Embrace the New Keto Zone Diet

IT COMES BACK TO FOOD

Dr. Colbert noticed about 20 years ago that incurable, inoperable cancers began showing up in his office. He didn’t feel qualified to treat these cancer patients, but he wanted to help. So, he went on a journey to find answers that would allow his patients to not only survive but thrive.

"I firmly believed the answer was a nutritional one," he says. The rapid rise in preventable diseases was not new to Dr. Colbert. "Part of the problem had to do with the foods we ate."

He studied nutritional and preventive medicine, anti-aging therapies and integrative cancer therapy and even visited cancer treatment centers.

"There was no miracle cure, but I kept coming back to food," he says.

While speaking to the head instructor at his fellowship in integrative cancer therapy, Dr. Colbert asked him, "Is there any key nutritional therapy for cancer patients?" He replied, "The only major impactful thing is the ketogenic diet, but no one can stick to it over the long term."

Dr. Colbert then made it his goal to find out what made the ketogenic diet so beneficial. Low carb, high-fat diets have been used since the mid 1800s, but when fat was branded as "the greatest killer of our age," it brought the end of the ketogenic diet as being a viable option for weight loss. The ketogenic diet was made popular again with the Atkins Diet in 1972. Controversy swirled around Atkins' weight loss concepts, but recent studies show he was right.

"I have dissected every diet that exists," says Dr. Colbert. "And though Atkins was on target with many aspects of his diet, I propose a ketogenic diet that is different."

Dr. Colbert says:

1. Too much protein causes the body to convert excess protein to sugar
2. Healthy fats are better to eat for the long-term

One way to make sense of the importance of eating healthy fats is to look at a cell. Our cells are made up of fats. The fatty acids that make up our cells consist of 27 percent saturated fats, 55 percent monounsaturated fats and a small amount (18 percent) polyunsaturated fats. "Because our cells are made up of fats, the health of those fats directly affects our own health,” he says.

HEALTH TRUTHS

Dr. Colbert says there are three health truths we need to know:

1. Sugar and carbohydrates are the enemies of health and weight loss (body burns excess fat when carbs are reduced).
2. All fats are not bad (healthy fats aid in the fat burning process). "We have to get over our fat phobia.”
3. Accept the rules have changed (understand how the Keto Zone diet works).

The primary goal of the Keto Zone Diet is to reduce the daily carbohydrate intake to below your body’s carbohydrate threshold for weight gain. This causes your body to burn excess fats rather than sugars as its fuel source. By lowering carb intakes, insulin levels drop and metabolism eventually shifts into fat-burning mode (ketosis). Eating foods that are healthy and that speed up the fat-burning process (in the form of healthy fats and a moderate amount of protein) helps control your appetite and reach your goal weight.

"We all have to overcome our fat phobia,” says Dr. Colbert.

In the above video, Dr. Colbert shows us how to make:

• Breakfast: Eggs and Veggies, page 196
• Lunch: Chicken Salad, page 201
• Dinner: Grilled Salmon and Spinach, page 206
• Dessert: Fudgy Brownies, page 209