HEALTHY

KETO
TM

&
INTERMITTENT
FASTING
A SIMPLE OVERVIEW

ERIC BERG, DC

KB PUBLISHING | ALEXANDRIA, VA
 Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty

This booklet is not intended as a substitute for the medical recommendations of physicians or other
healthcare providers. Rather, it is intended to offer information for educational purposes and to help the
reader cooperate with physicians and health professionals in a joint quest for optimum health.

The information discussed in this booklet—including any dietary and other substances, materials or
products—has not undergone evaluation and testing by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
or similar agency of any other country and is not intended to diagnose, treat, prevent, mitigate or cure
any disease. The reader and user should treat this information as a general guide and not as the ultimate
source of information, since it is based on the opinion and sole experience of Eric Berg, DC. The advice
and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. Please consult with a physician or
other healthcare professional where appropriate.

While the publisher and the author have used their best efforts in preparing this booklet, they make no
representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of its contents and specifically
disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may
be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. Neither the publisher nor the
author is responsible for any goods and/or services referred to in this book, and both expressly disclaim all
liability in connection with the fulfillment of orders for any such goods and/or services or for any
damages, loss or expense to person or property arising out of or relating to them. Neither the publisher
nor the author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not
limited to special, incidental or consequential damages.

Regular exercise and proper nutrition are essential for achieving your weight-loss goal.

© 2017, 2018 by Eric Berg, DC

All rights reserved. First published 2017.
Third printing 2018

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system,
without the written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical
articles or reviews.

ISBN: 978-0-9826016-6-2

Printed in the United States of America

KB Publishing
P.O. Box 11716
Alexandria, VA 22312

For more health information from Dr. Berg, visit www.DrBerg.com.

 Contents

Let me ask you a question .................................................................. 1

Weight-loss mistakes ......................................................................1
2
What is the best diet? ......................................................................
The Problem ........................................................................................ 4
5
Insulin...............................................................................................
Low blood sugars ........................................................................... 9
Cellular absorption of nutrients ..................................................... 11
How do we lower insulin? .............................................................. 16
21
The Solution .......................................................................................
21
Healthy Keto™ ................................................................................
Intermittent fasting ........................................................................23
Getting all your nutrients ............................................................... 27
Keto-adaptation .............................................................................30
32
Putting It All Together ........................................................................
32
What to eat ....................................................................................
38
Meal Examples ....................................................................................
Three-meal examples ...................................................................... 39
Two-meal examples ........................................................................ 40
42
Desserts ...............................................................................................
44
Frequently Asked Questions ..............................................................
 Let me ask you a question:

What came first, obesity or a state of “un-health”?

Was it the chicken or the egg?

Do you lose weight to get healthy or do you get healthy to lose weight? I
want to introduce you to an important new concept, which completely
contradicts what you’ve been taught about weight loss:

It’s NOT lose weight to get healthy ; it’s get healthy to lose the weight.
Obesity is a symptom, not a root cause.

Loss of excess weight is a natural byproduct of getting healthy. Likewise,

obesity is always the result of a basic health problem.

So to lose excess weight, the process must start with getting healthy.

Let me explain:

Trying to lose weight to get healthy is putting the cart before the horse. If
you focus on losing weight, this may or may not result in healthy actions.
Starting your weight-loss medication pills, low-calorie, nutrient-deprived
frozen meals, low-fat soups, and salads with low-fat dressing, all on a
1,000-calorie-a-day diet, might not raise your state of health even 1 percent.
Usually it will reduce your health.

Weight-loss mistakes
And there’s where everything goes wrong, because low-calorie diets slow
the metabolism, causing the weight to come back and making it harder and
harder to lose in the future. Low calories mean lowered nutrients, resulting in
lowered health. To many people, losing weight and dieting are associated
with eating things like these:

1
 • Prepackaged soy-based protein powders
• Protein bars (containing huge amounts of hidden sugars)
• Low-calorie, nutrient-deficient, high-carb meals (think
frozen low-fat dinners)
• High-sugar/high-carb liquid-diet shakes
• Low-fat puffed rice cakes
• Appetite suppressants and stimulants

Don’t buy into the low-calorie, low-fat myth. We’ve experienced the
failure of this experiment for at least the last three decades.

Just ask any person who has yo-yo dieted most of their life—they always
gain MORE weight, reaching a new level of obesity they’ve never imagined.
That’s because dieting slows your metabolism.

Unhealthy attempts at losing weight burn off the muscles in your legs
and butt without budging that middle section. Your extra weight is not the
problem; it’s a symptom of something very unhealthy going on in your body.

What is the best diet?

My whole mission has been teaching others what to eat to be healthy. But
the concept of what food you should eat to get healthy has as many different
viewpoints as there are stars in the sky! So the question is this: What is the
best diet for you?

Why don’t we start with the basic definition of the word food ? Eating
healthily begins with understanding the definition of food, which gives us
its purpose:

FOOD: (n.) that which is eaten to sustain life, provide energy, and promote
the growth and repair of tissues; nourishment. [Old English fōda, “nourishment”]
—Macmillan Dictionary

So, we eat food in order to

1. Provide energy (fuel); and
2. Nourish the body (meaning to provide nutrients).

2
 Let’s first talk fuel. You have a choice: Do you know you can run your
body on either sugar fuel or fat fuel? You can.

Which one is better?

Sugar fuel is like running your body on diesel (dirty fuel). However, fat fuel
is like running your body on electric power—it’s a clean, non-toxic and more
efficient fuel that can provide even more energy than sugar. And most people
have quite a bit of unused fat that is potential energy ready to be burned.

Nearly all people rely on too many carbs (sugar fuel) and so get into
trouble, ending up with blood sugar problems. One out of three people in
the U.S. has either prediabetes or diabetes.

Between meals, the goal is to run our bodies on our own fat. The best diet
for weight loss would be one that allows your body to tap into its fat reserve.

Now let’s cover nutrients.

The types of nutrients you need for health are vitamins, minerals, trace
minerals, proteins (amino acids), and healthy fats (fatty acids). Nutrients are
the helper substances that build body tissue and organs and allow all the
chemical reactions to occur in the body. Your body requires certain amounts
of nutrients, and those are called Recommended Daily Allowances (RDAs).

It would be a logical thing to do a diet based on getting these required

nutrients, right? Then it seems we should

1. Eat foods that cause us to use our own fat reserves;

2. Eat foods that provide all the nutrients our bodies require.

The plan that I have put together to improve health uses powerful
strategies. The first one is switching your body to run on fat fuel. This is
called ketosis. More on this in a bit.

Another strategy is intermittent fasting (IF). Intermittent fasting at first

doesn’t sound exciting and even sounds like you have to deprive yourself.
However, it’s not deprivation at all, and you are about to find out about its
huge health benefits, which go way beyond just weight loss.

3
 The Problem

Our entire lives we’ve been taught that body energy comes solely from
glucose (carbohydrates).

This is totally false information.

Glucose (sugar) is actually a secondary or alternative source of energy. It

was never intended to be used the way we use it today. The primary source of
energy is ketones (or fat fuel), which is the byproduct of fat burning.

Think about it. Your body carries around a tremendous amount of stored
fuel (known as fat)—about 70,000 calories’ worth, and that’s on a skinny
person. Yet it has fewer than 1,700 calories of stored sugar (called glycogen).
It would be crazy for the body to rely on the short supply of sugar fuel.
Reliance on sugar fuel is why we love to snack all day long.

And here’s an important side note: The amount of sugar we need in our
bodies to keep the blood sugar number normal is only 1 teaspoon for all of
the blood in the body (about 1⅓ gallons of blood). And that tiny amount
of sugar could come from eating vegetables or even protein. In reality we do
not need any sugar in our food at all. Yet the average person consumes 31
teaspoons of sugar and hidden sugar each day!

Our bodies do not have the ability to cope with the toxic amounts of
sugar we consume. The body reacts very badly to excess sugar. Just look at
what happens to a diabetic: artery damage, vision damage, nerve and
kidney damage.

So, fat fuel is a much more efficient, cleaner and healthier fuel than sugar.
And you have a ready supply of it.

How do you switch over to fat burning?

It’s actually very simple. You merely need to bring down to normal the
hormone that controls sugar. This hormone is called insulin.

4
 Insulin
Insulin is the body’s main hormone switch; it determines which
fuel you will use: fat or sugar. If insulin is high, no fat will be
burned—only sugar. If insulin is low, fat will be used exclusively as fuel.

What exactly is insulin? Insulin is a hormone (a body message) that is

made by the pancreas, which is located under your left rib cage. Look at
insulin as a key that allows sugar (glucose) into your cells.

GLUCOSE
INSULIN
INSULIN IS THE KEY
THAT UNLOCKS THE
HOW DOES GLUCOSE CHANNEL
INSULIN
WORK?

Insulin does six main things (and a lot of minor things too):

1. It acts as a key to open the door, allowing cells to get sugar fuel.
2. It lowers excess sugar in the blood after eating.
3. It stores sugars in the liver and muscles. Stored glucose is
called glycogen.
4. It converts excess sugar to fat (especially around the belly)
and cholesterol.
5. It allows protein (amino acids) into the cell.
6. It allows minerals into the cell, especially potassium.

Cell
stored sugar
INSULIN
Fat
High
Sugar BLOOD
Meal
5
 Insulin is the main fat-making hormone, and in its presence no fat can
be burned.

Insulin stores fat mainly in your midsection. In fact, your belly size is the
best measurement of how much insulin you have in your bloodstream.

In this booklet, I will refer to glucose and sugar interchangeably because

they are basically the same thing.

The faster the body breaks down food into sugar, the higher the insulin
response. There is even a scale, called the glycemic index, that measures this
spike of sugar in the blood.

The main trigger of insulin is carbohydrates. You eat carbs, and they turn
into sugar—raising glucose in the blood. That triggers insulin to whisk in
and do its job of lowering blood sugar, as seen in the next diagram.
BLOOD GLUCOSE CONCENTRATION

carbohydrate-rich meal

80–100 mg/dl
low-carbohydrate meal
1 2
TIME / HOURS

What does normal blood sugar mean?

When you get your blood sugar level tested,
normal range is between 80 mg/dl and 100 mg/dl.

But what do these numbers mean?

If your blood sugar is normal, it means that you have roughly 1 (heaping)
teaspoon of sugar in your blood. An average person has about 1⅓ gallons of
blood in their body.

6
 = NORMAL
1 teaspoon of
sugar (heaping)
7.5 grams
PER
+ BLOOD
SUGARS
(80-100 mg/dl)
1 1/3 gallons of blood (avg. 165 lb person)

As you can see, we barely need any sugar at all, right? Actually, that 1
teaspoon of sugar can even come from non-carbohydrate sources, like protein.

But we have said that the average person in the U.S. consumes 31
teaspoons of sugar each and every day.

31 TEASPOONS OF SUGAR PER DAY

Just imagine how hard insulin has to work to remove this massively
excessive amount of sugar from the blood! It has to work 31 times harder.
That’s insane.

Even more crazy is that the American Diabetes Association (ADA)

recommends foods that equate to over 50 teaspoons of sugar per day. And the
American Heart Association, the USDA Food Pyramid and the Obesity
Society all recommend a similar eating plan: high carbs.

FACT: Diabetes is the disease of too much sugar in the blood. Medical
texts call it hyperglycemia, a word made from hyper- (excess) and glycemia
(glucose in the blood). How could you cure too much sugar by adding more?

As a diabetic you are put on medication. This medication lowers your

blood sugar . . . but not your body sugar—only the sugar in your blood. In
other words, diabetic medication takes sugar out of the blood and puts it
in other places in your body. Think about it like this: Let’s say you have dirty
dishes, and instead of washing them, you stick them under the sink, in your
cupboards and in the pantry. Eventually your house is going to stink. This is
7
exactly what diabetic medication does—removes sugar from the blood and
puts it somewhere else. The true cause gets hidden.

How your body copes with excess blood sugar

and insulin
When you consume lots of sugar and have higher levels of insulin on a
continuing basis, your cells try to protect you and eventually start resisting or
ignoring insulin. Remember, insulin is the key that allows glucose into the
cell. So your cells prevent insulin from working in order to prevent excessive
sugar in the cell. This is your body saying, “If you’re going to keep eating sugar,
I will block it at the cellular level.”

Insulin resistance is a protective mechanism

Over time, an elevated blood sugar and insulin level causes your cells to
block or resist insulin. Your body considers sugar to be toxic and will protect
you by stopping it from entering your cells. This is called insulin resistance.
It causes the problem of your cells becoming deprived of glucose fuel. So they
stay hungry and crave carbs—and so do you.

FUEL
FUEL
INSULIN
RESISTANCE

NORMAL CELL INSULIN RESISTANCE

Since the cells need fuel but cannot get it, the pancreas has to compensate
by producing more insulin so the cells can get a little more fuel.

Insulin resistance makes your pancreas work too hard. In fact, insulin
resistance forces the pancreas to produce five to seven times more insulin than
it should normally. So, we have a situation where the body has way too much
insulin in the blood—yet the insulin is not able to do its job in the cells, either.
The cells are resisting it. As a result, the body keeps making more and more

8
insulin. These hormones are on a constant feedback loop, sending and
receiving messages of “Sugar is high—release more insulin. . . . Must lower
blood sugar for the body to stay alive.”

Low blood sugars

Think about what’s happening. Your cells are resisting insulin, causing
your body to make a lot more. With all this extra insulin in your blood, you
could experience low blood sugars. This is called hypoglycemia, a word made
from hypo- (low) and glycemia (glucose in the blood). Hypoglycemia is caused
by too much insulin in the blood and is a prediabetic symptom. Signs of
hypoglycemia include cravings for carbs and sweets, being irritable, moody or
depressed, having vision problems, being hungry or dizzy, and the list goes on
and on. Your brain is the first organ to feel the effects of low blood sugars.

IMPORTANT: Your blood sugars could be normal or low because of

the overcompensation of insulin. This can cause your doctor to fail to
identify the early signs of prediabetes.

NO
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Glucose
HIGH INSULIN
LIVER PANCREAS

INSULIN
RESISTANCE

The problem is that, as this continues, the pancreas eventually stops

compensating, becomes exhausted, and makes less and less insulin—allowing
the sugar in your blood to go higher and higher. So, the first stage of insulin
resistance is normal or low blood sugars due to excessive compensating
insulin. Then this is followed by higher and higher blood sugars as you lose
the ability to compensate for the sugar with insulin. This is called diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes is higher levels of blood sugars due to insulin resistance.

Type 2 diabetics are given a medication to reduce the cells’ resistance to
insulin. As things worsen over time, type 2 diabetics are then put on insulin.
Why? Because the pancreas is too exhausted to produce it.

9
 This problem could easily be caught early if your doctor would test your
fasting insulin levels in addition to your fasting glucose levels, but the doctor
rarely does. Insulin is usually high well before your blood sugars become high.

All this happens gradually and does not show up on blood tests until
months or years later. In the meantime, however, insulin-resistance
symptoms will manifest in other ways.

For example:

Tiredness Belly fat Anxiety

after meals

Fatigue Cravings Desire to snack

after meals

Moodiness if not fed Bladder issues Brain fog

These are also the symptoms of high insulin. Insulin resistance,

hypoglycemia and the initial stages of diabetes type 2 all have one thing in
common: high insulin.

The worst advice to give a person with high insulin is to eat too many
carbs. In 1971, the American Diabetic Association (ADA) recommended
that your carbohydrates should be 45 percent of your calories; in 1986, they
recommended that carbohydrates be 60 percent. In 1994, they allowed table
sugar and sugar added to foods to be part of your total carbohydrates.

10
 You may wonder why our country is so fat-phobic and not as concerned
about the massively high levels of dietary sugar. Well, check this out: Some
documents were recently found in the basement of Harvard University
revealing that two of the school’s most famous nutritionists collaborated with
the sugar industry and ended up getting paid to downplay sugar’s role in
coronary heart disease, despite studies showing the opposite. On top of that,
many of the research studies supporting sugar were directly sponsored by the
sugar industry. So, fat and cholesterol took the blame. Of course, years later we
are realizing that it was never the cholesterol.

FACT: An average American (per 2014 data) consumes 131 pounds of

added sugar annually, which works out to 22 teaspoons per day. The key word
is added. This is on top of the hidden sugars from grains, which, by the way,
equate to 56 pounds per year—roughly 0.15 pounds per day.

Eating carbohydrates is the main trigger for insulin! And if you want to
lose weight, it’s important to remember that insulin is the main fat-making
hormone because it converts carbs into fat—especially true for belly fat and
visceral fat (fat around the organs).

FACT: If you see someone with belly fat, they have too much insulin!

Belly fat

Now let’s get into some other aspects of insulin that are important for you.

Cellular absorption of nutrients

Insulin is needed to help cells absorb nutrients such as potassium,
magnesium and amino acids (protein). In fact, almost every nutrient is
influenced by insulin. Potassium is needed for energy, for balancing sodium
in the body, and for all kinds of other important things. We need amino acids
for hair, nails, skin, joints and muscles. We need magnesium for a healthy
heart. . . . See where I am going?

11
 Glucose
Potassium
Magnesium
INSULIN
Amino Acid (protein)
Amino Acid (protein)

When you have insulin resistance, you not only starve the cell of fuel but
you also become deficient in nutrients and protein! How can you create
health on top of this problem?

In addition to the substances named above, insulin resistance can cause

deficiencies of various other nutrients:

• Vitamin A
• B vitamins (especially B and B)
• Vitamin C
• Vitamin D
• Vitamin E
• Vitamins K and K
• Calcium
• Omega-3 fatty acids

Getting all of these nutrients can actually reduce insulin resistance,

but insulin resistance can prevent the cells from absorbing them.

One of the terrible symptoms of diabetes is peripheral neuropathy. That’s

a condition where the nerves in the feet and hands are destroyed, leading to
burning pain and numbness—the sensation of pins and needles. This is a B
and B deficiency. The B vitamins in general help prevent the damage from
high blood sugar and insulin. Actually vitamin B normally protects the cells
from some of the symptoms of high sugar and insulin. There is great research
data to show that taking a fat-soluble form of B (benfotiamine) can even
reverse some of the damage (nerve pain, for example) from high sugar.
However, refined sugars and grains actually deplete vitamin B. It’s when you
become deficient that the complications start.
12
 Insulin resistance can deplete vitamin C in the body, weakening the
vascular wall. If there is not enough vitamin C, you lose collagen, which
keeps your arteries strong, triggering a cascade of events: bad cholesterol
(called LDL), calcium and white blood cells all start forming a bandage
(plaque), which is known as a clogged artery. But the plaque is the effect of
the damage caused by high insulin.

Vitamins A and D, K and K all reduce insulin resistance. Potassium,

magnesium and calcium also lessen the resistance of insulin, working at the
cellular level. This is why the focus on consuming high nutrient-dense foods
and creating health needs to come first, and weight loss is merely one benefit
of getting healthy.

(By the way, not to get off topic, but did you know that cancer and
tumors can only live on sugar?)

Every single one of the problems listed below can be caused by

chronic high levels of insulin:

• Type 2 diabetes
• Heart disease
• Stroke
• High blood pressure
13
 • High cholesterol
• Dementia and Alzheimer’s
• Fatty liver
• Obesity

Brain
Blockage
(stroke)

HEART DISEASE DEMENTIA

DIABETES
INSULIN STROKE Brain

CANCER
(lives on sugar)
Aneurysm
HIGH (stroke)
FATTY HIGH BLOOD CHOLESTEROL
LIVER PRESSURE

INSULIN RESISTANCE LEADS TO EXCESS INSULIN

High insulin is the underlying cause of the biggest health problems we

experience today.

I want to show you a comparison of the USDA plate to a Healthy Keto™

plate so you can have a bird’s-eye view of what you will be doing.

DAIRY
CARBS

FRUITS
VEGETABLES GRAINS VEGETABLES FAT
PROTEIN PROTEIN

MyPlate.gov HEALTHY
KETOSIS™
14
 If you look at the USDA example of what your plate might consist of
(MyPlate.gov), you will notice several big problems, such as their guidelines
for vegetables and grains.

The recommendation for quantity of vegetables is only 2 to 2½ cups of

vegetables per day, which is not enough.

FYI: An average American consumes only 1.6 cups of vegetables per day.

And they allow your vegetables to be in the form of a V8 juice, a potato or

canned vegetables. Potato can raise your blood sugar, and the V8 and canned
vegetables are both pasteurized (cooked) at high temperatures, destroying many
of the nutrients. Fruits can be canned or even in the form of fruit juice; again,
way too much sugar. But the worst recommendation is grains. The Dietary
Guidelines recommend 6 to 7 ounces of grains per day. They say half of them
should be in the form of whole grains. This leaves 3 ounces of refined grains.

Examples of Grains (6 – 7 ounces)

1 ounce = 1 slice of bread
1 ounce = 1 cup of ready-to-eat cereal
1 ounce = 1 pancake
1 ounce = ½ cup of cooked rice
1 ounce = ½ cup of cooked pasta
1 ounce = ½ English muffin
1 ounce = 1 small piece of corn bread
1 ounce = 5 whole-wheat crackers
1 ounce = 3 cups of popcorn

So, when multiplied by 6 or 7, this is going to add up. Many people

don’t realize that these foods turn into sugar at a very high rate; thus they
are hidden sugars.

15
 How do we lower insulin?

1. Eliminate the sugar

This really does mean eliminating all sugar from the diet.

The key is bringing your dietary sugar down to zero. There are acceptable
sweet alternatives. The three I recommend that are easy to get are stevia,
non-GMO erythritol and non-GMO xylitol.

Avoid these:

• Table sugar (cane and beet)

• Fructose
• Honey
• Brown sugar
• Agave nectar
• Dextrose
• Maltodextrin
• High-fructose corn syrup
• Maple syrup
• Rice syrup
• Juice
• Alcohol

2. Eliminate the hidden sugars

16
 The four hidden carbohydrates that many people don’t consider:

1. Grains
2. Starches
3. Fruits
4. Legumes (beans)

Grains to avoid include breads, pasta, cereal (even oatmeal), crackers,

biscuits, pancakes and waffles. Even if something is gluten-free, it’s still a
grain. Gluten is the protein in grains.

You want to avoid ALL grains, including oats, wheat, barley, Ezekiel
bread, sprouted bread and quinoa.

Exception: Small amounts of rye crispbread, the kind with about 4 grams
of carbohydrates in each. This is net carbs, which is the total carbohydrate minus
the fiber.

Starches to avoid include white and red potatoes, sweet potato, yams,
white and brown rice, corn (even though it’s a vegetable) and cornstarch. Did
you know that those puffed rice cereals or puffed rice cakes have glycemic
responses that are near the top of the charts?

Fruits to avoid include apples, bananas, pineapple, pears, dates, figs,

grapes (and raisins), and fruit juices (orange, grape and apple juice—even
tomato juice).

Exception: Small amounts (one-half to one cup) of berries per day.

Legumes to avoid include beans.

Exception: Hummus, but make sure it’s not made with soy or canola oil.

3. Eliminate the combination of sugar or refined

carbs with protein
What’s worse than consuming carbs? Combining sugar or refined carbs
with protein can spike insulin by 200 percent or more.

17
Avoid these combinations:

• Hamburger with bun

• Hot dog with bun
• Protein/bread combos in general
• Burger with fries
• Burger with ketchup (most condiments are
packed with sugar, except for mustard)
• Burger with soda
• Sweet-and-sour pork
• Breaded meats
• Beef jerky (unless it has no sugar)
• Deli meats (unless they have no sugar)
• Spaghetti and meatballs
• Lasagna
• Eggs and toast
• Sandwiches
• Barbecue
• Chicken wings with sugary coating
• Cheese and crackers (except rye crispbread
with about 4 grams net carbs in each)

18
4. Eliminate MSG (another hidden sugar)
Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is a flavor-enhancing chemical, meaning
that it makes food taste better than it actually is. The way it works is to
enlarge your taste buds to enhance the perception of the savory taste. It’s in
many, many foods at the grocery store and fast-food restaurants, not to
mention Chinese and many other restaurants. You have to realize it can be
listed under other names too: modified cornstarch and modified starch and
about eleven additional names. So read your labels—even commercial
cottage cheese has modified cornstarch.

MSG can spike insulin by 300 percent, even though it’s not a
carbohydrate.

5. Eliminate artificial sweeteners

Avoid aspartame. (Equal is also dangerous, and it’s in many diet sodas.)
Avoid saccharine (commonly found in powdered diet sweeteners). Although
these are sugar-free, they can spike insulin. Many people have been drinking
diet soda for years without knowing the effects of these artificial sweeteners.

Sugar alcohols are much better: non-GMO erythritol and xylitol are
great. There are others too. Stevia is the best, since it has a zero glycemic
effect. You can even get soda-flavored xylitol that you can add to water to
enjoy the taste of a soft drink without the insulin spike.

6. Switch from lean (low-fat) protein to the

higher-fat version
You have already heard about the scale known as the glycemic index (GI),
but you may never have heard of the insulin index. This scale rates all the
non-carbohydrate triggers of insulin, and the big one is zero-fat protein—for
example, in whey protein powder. This is interesting because we have been
brainwashed into thinking that low-fat or lean protein is healthier for you.

The fattier the animal protein, the lower the effect on insulin. Did you
get that? The fattier the protein, the lower the insulin response. So, when
consuming protein, go for the higher-fat version. This includes cheese,
dairy, meats, fattier fish, etc. It would also be better to leave the skin on the
chicken if possible.
19
7. Avoid excess amounts of protein
Another trig ger of insulin is large quantities of protein. This was one
of the issues with the Atkins diet. The optimum amount of protein per meal
is about 3 to 6 ounces. Protein is needed for repairing and providing the raw
material for muscle, tendons, joint cartilage, and even bone. Protein can also
be used for fuel; however, too much triggers insulin and can be converted to
sugar and then to fat.

A common question people have is, “Should I not be consuming lots of

protein to build my muscles?” The liver can only handle so much, and
keeping your protein to a moderate amount is all you need. To build muscle,
you also need to have normal amounts of insulin, which is why diabetics
many times lose their muscle and become flabby.

8. Avoid GMO soy and corn oil

Unfortunately, very commonly consumed oils such as soy, canola and
corn can trigger insulin resistance. If oil is not organic, it’s likely to be
GMO. Try to find a salad dressing or condiment without these oils. Good
luck! Most of the soy and corn are sold for animal feeds; so you could also be
getting GMOs indirectly through meats. Another reason to go organic.

9. Avoid eating too frequently

Did you realize that eating in general triggers insulin? It is not a good
idea to eat five to six small meals per day. This spikes insulin big time and
prevents you from correcting insulin resistance. Snacking and grazing late at
night are the worst. The solution to this is intermittent fasting (IF); more on
IF follows.

20
 The Solution

There are two strategies I recommend to lose weight and undo

insulin resistance:

• Healthy Keto™
• Intermittent fasting

Healthy Keto™
Healthy Keto™ is a state in which the body is using ketones as its primary
fuel. Ketones are the byproduct of fat burning and a much cleaner fuel than
sugar. Ketones are the preferred fuel of the body and brain. Running on
glucose is inefficient for the body and unhealthy in numerous ways. It is also
a recent way of eating for humankind.

When people try to lose weight, they usually lose some initial water
weight and plateau after two weeks. They rarely tap into fat fuel.

I recommend a type of ketosis that emphasizes getting your required

nutrients—not merely cutting your carbs—and eating healthy fats. More on
this in a moment.

In the worst form of diabetes (type 1), a condition called ketoacidosis can
exist. This is completely different from when you put your body into ketosis
by lowering your carbs. Ketoacidosis is a disease state where there is no more
insulin and acids build up to high levels that are dangerous for health. But
with Healthy Keto™ we will be adding lots of vegetables to counter any
potential excess of acid in the body.

Ketosis is the state of running your body on fat.

The benefits are immense—and go way beyond weight loss.

By running on fat fuel with ketosis, you’ll experience such rewards

as the following:

21
 • No more cravings
• Less hunger between meals
• Better memory
• Cardiovascular protection
• Normal blood sugar
• Improved mood
• Improved cholesterol
• Way more energy
• Amazing skin
• Much less inflammation
• Improved sleep

To get into a state of ketosis so you can run on fat instead of

glucose—and finally burn your own fat stores for fuel—you will have to start
adapting your body to producing ketones, the body’s preferred fuel source.
For some people this can take as long as six weeks, while for others it only
takes one to two weeks.

But if you want to dramatically speed up your metabolism, this is the way
to do it!

Here’s how to make ketosis work for you.

The key to switching your body to fat burning is to lower your carb
intake to 20 to 50 grams per day. People who have very slow metabolisms
should limit carb intake to 20 grams or less.

By the way, there is no such thing as an “essential carbohydrate.” Our

bodies can do quite well without carbohydrates. There are different types of
carbohydrates: vegetables, fruits, berries, starches (potato and rice), grains
and legumes. Then you have the really bad guys: refined carbohydrates like
table sugar, wheat flour and high-fructose corn syrup.

However, the main carbohydrate you want to consume is vegetables.

Vegetables give us our vitamins and minerals and do not turn into sugar like
other carbs do. Vegetables also provide the fiber to feed your friendly bacteria.

Fruit and fruit juices are the worst. Did you know that an apple contains
19 grams of sugar? Berries, though, turn into sugar much more slowly than
other types of fruit; so one cup per day is okay to consume.
22
 Intermittent fasting

Intermittent fasting (IF) is not a diet; it is a frequency of eating and not

eating. When you do not eat, you lower insulin. So the less frequently you
eat, the less stress on the pancreas and the less insulin. Nevertheless, it’s
something you have to let your body adapt to.

This is important because one of the primary triggers of insulin is

eating—eating anything. I am not talking about taking your supplements or
drinking tea or even one cup of coffee in the morning, but eating five to six
times a day; and let’s not forget, snacking will spike insulin even if it’s healthy
food. The more frequent the eating, the more there is chronic elevation of
insulin, leading to insulin resistance.

INSULIN INSULIN INSULIN

INSULIN INSULIN INSULIN INSULIN INSULIN
SNACK SNACK SNACK SNACK SNACK

BREAKFAST LUNCH DINNER

Eating less often, with no snacks to spike insulin between meals, is one
of the most powerful ways to lower insulin resistance—and it can give you
a lot of amazing benefits, such as anti-aging effects.

I also recommend you always do keto with intermittent fasting. Doing IF

without keto, on top of a low blood sugar problem, is a real strain on your
brain: you can feel miserable and can be very moody.

To do this, let’s first begin with three meals per day—NO snacks—
absolutely nothing between meals except water and other non-caloric,
non-insulin-spiking drinks like tea and coffee (but try only one coffee per day
in the a.m. because too much coffee can spike insulin).

INSULIN INSULIN INSULIN

NO NO NO NO
SNACKING SNACKING SNACKING SNACKING
Ø Ø Ø Ø
FAT FAT FAT FAT
BURNING BURNING BURNING BURNING
23
 Keeping insulin at a normal level between meals and during sleep will
allow your pancreas to chill and recover. However, some people will have a
heck of a time going from one meal to the next because they get blood sugar
crashes and severe hunger. Not a problem.

The solution to this is simply to consume more fat at the end of the meal.
This could include avocados, nut butters, pecans, brie cheese or olives. Fat
not only satisfies your hunger but also will not trigger insulin very much. You
know now that consuming lean proteins and low-fat meals will keep you
hungry and make it impossible to do intermittent fasting. So the answer is
more dietary fat.

The next goal is to gradually transition from three meals per day to two
meals a day.
INSULIN INSULIN

FAT FAT FAT

BURNING BURNING BURNING
LUNCH DINNER
Realize that this is not about lowering your calorie intake; it’s about
eating less often. Reducing the frequency of meals reduces occasions for
spiking insulin.

The secret is to do it gradually. The main reason for going slowly is that
your body needs time to build up the cellular machinery to burn fat and
switch over to ketones.

Continue to push your breakfast forward until you can skip it altogether.
For example, as in the diagram below, you will be able to eat later and later
in the morning, since your body will not be as hungry, eventually dropping
out breakfast completely.

INSULIN INSULIN INSULIN

Continue
To Push
Breakfast
Forward FAT FAT FAT
BURNING BURNING BURNING
BREAKFAST LUNCH DINNER
24
 As you adapt to using ketones instead of glucose, your cravings will turn
off and so will your hunger. There are many different meal schedules that you
can use based on the demands of your life. My wife waits until 3:00 p.m. for
her first meal, then eats a late dinner around 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. I eat at 12:00
noon and again at 4:00 or 5:00 p.m. But many people do a six-hour eating
window, which works fine.

12:00 Noon 6:00 PM

INSULIN INSULIN
6-HOUR EATING
WINDOW

FAT FAT FAT

BURNING BURNING BURNING
LUNCH DINNER
As your body adjusts to fat burning, it will be easier to shorten this
window, especially if you want to lose more weight. If you can have a
four-hour eating window and twenty hours of fasting, many more benefits
will occur.
1 :00 PM 5:00 PM
INSULIN INSULIN
4-HOUR EATING
WINDOW

FAT FAT FAT

BURNING BURNING BURNING
LUNCH DINNER
And for those of you who have a very slow metabolism, are menopausal,
or maybe even have a slow thyroid and just want to speed things up, you may
want to try doing one meal a day (OMAD). Just gradually work up to this.

INSULIN
1 HOUR

FAT BURNING ONE FAT BURNING

MEAL A DAY
23-HOUR FASTING
25
 It is okay to be a little hungry as long as it does not impair your cognitive
function or cause headaches or weakness.

Allow your body to adjust to running on fat. For some true sugar junkies,
this can take five or six weeks. But your cells will eventually adjust and you’ll
enter full fat-burning mode. Then it gets really, really easy to resist snacking
because you have no cravings and you’re not actually hungry. Your
fat-burning switch is finally fixed.

I’ve found that if you want to lose weight, you’ll initially need more
dietary fat with meals; but then you’ll need a little less down the road because
you’re running more on your own fat. Some people eventually decide to do
one meal per day; but for now, just focus on going to two meals per day.

When you get to one meal a day, just make sure the meal is a robust one,
containing all the needed nutrients to fortify your body with vitamins,
minerals, amino acids, those important fatty acids, trace minerals—all of it.
(This can be aided with green drink powders and high-quality electrolyte
supplements that will help you get your daily requirements for potassium.)

Intermittent fasting is a very healthy thing to do because it increases the

anti-aging and muscle-preserving growth hormone by up to 2,000 percent,
giving you some tremendous benefits that go way beyond weight loss. It will
even help regrow brain cells.

In my larger book, The New Body Type Guide, I talk about this in more
detail. However, I do want to mention another very amazing benefit called
autophagy.

Autophagy is a condition in the body where your cells become cell

cleaning ovens. They literally start recycling old, damaged proteins and turn
them into new ones. Your inflammation can be dramatically reduced. Even
the pathogenic microbes in the body can get recycled—incredible. Talk
about anti-aging! If you’re doing intermittent fasting for at least 18 hours as
well as Healthy Keto™, you can experience these benefits.

26
 Getting all your nutrients
There is a third piece of the puzzle. Part of getting healthy is ensuring
you have the required nutrients. Fixing insulin resistance allows you to
absorb your nutrients even better, but you still need to eat well to obtain
all the necessary nutrients.

If you research ketogenic diets, low-carb diets, or even intermittent

fasting, you’ll notice they do not put emphasis on fulfilling nutrient
requirements. This is where many proponents of keto and IF go
wrong—because without enough of the right nutrients you can develop keto
side effects.

VITAMINS: Generally speaking, most of the vitamins and minerals you

will need come from vegetables (like salad). B vitamins are present in whole
wheat, but we don’t want to consume grains because they turn into sugar too
fast. There’s a product I recommend called nutritional yeast that is high in B
vitamins, but just make sure you don’t get the “fortified” or “enriched”
type—which has added synthetic B vitamins.

Actually, you need both plant and animal foods to get your daily
requirements. There are certain vitamins in vegetables—especially the
fat-soluble ones—that only come in a pre-vitamin form. This means when
you eat spinach, kale or leafy greens, the pre-vitamin form has to be
converted into the active form, and you’re only going to absorb roughly 4
percent. Animal meats have certain readily absorbed forms of these nutrients,
which plants do not.

This is why I recommend that you get these vitamins by consuming animal
protein with fat. Just make sure the animal foods are grass-fed and organic.

FAT-SOLUBLE VITAMINS are specific vitamins (A, D, E, K) that can

penetrate your cells much deeper than other vitamins. They also get stored in
your fat, which allows you to hold them longer.

The best sources of fully absorbable vitamin A are egg yolk, cod-liver oil,
fatty fish, butter, grass-fed liver and grass-fed dairy. Vitamin D can come
from the sun, as well as from cod-liver oil, egg yolk and grass-fed dairy.

VITAMIN K, another interesting but not commonly discussed

fat-soluble vitamin, is crucial to keep calcium out of the soft tissues (arteries
and joints) and in your bones. Vitamin K comes from grass-fed dairy,
cheese, egg yolk and grass-fed liver.
27
 POTASSIUM is the mineral you need most, yet it is the hardest to get in
the diet. This is because our bodies need 4,700 mg of potassium every single
day. Bananas only have 300 mg of potassium, and of course they have too
much sugar. You would have to consume more than 15 bananas a day just to
meet your potassium requirement.

Avocados and beet tops (beet greens) have lots of potassium and all kinds
of other vitamins and minerals, so these are good.

You can also get your potassium from leafy greens (salads), but you’re
going to have to consume larger servings. That one-serving side salad they
normally give you at the restaurant is not going to work—sorry. Don’t freak
out, but I’m going to recommend consuming seven to ten cups of salad per
day. This will not only provide you with a good amount of potassium, but it
will also give you most of the remaining required nutrients as well.
Furthermore, it will counter all the fat that’s being burned up and coming
out through your liver.

28
 If you go shopping for salad, realize that one cup equals 1 ounce. Bags of
salad are often 5 ounces (five cups), and plastic containers are also 5 ounces,
to give you a reference.

Consuming large salads with spring mix, spinach, arugula or even

cabbage will start to give you the nutrients that help undo insulin resistance.
There are numerous studies demonstrating that various nutrients (vitamins
A, B, C, D, K, potassium, magnesium and chromium) improve insulin
sensitivity. Adding in intermittent fasting will also help insulin dysfunction,
which is the icing on the cake. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist that one.)

Below are some examples of amounts of salad.

29
 Keto-adaptation
Your body is going to have to switch fuel sources from sugar to fat and
will need a new cellular process to accomplish this. When you follow this
plan, your cells will change over and adapt; how quickly this happens
depends on how serious your insulin resistance is.

During this adjustment phase, you might experience some of the

following symptoms:

• Keto flu (feeling run-down)

• Fatigue
• Irritability
• Muscle cramps
• Kidney stones or gout
• Sleep problems
• Constipation
• Keto rash

Generally speaking, to help reduce these symptoms, there are two main
types of nutrients you need: B vitamins and electrolytes.

Electrolytes are minerals like potassium, calcium, magnesium, sodium

and chlorides.

Again, for a good B vitamin source, I recommend nutritional yeast, which

is packed with virtually all the B vitamins you need every day. But make sure
it’s unfortified (that is, make sure it doesn’t have synthetic vitamins added).

You can find your own electrolyte powder or use mine. Mine contains
1,000 mg of potassium per serving, as well as all other minerals and trace
minerals—but without the maltodextrin (or sugar) that normally comes with
most electrolyte powders.

To make nutritional yeast easier to consume, I put it in tablets, which

you can even break in half to take. My version is non-fortified, with added
natural B.

30
Go to www.DrBerg.com for more information.

31
 Putting It All Together

Let’s now combine nutrient-dense foods, ketosis and intermittent

fasting to achieve maximum weight loss and a ton of added health too.

What to eat
Most people need to consume between 1,500 and 2,100 total calories per
day, depending on the size of the body. To make this simple, for all of the
following meal examples the carb, protein and fat ratios are based on an
1,800-calories-per-day plan for three meals per day. Of course, this is just for
an average adult.

Roughly you will want to stick with these percentages:

• 5 percent carbohydrate
• 5 percent non-starchy vegetables and salad
• 20 percent protein
• 70 percent fat

The diagram below illustrates the percentages of calories in relation to

each other.

Veggie/salad carb 5%
(non-starchy)
5%
Carb
Protein
Fat 7 0% 20%

32
 What the diagram shows are rough percentages that can vary from person
to person based on your body size and activity level. However, I would prefer
that you not count calories, since the purpose of food is to supply all your
nutrients not to balance calories. Instead, let me show you in picture form
the amounts of foods it will take for you to get these percentages.

But first, to give you a bit more understanding, here again are my plate
proportions—which are slightly different from the Dietary Guidelines that
we’ve been used to. The main thing I want you to see is the fat quantity. In
the pie chart on the previous page, you’ll see 70 percent of all your calories
are fat; but the amount of fat on your plate is much less because of the
difference in calories and actual volume.

CARBS

HEALTHY
VEGETABLES FAT
PROTEIN
KETO™

Let me give you another one, which is my food pyramid. This way you
can get the big overview of foods and amounts. I think it’s important to see
what you eat from different angles.

CARBS: 20 g
PROTEIN:
3–6 oz. per meal
FAT: 70%–80%
of total calories
VEGETABLES:
7–10 cups

33
 Protein Amounts

On average, you will be consuming 3 to 6 ounces of protein at each meal,

if you are doing three meals per day. What does this look like? See below.

34
 If you are doing three meals a day, the following is an example of how
much total protein you could eat in one day: between 9 and 18 ounces.

35
 A common question that people ask is, “If I consume fewer meals and
the protein amounts dramatically increase, how am I going to keep
insulin low, since excessive protein spikes insulin?” The less frequent the
meals, the more protein you will need per meal. What happens as you eat
fewer meals is that your body will compensate, and you’ll lose less protein
and become more efficient at using protein. If you consume two meals per
day, the average protein per meal could be 7 to 8 ounces. If you were doing
one meal per day, the total daily protein amount could be 9 ounces.

Carbohydrate Amounts

You want to keep your carbohydrate amounts between 20 and 50 grams

per day. Many people use 30 grams as a guideline to keep it simple. What you
need to know is that the lower your carbohydrates, the more rapid your fat
burning will be.

The “Carb” category in the diagram on page 32 includes carbs from foods
like berries, nuts, tomatoes, carrots, beets, hummus, avocados and onions.
But we can allow for an additional 5 percent of our total calories to be found
in non-starchy vegetable and leafy-green salad-type carbohydrates. The
reason I am adding this is to make the important point that you need to add
more vegetables and salad to your diet.

Also realize that when we calculate this, we are using net carbs, which are
the total carbs minus the fiber. To make it easy: try to consume 10 cups of
salad if you eat three meals per day, 8 cups if you eat two meals per day, and
7 cups if you eat one meal per day.

A key point on corn and soy:

Avoid these because most likely they are GMO.
36
 Fat Amounts

When you calculate 70 percent of your total calories per day, the fat may
initially seem like a lot. However, because fat is more concentrated, a certain
volume of fat has more than double the calories of the same volume of
protein or carbs. For example, if you were to compare 100 calories of carbs to
100 calories of fat, the fat would be less than half the volume of the carbs
because the density of calories is more than twice as much. Make sense?

Here are examples of what your total daily fat amounts might look like:

or

One key point on fat: Fat is the wild variable, which means it can change
the most. When you are starting out, you’ll need more to feel satisfied
between meals. But as you adapt and your body starts burning its own
fat between meals, you’ll need less.

Why?

Because if you are trying to lose weight and you consume too much fat,
your body may use the dietary fuel before it uses your own body fat as fuel.
So, despite being in “ketosis,” you may not see much weight loss. Therefore,
adjust your fats as you go through this until you have a nice balance between
hunger and weight loss. Too little fat will make it hard to do intermittent
fasting, and too much can cause excessive bloating.

If you are not trying to lose weight and just want to maintain, you will
have to increase your dietary fat or you may end up getting too skinny.

37
 Meal Examples

You can also go to www.DrBerg.com to see a long list of amazing meals

and recipes. A few of them are pictured here.

38
 Three-meal examples

Breakfast Lunch

Dinner

Breakfast Lunch

Dinner
39
Breakfast Lunch

Dinner

Two-meal examples

First Meal

Second Meal
40
First Meal

Second Meal

First Meal

Second Meal
41
 Desserts
As you transition from three meals to two meals or even to one meal a day,
you will need to consume more fat. There are all sorts of great desserts you can
create that support your weight-loss program. There are also keto bombs,
which are fat-rich cookies that can be eaten at the end of the meal to make it
incredibly easy to do intermittent fasting. Here are some examples:

Peanut Butter– Chocolate Coconut– Peanut Butter

Fat Bomb Fat Bomb

Peanut Butter & Cream Cheese Shortbread Cookies

Fat Bomb

42
 Peanut Butter – Chocolate Fat Bomb

200 Calories | 24 g Fat | 5 g Net Carbs | 6 g Protein

Total time: 45 minutes

Serves 5

Ingredients

Chocolate Peanut Butter

2 tablespoons coconut oil, melted 2 tablespoons coconut oil, melted
2 tablespoons coconut butter ¼ cup peanut butter
2 tablespoons peanut butter ¼ teaspoon vanilla
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder 5–10 drops stevia (to taste)
¼ teaspoon vanilla
5–10 drops stevia (to taste)

Directions

1. In a double boiler, melt down chocolate mixture: coconut oil, coconut

butter, peanut butter, cocoa powder, vanilla and stevia.

2. In a separate bowl, melt down peanut butter mixture: coconut oil,

peanut butter, vanilla and stevia.

3. Fill bottom of silicone molds with a layer of the chocolate mixture; place
in refrigerator. Let solidify. This should take about 10 minutes.

4. Next, fill the molds with a layer of the peanut butter mixture. Place in
refrigerator again. Let solidify.

5. Add the top and final layer of chocolate mixture. Let solidify one
more time.

Tip
Eat only one of these after a meal to help satisfy your sweet tooth!

Recipes for all keto bombs and other delicious desserts can be found at
www.DrBerg.com/Ketogenic-diet-meals-recipes/desserts.
43
 Frequently Asked Questions
on Ketosis and Intermittent Fasting

What is a ketone?

A ketone is a byproduct of fat being burned in your body. It is basically a

source of energy (fuel) that is an alternative to glucose. Ketones are the
preferred and superior fuel for the body and are more efficient for the brain
and the heart.

Why is ketosis superior for weight loss and health?

• Ketones are a superior fuel.

• Ketosis produces the most weight loss of any diet I know of,
targeting the belly in particular.
• Ketosis improves your memory and cognitive function.
• Ketosis improves mood. When running on sugar, you get highs
and lows; you’re irritable and grouchy all the time.
• Ketosis eradicates cravings and hunger. It’s crazy to try to diet
when you’re hungry and have cravings. When you’re running
on ketones, you don’t have that fluctuation of blood sugar.
• Ketosis improves metabolism, can repair a set point that is
stuck at a certain weight, and will allow you to break through
that barrier.
• Ketosis improves insulin dysfunction.

So ketosis is very powerful for health and can even help prevent or reverse
the effects of insulin resistance.

How long before I start losing weight?

Often people want weight loss to start happening right now. Your body
has been running on glucose for your entire life, though. Your cells have to
build new enzymes—a whole new cellular machine—to break down fat as a
new source of fuel. It may happen in a month, but more likely it will take at
least six weeks. However, once you do get there you won’t have sugar cravings
anymore. You’ll have better blood sugar. Your memory will be sharper, and
you’ll urinate less at night and sleep better because your blood sugar won’t be
plummeting during the night after sugar spikes.
44
Should I count total carbs or net carbs?

Count the net carbs, which is total carbs minus fiber. However, you do
not have to worry about including vegetables in your calculation. You want
lots of them.

Okay, I “fell off the wagon” and cheated. How long will it take me to get
back into ketosis now?

It can take 48 to 72 hours if you’re lucky, but it could be as much as a

week. Now, if you’re in your twenties and pretty healthy, you’ll bounce right
back in a day. When you’re older and working on repairing a broken
metabolism, it will take longer.

I started the keto diet about a week ago. Now I’m tired constantly.
What do I do?

As your body adjusts to fat burning, you will need more B vitamins. The
nutrient you need a lot of, to keep the fatigue away and help your adrenals
and metabolism, is B. A sodium deficiency could also produce fatigue and
weakness. Nutritional yeast is the best source of B vitamins.

How can I avoid (or get over) the keto flu?

The symptoms of keto flu are headaches, body aches, cravings, brain fog
and fatigue. Just think about what you’re trying to do. You’re converting your
entire cellular machinery to fat burning. What you need to do to avoid or
heal the keto flu is take more electrolytes and B vitamins. These are the
cofactors that help in developing the machinery to burn fat effectively
without draining your body.

For the B vitamins, try nutritional yeast. For electrolytes, I recommend

my electrolyte powder. It has 1,000 mg of potassium and will help provide
the 4,700 mg you need to create this machinery to burn fat faster and get
into ketosis.

What do I do about a keto rash?

Typically this is caused by the liver dumping something; the reason for
that is you’re losing lots of fat, and toxins are stored in your fat. As they come
out of the system, these toxins can cause a rash. The solution? Consume more
vegetables. Also, try bentonite clay. This clay attracts toxins by pulling them
toward itself, and it is excreted through the stool.

45
I am losing no weight. Why?

You may be losing fat and gaining muscle, which is a bit heavier—thus
no actual weight loss. I would use your midsection measurement rather than
weight as a better indicator of success.

Will too much protein throw me out of ketosis?

Yes, especially too much lean protein—like turkey and chicken, and even
lean fish. Egg white without the yolk is lean protein and will trigger insulin
more than the whole egg. Normally 3 to 6 ounces of protein is sufficient,
while 10+ ounces is going to kick you out of ketosis.

Will vegetables slow ketosis?

If you consume non-starchy vegetables like the leafy greens, they will not
affect ketosis. However, potatoes and corn, despite being vegetables, must be
eliminated. Other starchy vegetables like beets, peas and carrots can be eaten
in small quantities because they are rich in fiber, which reduces the insulin
spike. (Carrot juice should be avoided, as it is high in sugar.)

In fact, you want to eat lots of green leafy vegetables, cruciferous

vegetables and Brussels sprouts. Create big kale salads with bacon bits and a
full-fat dressing. Or sauté beet greens in coconut oil with some bacon, garlic
and onion stirred in. These will be dishes packed with potassium, which will
quiet food cravings much like fat does. Often, food cravings are nothing
more than your body crying out for nutrients and minerals that you’re not
giving it.

I heard that on a ketosis diet you eat more fat—isn’t that unhealthy?

Much conflicting information has been circulated about the consump-

tion of fat. People are sometimes concerned that adding fat to their diets will
cause them to gain weight. This is not necessarily the case. Fat is a neutral
food when it comes to insulin. It is also satisfying. Fat allows you to feel full
for longer to help with intermittent fasting (IF).

How much fat should I eat at each meal?

If you’re really battling a high-appetite/high-craving day or week, you

might want to add more fat, especially at breakfast to trim your appetite
throughout the day and enable you to go longer without cravings and hunger.

46
 Ketosis in general suppresses your appetite, so your hunger will be greatly
reduced. You’re going to be able to go many hours without eating. Let the
hunger dictate how much fat you eat. If you’re not hungry, cut down on
the fat a little bit.

Is it possible to eat too much fat?

Yes, because it can overload the gallbladder. In the beginning you are
going to need more fat to allow your body to go longer between meals;
however, as you adapt to fat burning and burn your body’s own fat, the need
for dietary fat will go down. Realize that during a fasting state, your body’s
meal is its own fat.

What about keto bombs?

Keto bombs are fat cookies that ketogenic dieters love because they’re a
healthy, delicious cheat food that is virtually devoid of carbs. I have plenty
of videos on how to make keto bombs, but you have to eat them with a
meal, not as a snack. The goal would be to stick to one a day. Go to my
YouTube channel under Playlists, then Recipes; or to www.DrBerg.com
under Recipes.

I love hummus. Will that throw me out of ketosis?

No—hummus is great for ketosis. The six basic ingredients of hummus

are all very good for you. Just be sure to avoid hummus with preservatives
and/or soybean oil. Look for hummus that contains only chickpeas, tahini,
olive oil, garlic, lemon and sea salt.

Also, you’ll want to eat your hummus with vegetables, not with chips or
pita bread.

Are condiments bad for ketosis?

Actually, yes. Ketchup, barbecue sauce, and Asian sauces like duck sauce
and sweet-and-sour sauce are loaded with sugar, and eating sugar with protein
greatly spikes insulin—exactly what you don’t want to do. Mustard is okay.
Mayonnaise is okay if not made with soy. Start looking at sugar grams on
everything, especially your salad dressings.

47
Is stevia okay on a ketogenic diet?

Yes, pure stevia is fine. Stevia with maltodextrin is not good, so read
the labels.

What about fruit or berries on a ketogenic diet? Can I do it?

No fruit but some berries. Apples have too many carbs. Pineapples will
create massive insulin spikes. Never consume fruit juices: Valuable
phytonutrients are bound to the fiber, and these are lost; plus the juice is
cooked, removing many other nutrients. You’re basically just drinking
concentrated fructose. You can get away with one-half to one cup of
berries a day.

What about nuts and seeds on keto?

Nuts and seeds are fine. Macadamias and pecans are great fatty nuts. (But
walnuts and macadamias can go rancid. Be careful.) Cashews are higher in
carbohydrates, so avoid them. For nut butters, look on the label. You want
sea salt and peanuts or almonds only. Make sure there’s no added food starch
or MSG. MSG really spikes insulin.

Two to three ounces of nuts in a given meal should be fine, but use less if
you have a gallbladder issue. Seeds are even better than nuts, nutritionally.
Chia seeds, flax seeds and sunflower seeds—which are high in healthy
nutrients, high in fat, low in carbs—are good for you. You can put them on
salads, or make a trail mix out of nuts and seeds.

Is gluten-free healthy on a keto diet?

It’s true that gluten is harmful to the gut. But just because a food doesn’t
have gluten doesn’t mean it’s safe; you’re still dealing with the wheat, which
turns into sugar quickly. Quinoa, buckwheat, sorghum, millet—all these
have effects similar to wheat, so avoid them.

Can I eat oatmeal on a ketogenic diet or will it bump me out of

fat burning?

Steel-cut oats (unrefined) are better than instant oats on the glycemic
index scale (GI). However, they are still too high for keto and will slow you
down. Instant oatmeal is around 83 on the GI. It will turn into a lot of sugar.
If you’re trying to lose weight, oatmeal will slow you down; so, no.

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What kind of cracker can I consume?

Rye crispbread with about 4 grams of net carbs in each. In small amounts,
this is okay. You can find it online and at some stores.

Can I chew gum?

This is a minor concern, but yes. You should use xylitol gum.

What kinds of liquids should I be drinking that won’t interfere

with ketosis?

• Filtered or spring water.

• Bone broth is good—even during the fasting period between
meals. Too much can slow ketosis for some people.
• Homemade sodas with flavored stevia—these are great.
• Apple cider vinegar in water is good for helping you manage
insulin and also for overcoming insulin resistance.
• Unsweetened almond milk.

But avoid alcohol and even coconut water.

Is lemon water okay?

Yes.

Will diet soda throw me out of ketosis?

The artificial sweeteners in soda are not only bad for you but also spike
insulin. I’m not talking about stevia and non-GMO erythritol or xylitol; I’m
talking about aspartame and saccharine or worse. Instead, you can make your
own sodas using carbonated water and liquid flavorings containing stevia.

Is coffee okay on the ketogenic diet?

Sure, if you’re having about one 8-ounce cup per day, not 15 cups. The
problem with coffee is that it is the third most sprayed crop in the world and
it depletes the adrenals. If you’re going to drink coffee, make sure it’s organic,
that the creamer is organic, and that you sweeten with xylitol—which is
GMO-free and tastes just like sugar.

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Is decaf coffee all right?

Be careful with decaf—companies use the chemical methyl chloride to

remove caffeine. You want to buy coffee that is decaffeinated utilizing CO
and the water processing method.

What about Bulletproof Coffee?

Bulletproof Coffee is coffee with added grass-fed butter and a fat called
MCT oil, which is extracted from coconut oil. If you want to use that as a
meal, fine; but it can trigger insulin a little. That being said, I think it is good
to do in the beginning, as it reduces hunger. However, for some people it
could slow progress; so experiment.

What are the best supplements to take while on keto?

There are several healthy supplements that I recommend, most of which

can be found on my website. These can help you avoid the side effects that
may develop when you start burning your own fat. For example, you can find
the following on www.DrBerg.com:

• Electrolyte Powder: This is loaded with electrolytes to provide

your cells with the right nutrients.
• Nutritional Yeast: This has all the B vitamins you need and more.
• Wheat Grass Juice Powder: This is packed with vitamins and
minerals as well as phytonutrients.
• Insulin and Glucose Support Formula: This supports healthy blood
sugar levels to enhance the ketosis state. It would be something
to add if your blood sugars have been chronically elevated.

Can I have a cheat day?

No. If you want to get into ketosis and stay there, you need to stick to the
plan. It can take over a week to get back into ketosis after a sugar slip.

What other things will kick me out of ketosis?

• Stress elevates insulin. Stress activates cortisol, which can keep

you from weight loss as well.
• Caffeine elevates stress in the body. However, one small coffee
in the a.m. should not be a problem.

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 • Too much protein can do it.
• So can bloating from kale and other types of vegetables that
you have trouble digesting.

What are the biggest mistakes people make when doing ketosis?

Eating too much or too little fat. If you don’t eat enough fat, you won’t
be successful because (a) too little fat is unhealthy; and (b) fat helps control
the appetite. So, this is the wild variable that needs to be figured out as you
experiment with your body.

Can my cholesterol go high on a ketogenic diet?

When you lose weight, fat cells shrink. In a fat cell, there are triglycerides
and cholesterol. Now, as that fat cell shrinks, you can burn triglycerides, but
you cannot burn cholesterol. So it will go into the blood, go to the liver, and
come out through the bile. But you’ll be totally fine as long as your
triglycerides are low. (If you’re not using those as fuel, then you’re eating too
much sugar.)

I’ve heard ketogenic diets can get rid of migraines. Is this true?

Yes. Eliminating insulin spikes has been shown to greatly reduce

migraines. Adding intermittent fasting, in reality, speeds this process even
more. Your brain will be less stressed using ketones as fuel. Also most
headaches stem from low blood sugars.

Does ketosis worsen adrenal health?

No. Ketosis allows your adrenal glands to function more stably. It works
like this:

The adrenal glands make cortisol, which is triggered by stress. Cortisol

increases insulin, which will kick you out of ketosis. When you decrease
insulin (as with ketosis), you lower stress and lower cortisol. Therefore, the
adrenal glands don’t have to work so hard and will function more healthily.

Does ketosis cause hypothyroidism?

No. A low-carbohydrate diet is not the thing that causes a slow thyroid.
A low-calorie diet, however, can worsen hypothyroidism. Sometimes people
on a ketosis diet will find that they’re just not very hungry. So if you’re going
to do a ketosis diet, you need to make sure you provide your body with
enough nutrients.

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I’ve heard ketosis can cause kidney stones. Is there anything we can do to
prevent this from happening?

People on a ketosis diet may be at higher risk for kidney stones, but these
are easily preventable. Here’s how it can happen:

With a ketosis diet, you tend to eliminate more calcium than usual.
Additionally, foods such as cruciferous vegetables, spinach, iced tea or
chocolate all have a high quantity of oxalates. Oxalates are naturally
occurring substances found in a wide variety of foods; they play a supportive
role in the metabolism of many plants and animals, including humans.
Oxalates combined with calcium can cause kidney stones.

Lemon juice contains citrates (the substance that gives citrus fruits their
sour taste). When you’re low on citrates, you’re at risk for kidney stones. Add
the lemon juice to your kale shake or drink it in water. Try to consume at
least one lemon per day (lemon juice or the fruit of the lemon). I also
recommend taking my electrolyte mix because it contains minerals in their
citric form, as in potassium citrate, helping to bind oxalate stones and
neutralize uric-acid stones.

Can you be in ketosis and not show it on your urine test?

There are three kinds of ketones, and the urine is only tested for
acetoacetate. As you switch to the more efficient fat-burning process, you
convert that acetoacetate to beta-hydroxybutyrate. So, yes, your test can
actually show negative or zero ketones. Look at other factors. Are you losing
weight? Are you feeling good? If you’re doing 20 grams net carbs a day or less,
you’re going to be in ketosis, no matter what.

What can I do about ketosis and constipation?

There are many scenarios that can cause constipation with the ketogenic
diet. Most people assume it’s a fiber issue; but it’s not that simple. You want
to compare what you were doing before ketosis and after. Look at the change
in vegetable fiber consumption; if you don’t have enough gut bacteria to
digest all these vegetables, they will cause bloating, constipation, gas and all
kinds of digestive issues.

Some people can do vegetables and others can’t, of course. Some people
can’t do cabbage; others can’t do cruciferous. So you might have to switch to
less fibrous vegetables, such as various kinds of lettuce, and especially kale
and beet greens, for your potassium. Electrolytes greatly help with the
constipation too. If you need more support getting electrolytes, try my

52
electrolyte powder. It helps supply the 4,700 mg a day of potassium you
need, which is hard to manage without eating loads of vegetables.

What do I do about bad breath on a keto diet?

When you’re burning more ketones, you can start releasing a bit of
acetone, which smells like nail-polish remover. Or you might release
ammonia. Sometimes you get that sulfur smell. For all of these, increase
vegetable consumption. Over time, you’ll be more efficient at burning
ketones, and a lot less of this will happen. If you’re getting an ammonia smell,
you’re eating too much protein. Cut back. A sulfur odor means there’s a gut
issue, and you need to regulate your gut bacteria; you should take a type of
probiotic called Pro EM-1, which you can find online.

What is ketoacidosis? Is this good or bad?

Ketoacidosis is a very dangerous condition that happens only when

you’re a type 1 diabetic and completely stop making insulin. This results in
raising your acid levels far beyond normal. However, Healthy Keto™ will not
produce acid levels even close to those of a ketoacidosis condition.

What mistakes are common with intermittent fasting?

• Not eating enough vegetables.

• Not eating enough fat at the first meal of the day to keep hunger
and cravings away until your next meal.
• Thinking to yourself, “This is working so well that I can change
it and eat what I want.”

I’m losing weight but want to lose weight a bit faster with IF. How?

• Potassium: This is the most important mineral to help you fix

insulin and burn fat.
• Don’t overeat. Don’t gorge. Add more fat at meals to curb hunger.
• Get extra sleep; you burn fat during sleep. More sleep, and
you wake up lighter.
• HIIT (high-intensity interval training, like Tabata, sprints, etc.)
burns fat and majorly speeds the metabolism.
• Do it gradually, and be patient. Your body is trying to manu-
facture enzymes so you can run on fat. This can take six weeks
for sugar junkies.

53
Can I do IF without doing a keto diet—or should I do both?

Well, if you’re doing intermittent fasting alone, but you’re eating lots of
carbohydrates and not eating nutrient-dense foods, your skin, hair and nails
will suffer. I recommend doing both, as they both complement the reduction
of insulin.

When should I exercise with IF?

With intermittent fasting, the whole goal is to burn off excess fat, right?
Watch how you feel when you exercise. Do you feel best when you exercise
after eating or if you exercise while fasting? Watch if your legs feel heavy or if
you tire too easily. Some people do well with eating first, and some love that
feeling of exercising fasted and eating afterwards.

Can I get hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) from IF?

Intermittent fasting actually improves hypoglycemia and high blood

sugar problems. If you are having a rough time and experiencing too much
stress, make sure you transition slowly into intermittent fasting.

Help! I’m way too hungry!

Hunger is one way to know if you’re in fat burning, because the longer
you do keto, the less hungry you’ll be. If you’re experiencing severe hunger
with weakness and brain fog, you’re not quite into keto. Back off a bit. Don’t
be doing 20-hour fasts. You need more fuel to give your body the energy it
requires, and that includes energy to manufacture the enzymes to burn fat
instead of glucose. Take it slow, add more fat to your first meal, and eat
nutrient-dense foods. If you need more nutrients, try adding some
nutritional yeast and electrolytes, and major amounts of potassium. These
will help you fix insulin resistance and help you get into fat burning. Bone
broth is great for a snack. It’s just nutrients without calories, period.

Which boosts more growth hormone (GH), IF or high-intensity interval

training (HIIT)?

Although they are both very effective at stimulating fat-burning

hormones, intermittent fasting is actually superior, releasing 2,000 percent
more GH; whereas exercise can only raise it by 450 percent.

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What about the gallbladder—is IF good or bad for the gallbladder?

Intermittent fasting is very good for the gallbladder in all kinds of ways.
Gallstones are caused by two things: high insulin and low bile. IF lowers
insulin spikes and concentrates bile to make it easier to digest fats and absorb
nutrients from the foods you eat. If you’re eating five times a day, you’re using
up your bile reserves like crazy.

Can I do a keto diet and IF without a gallbladder?

Some people actually grow a gallbladder back. Really!

But in general, intermittent fasting combined with ketosis helps the

gallbladder. When you only do ketosis, you have higher fats but not IF, and
the frequent eating can put additional stress on the gallbladder.

I do recommend my Gallbladder Formula, one after each meal.

Thanks for reading, and the very best of luck

with your new lifestyle!

Dr. Berg

55
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