How To Follow The Cyclical Keto Diet
The Keto diet has gained popularity in recent years among people from all walks of life. Whether you’re looking to lose weight or simplify your diet, Keto comes in handy.
Keto allows you to easily diet without counting calories or eating fancy foods. The only caveat is that you have to keep your daily carbohydrate intake low. While that’s not an issue for some people, others enjoy occasionally eating carbs.
The good news is that you can practice Keto while still enjoying carbs occasionally!
How you ask?
People tend to think of Keto as an all or nothing strategy, but the truth is there’s other ways of incorporating it into your daily lifestyle. One common method used is Cyclical Keto Dieting.
The strategy involves eating Keto a majority of the time, while occasionally incorporating carbs into your diet.
In this blog, we’ll show you how you can use Cyclical Keto Dieting to help meet your dietary goals.
What is Cyclical Keto?
Cyclical Keto involves following a Keto diet the majority of the time, while occasionally consuming carbs. You’ll still be in Ketosis most of the time, while allowing yourself some carbs here or there.
You do this by following a Keto-style of eating 5 to 6 days per week, and allowing yourself 1 or 2 days to enjoy carbs. While this style of dieting may be slightly different from traditional Keto, it does have certain benefits.
For example, if you’re an athlete, you may occasionally want to consume carbs to help improve your overall performance and recovery. If you feel like Cyclical Keto may work for you, here’s how to implement it.
How to Implement a Cyclical Keto Diet
Phase One: Eating Keto
Keto is a form of low-carb eating designed to reach a single goal—getting into Ketosis.
Traditionally, your body is designed to run off glucose created from carbohydrates as its main fuel source. Following Keto involves eating a low-carbohydrate diet, so that the body no longer needs to run off glucose as its main energy source.
As you gradually eat a lesser amount of carbs, your body begins producing an alternative source of energy known as Ketones.
During the Keto phase of the Cyclical Keto Diet (5-6 days per week), you follow a traditional Keto diet eating around 50 grams of carbs or less per day. Your diet will mostly consist of foods rich in fats and proteins with very few carbohydrates.
On these standard Keto diet days, around 60% to 80% of your calories will come from fat, 15% to 25% will come from protein, and around 5% or less will come from carbohydrates.
And as you continue to eat a low-carbohydrate diet, your body will become depleted of its glucose stores and begin producing Ketones as a result.
Phase Two: Eating Carbs
As I mentioned earlier, when you’re following the Cyclical Keto Diet, the one or two days per week you aren’t eating Keto can be spent eating carbs!
But, don’t get ahead of yourself and confuse these carbohydrate days with cheat days. They aren’t a license to binge on cake and cookies.
Rather, you should consume complex carbs coming from healthy sources such as sweet potatoes, white potatoes, rice, quinoa, and whole wheat bread.
However, you shouldn’t go overboard on carbs during these days. These days aren’t meant to stuff your face. They’re simply meant to replenish your glucose stores. So, you should try to consume 30% to 40% of your calories from carbs on these days.
Remember, the carbs consumed on these days can be used as fuel to help replenish muscles and improve recovery and performance. And, you can time your carbohydrate intake around workouts to help optimize performance.
How to Eat a Cyclical Keto Diet
Eating a Cyclical Keto Diet is simple! You have your Keto days and your carbohydrate days. Let’s take a look at how easy it is to follow now!
The Keto Days (5-6 days per week)
You’ll spend these days eating a traditional Keto diet, which consists of a high-fat, moderate-protein, and low-carb macro intake.
Here are some common foods you can eat on Keto days:
Chicken
Beef
Fatty fish
Eggs
Low-carb vegetables
Most dairy sources
Nuts
Healthy oils
Sticking to these main food options on your low-carb days can help ensure you stay in Ketosis.
Carb Days (1-2 days per week)
Some people don’t enjoy following a low-carb diet all the time. If that rings true, then the Cyclical Keto Diet is probably for you!
Try starting with one day a week and gradually add some carb sources into your diet.
Here are some healthy complex carbs that you can add in to your diet, all of which we offer in our meal delivery store at TMC. Healthy complex carbs such as:
Roasted sweet potatoes
Mashed potatoes
White potatoes
Brown rice
Coconut rice
Quinoa
Oatmeal
Farro
And remember, all carbs aren’t created equal!
As such, you should try and stay away from foods containing sugary carb sources such as: cookies, cakes, candies, ice cream, and chips. These foods are high in sugar and lack vital nutrients important to your health. Unless of course, you’re eating our healthy desserts :)
And, the amount of total carbs consumed will vary from person to person, so it’s important to keep your consumption within reason. Don’t throw off your whole Keto diet by overeating carbs!
Benefits of a Cyclical Keto Diet
The Cyclical Keto Diet is great option if you want to eat Keto primarily, but would also like a bit of wiggle room to enjoy carbs during the week.
Eating carbs on occasion is a great way to improve your strength and performance, while staying in Ketosis most of the time. And, you can also use carbs for extremely strenuous, physical activity days.
Using a Keto Meal Prep Delivery Service
If you’re short on time, but still want quality Keto meals—look no further than Taylor Made Cuisine! We specialize in Keto prepared meal delivery in Newport Beach, and we can deliver you fresh Keto meals right to your doorstep each week!
Our par-cooked Keto meals come individually packaged to preserve freshness, and your Keto meals are ready to eat in minutes! All you have to do is re-heat your meals in your microwave, stove top or oven, and you’ll have a delicious meal in minutes.
In addition to Keto meal prep, we also specialize in a number of other meal prep diets, including Paleo meal prep, Vegan meal delivery, Candida meals, and Low FODMAP meal delivery. And, don’t forget about the benefits of Vegetarian meal prep too!
If you want to try the Cyclical Keto Diet, simply order a Keto meal plan or Keto meal plan subscription and add some carbs to your cart. For example, you could order some coconut rice or sweet potatoes for your carb days, and you’ll be set!
No matter which diet you’re searching for, Taylor Made Cuisine has a solution for you! And if you’re wondering about our healthy meal delivery service, then check out our reviews and see what our client’s have to say!
So what’s it going to be? Are you going to keep using your valuable time grocery shopping, cooking, and cleaning up after yourself. Or, let TMC do your meal prepping for you, so you can have your life back!
With Orange County meal prep delivery and Los Angeles meal prep delivery costing only $15, TMC makes eating healthy accessible for everyone! Try our meal delivery service today and see how easy it is to eat healthy with Taylor Made Cuisine!
- R