How To Get Into Ketosis Quickly

While “keto” is all the rage now, it was not back in 2014 when I helped my late wife, Mara, implement a ketogenic diet as part of her cancer therapy.  While the ketogenic diet is very common today, the difficulty has shifted from too little to too much information, as not all the information is good.   

The ketogenic diet is traditionally a diet comprised of 80% fat, 15% protein and 5% carbohydrates.  This diet helps promote a healthy microbiome and reduce inflammation and promote healthy brain function.

When I’m following a ketogenic diet, I feel great and those aches that I didn’t think would ever go away typically disappear. 

To be in light ketosis, you typically want a blood glucose level of below 80 mg/dL and a ketone level above 0.5 mmol/L. 

What we’ve been learning recently is how you can get into ketosis quickly (like 2-4 hours) after waking up having fasted since dinner the night before (around 12 hrs fasting). 

Take Caprylic Acid

We found from a paper in Frontiers of Nutrition, April 2020 whose results show that by taking 20 g of caprylic acid (an eight-carbon medium chain fatty acid or C8), a blood ketone level (b-hydroxybutyrate) of 0.6 mmol/L and glucose of 89 mg/dL can be achieved in 2 hours. I buy this Caprylic Acid from Amazon.

A second hack we’ve recently found was in a pre-clinical trial that we performed looking at our bioavailable berberine product, BerbElite. A blood ketone level of 0.5 mmol/L and a glucose of 82 mg/dL can be achieved in 3 hours with two BerbElite capsules.  

Six Ketogenic Diet Tips:

1. If you’re serious about doing the keto diet, buy a blood glucose and ketone monitor.  The Precision Xtra measures both and can be found on Amazon here.  I buy the test trips off of Ebay because they are cheaper.
2. Look at the labels even if it’s advertised as “keto”. Try to be as close to a diet of 80% fat as possible.
3. If you are looking to lose weight on the keto diet, you need to restrict how many calories you take in. If you are dropping weight and not restricting your calories, it is likely water weight you are losing. 
4. Drink lots of water and supplement with salt (sodium chloride, magnesium and potassium).  You can use table salt (I use Real Salt), magnesium citrate (I use Bulk Supplements) and potassium citrate (again from Bulk Supplements), or buy these premade, tasty salt packets that have all three salts together.  I also use LMNT salt packets, which have been revolutionary for me.  
5. Organic olive and coconut oils are your friend. Buy a tub or two of organic coconut oil (I get Nutiva off Amazon.).  It’s high in omega-3 fatty acids and has a high smoke index, so it’s great for cooking. I use it to make scrambled eggs and sauté veggies for soup. Use lots of organic olive oils for your salad dressings.
6. My typical meal when I’m doing keto is:

Breakfast: Fast Bar and coffee   

Mid-day snack:  8 olives or 8 macadamia nuts

Lunch: Vegetable soup with kale crackers or Whole Foods brand almond crackers 

Dinner: Salad with homemade dressing (lots of oil)