There are many ways that have proven successful regarding weight loss, whether it’s the caveman diet, intermittent fasting, or keto.
All these diets work well when done correctly; it just depends on your willpower, personal goals, and current state of health and weight. Both diets can significantly improve health.
During this guide, we will delve into keto vs. intermittent fasting and discover which is more beneficial for losing weight.
We will also examine the differences between the two diets, what you can eat, and whether you can do both simultaneously.
So, before we look at how these two diets work together, let’s take a look at each one individually.
Table of Contents
What is Keto?
The ketogenic (or keto) diet involves eating foods high in fat and low in carbs. Making you enter a metabolic condition known as ketosis as a result of your diet.
Once you reach ketosis, your body uses fat for energy instead of carbohydrates. Typically, the body will naturally burn the sugar found in carbohydrates, called glucose. However, the body will burn fat if there are no carbohydrates in your system. Additionally, ketosis permits the liver to produce ketones from fat, which give your brain energy.
You can learn more about what you can eat on keto here.
If you’re thinking of starting a keto diet, you will want to lower your carb intake to around 20–50g per day; once again, this will depend on your current age, weight, and personal goals.
What is Intermittent Fasting?
Intermittent fasting means having longer periods between certain meals. One easy way to do this is by skipping a meal, such as breakfast or dinner.
The good thing about intermittent fasting is that you can make it work to fit your lifestyle; it doesn’t matter what time of day or night you choose to fast as long as you stick to the set fasting hours.
You can choose to fast for 12, 14, 16, or 18 hours if you wish. Once again, this is entirely up to you.
A popular intermittent fasting diet is called the 16:8. In which you would fast for 16 hours, then eat for 8 hours. Now, when we say to eat for 8 hours, that doesn’t mean constantly eating or overindulging. You would be expected to try to stick within an acceptable amount of daily calories.
One easy way to do the 16:8 fasting diet is by skipping breakfast and eating between the hours of 12:00 pm and 8:00 pm. However, again you can make this work around hours that suit your routine.
Benefits of Keto
Keto has many benefits besides weight loss; below is a list of reasons people might choose keto over intermittent fasting.
Fast Weight Loss
Low-carb diets are one of the easiest and quickest ways to lose weight. It’s even faster than trying to lose weight on a low-fat diet.
The reason people tend to see such rapid weight loss, especially during the first few weeks of keto, is because the lack of carbohydrates quickly gets rid of excess water, lowering blood sugar levels. This means that those early days of weight loss were actually water weight.
Studies have shown that people on keto loses 2-3 times more weight in the first six months than those following a low-fat diet. However, after these six months, the progress for both kinds of diets is equal in terms of weight loss.
Appetite Reduction
One of the primary reasons people fall off the wagon while dieting is hunger. However, research has shown that people on keto feel much less hungry. This is because of the increased protein intake, which keeps you fuller longer. The higher fat content also plays a part in this.
Reduced Blood Sugar
People with diabetes frequently choose the keto diet because it tends to reduce blood sugar.
By cutting down on carbs, you can significantly reduce insulin. However, suppose you’re thinking about starting a keto diet with diabetes. In that case, you must discuss this change with your doctor beforehand to discuss any complications that could occur regarding your personal health record.
Treats Metabolic Syndrome
Metabolic syndrome is a condition that can lead to health conditions such as diabetes and heart problems.
Keto has proven to significantly reduce the symptoms of this, which can include:
- Weight Gain
- High Blood Pressure
- High Triglycerides
- Low HDL (good) Cholesterol
- High Blood Sugar
A keto diet can completely eliminate all of these symptoms.
Benefits of Intermittent Fasting
While intermittent fasting shares some of the same benefits as keto. For example, intermittent fasting also significantly reduces the chances of developing conditions such as diabetes by lowering insulin. There are some other significant benefits, too; let’s explore those.
Improved Physical Performance
Research has shown that people who practice intermittent fasting have an increased and improved quality of physical performance. This makes fasting a popular diet choice with some athletes or more physically active people. It’s also a great way to maintain muscle mass while losing fat.
Heart Health
Intermittent fasting lowers blood pressure, which reduces the chance of heart disease. It also lowers the resting heart rate.
Enhances Focus
Recent studies show that people who fast for long periods of the day have significant development when it comes to focus, memory, and productivity.
Obesity
Intermittent fasting is an effective way of losing weight and, even more so, preventing obesity. Not only can it help to lose body weight, but it also lowers glucose levels and fasting insulin, decreases leptin levels, and increases adiponectin.
Keto vs. Intermittent Fasting: Can You Do Both?
Since both of these diets have become increasingly popular weight loss solutions, a common question has arisen: can you combine intermittent fasting with keto?
So, can you?
The answer to this question is quite simple, yes, and it has a lot of health benefits.
If you’re pretty active and want to hold on to your muscle mass while losing fat as well as improving almost every aspect of your health, then combining keto with intermittent fasting will make a considerably noticeable improvement to your health.
Mixing both of these diets is a surefire way to increase your calorie deficit because not only are you cutting high-calorie carbs, but you’re also shrinking your eating window.
Because focus, energy, and physical performance are increased, you’re bound to burn more calories than before, another reason to combine keto with intermittent fasting.
All of these positives put together mean that your body will be in a constant state of fat-burning, which will result in substantial weight loss.
Keto vs. Intermittent Fasting – The Bottom Line
So which diet is right for you, keto or intermittent fasting? Or should you combine the two?
It depends on your current state of mind, physical activity, daily lifestyle, and end goal. All these factors can help determine which diet will work best for you. If you don’t want to be restricted on what you can and can’t eat, like with keto, then intermittent fasting is a lot more flexible as you can eat what you like within the given window,
The other thing that makes intermittent fasting appealing to most people is that you can make the diet work for your routine, whether that’s the 5:2, the 16:8, or the one day on, one day off.
However, if you want faster weight loss results and have the willpower to cut down carbs to a minimum, then keto could be the way forward.
As we’ve established, both of these diets have many major health benefits, so if you have the stamina, doing both together will see the best results in terms of fat loss, energy levels, performance, and health improvements. If you want to compare keto to other popular diets to see what works best for you, you can read about keto vs. Atkins.
