So I’ve talked about this subject multiple times in the past and getting started on keto really comes down to  wo ways to approach it. There is the “Rip It Off Like a Band-Aid” and go all in approach. With this method you start really restricting your carbohydrates very strongly from the very beginning. This is how to get into ketosis quickly. Although I might argue there is no real reason to get into ketosis quickly, this is one way to do it.

Then there’s a more gentle approach and that is really the approach that I recommend. Getting into ketosis with this approach means going lower carb in a slow manner. It gives your body more time to adjust. It gives you time to adjust your mindset and it gives you time to make some changes in your household. For example, planning what types of foods you’ll have in the house.

Those are the two approaches to getting into ketosis. Either one you choose, you’ll get into ketosis eventually and the difference is really only a couple of days to a week. The end game is to go lower carb.  Most people would be so much better off if they just got rid of as many processed foods as possible and started eating more whole foods. If that still included up to 100 carbs a day, that would still be a much, much better diet than what most people are currently doing, even thought for most people, that’s too many carbs to be in ketosis.

How to Get Started With Keto

You can consider low carb really anything up to about 100 grams of carbohydrates per day. Ideally, if you’re going to eat that many, you’ll want to spread them out throughout your meals. That way you’re not getting a big hit of insulin multiple times a day You should eat carbs with protein and fat so that they’re more slowly absorbed. That’s just a much healthier way to approach eating carbs no matter how you eat on a day to day basis.

Technically, ketosis or “keto” for short is a metabolic state. It’s not a food, it’s not a lifestyle. It’s not any of the things that we like to call it for short. I quite often say, “Yeah, I’m keto, or I do Keto,” or something like that. That’s just shorthand. Ketosis is a metabolic state. So if your goal is to truly be in ketosis most of the time and there are some reasons why you might want to do that which I’ll follow up with that here later in the discussion.

What to Eat to Get into Ketosis

If you want to be in ketosis then you’re going to want to limit your carbohydrates to under 30 grams a day. For most people, this is a pretty big change, from what you might have been eating up to this point. Some people find it very challenging to eat that few carbs. There is nothing else you can eat specifically to get into ketosis other than restricting carbs.  However, a slightly higher amount of fat (particularly MCT) can facilitate ketone production. Exogenous ketones (only high quality, there is a lot of garbage) can also be very useful in the transition as they give your body extra ketones to utilize when your body isn’t very efficient at making them yet.

How to Get into Keto Fast

If you were going to cut it down to that of few of carbs a day right away, you’ll probably need to track your carbs for a little while until you start to learn more about which foods have the most carbohydrates and which ones might affect you more strongly. Cronometer is a great tracker and you’ll just start to track the food that you eat. You’ll have to start paying attention to labels a lot more, but here’s the rundown of the things that you’re basically not going to want to eat much of at all if you’re going to be keto. However, I will say this, being this low carb every single day is not necessarily a permanent state of affairs. You can also use our free keto calculator to get your macros.

How you eat all the time depends on your goals. It depends on if your goal is weight loss or if your goal is that you know that you’re not quite metabolically healthy and you’re working on that, or if you have pre-diabetes or diabetes. All of these are different goals and your diet might look very different based on these. Let’s just take the case of somebody that wants to lose some weight, change their habits and start eating healthier. You’ll  want to cut out the most obvious sources of carbs. For most people, bread is the big one, pasta, rice, fruit, potatoes French fries, all that kind of stuff, that’s going to be off the table for a while if you want to lose weight with keto and get into keto fast.

Here’s where it helps to know what kind of person you are if you want to...