult with a physician, and the same goes with people who have known cholesterol issues. I also don’t recommend taking more than 3,000mg a day.