“The simplest way to building your fitness for going keto is to delay your first meal of the day until WHEN—When Hunger Ensues Naturally. This simple, intuitive strategy will turbocharge you fat- and ketone-burning genes, enhance your insulin sensitivity, and set you up for easier adherence to a low-carb or keto eating pattern for the rest of the day. When you act in accordance with your hunger instead of pursuing a fixed schedule for fasting, you will free yourself from the pressure and anxiety that can often cause you to rebel when your willpower weakens or you lose interest in being so regimented….
Owing to the many stress variables of daily life, some days are better than others to stretch the limits of your metabolic fitness. For example, I’m extremely comfortable eating in a compressed time window during which I routinely fast for 18-hour periods with no trouble—even if I throw an intense workout or jet travel into the mix. However, on certain days, hunger grabs me in the morning hours, possibly due to some interesting triggers. For example, if I have a public-speaking event, my nervous energy sometimes manifests as hunger. I also notice on mornings when I do little or no exercise, I often get hungry sooner. This might seem counterintuitive, because in the carbohydrate paradigm, exercise drives glycogen depletion drives hunger. However, I suspect that exercise increases my fatty acid and ketone oxidation, and thereby allows me to power along for longer on internal energy sources than if I had not exercised. With the WHEN approach, you essentially take what your mind and body give you each day, do your best with your eating, exercise, sleep, and stress-management strategies, and allow progress to happen naturally.
Mark Sisson is the founder of Mark’s Daily Apple, godfather to the Primal food and lifestyle movement, and the New York Times bestselling author of The Keto Reset Diet. His latest book is Keto for Life, where he discusses how he combines the keto diet with a Primal lifestyle for optimal health and longevity. Mark is the author of numerous other books as well, including The Primal Blueprint, which was credited with turbocharging the growth of the primal/paleo movement back in 2009. After spending three decades researching and educating folks on why food is the key component to achieving and maintaining optimal wellness, Mark launched Primal Kitchen, a real-food company that creates Primal/paleo, keto, and Whole30-friendly kitchen staples.