How To Cure the Keto Flu

So you’ve just started keto and everything is going swimmingly so far.

You’re a few days in, you realize that keto food is delicious and in just a few short days you feel more energetic, less bloated and you can’t wait to see how the rest of this story turns out.

And then… somewhere towards the end of that first week you hit a wall. Hard.

You wake up in the morning and your head is throbbing. You go through the rest of the day irritable and groggy. You’re tired, dizzy, grumpy and you want nothing more than to sit down with a pint of ice cream and kiss this keto crap goodbye.

But wait! Put down the spoon. Before you go throwing away all of your hard work, there’s something you should know.

What you’re going through is called the keto flu. It’s completely normal. It’s temporary. And it’s completely curable.

There have been lots of people who have been researching keto forever and chosen to remain on the sidelines because of fear of the keto flu. Countless others have given up on their keto journey after less than a week after being stricken by the dreaded keto flu.

And y’know what - I can’t say I blame them. Keto flu is no joke. A bad case of the keto flu can leave you feeling exactly like you’re having the worst case of the flu you’ve ever had in your life. And really bad cases can leave you with even scarier symptoms like shortness of breath and heart palpitations.

But the great news is that if you’ve got keto flu, you don’t have to spend days in bed before you kick the symptoms. And if you haven’t yet started keto, you can take preventative measures so you don’t have to experience it at all.

But before we get to the cure, let’s talk about what keto flu is and why it happens.

Some people think that the keto flu is confirmation that the body hates ketosis and that’s all the justification they need to condemn keto as an unhealthy fad diet.

The scientific reality is a little more complex.

When you start a low carb diet, you’re doing a lot more than just making different food choices. Your body has to rewire itself completely to switch over from consuming glucose to fat as its primary fuel source.

While it’s doing this, a couple important things are happening behind the scenes.

The first thing that happens is that your body starts having to produce a lot less insulin. This is a great thing!

Whenever we eat carbs the body breaks those down into sugar. Your body then produces insulin to shuttle that sugar out of the bloodstream and into cells where it can be stored in the form of glycogen.

There’s a problem though. Your body can only store so much glucose in the form of glycogen. And most people on a standard american diet over time consume far more in carbs than they ultimately use. Anything that can’t be stored as glycogen and used quickly gets stored as fat.

If your glycogen stores are topped off for an extended period of time, your cells will start to signal your insulin to stop trying to cram them full of more glucose. It does this by making the receptors on the cellular surface less sensitive to insulin. Essentially, your cells start giving insulin the cold shoulder.

Well, over time insulin keeps knocking on the doors of every party in town trying to get rid of its glucose, but keeps getting turned away. Glucose builds up in the blood stream and your body responds by sending more insulin!

This is a process called insulin resistance, and it’s one of the reasons that a low carb diet is so effective at promoting weight loss and reversing diseases like diabetes.

When you restrict your carb intake low enough to trigger ketosis, your body releases much less insulin than it used to. As a result, your blood sugar stays low and your body finally has a chance to burn through its glycogen stores.

As a result, you start shedding pounds like a crazy person! This is why many people experience some dramatic early weight loss on keto. Every gram of glycogen that you store binds to up to 3-4 grams of water. We can hold on to anywhere between 1-2 pounds of glycogen alone which means that when we start tapping into our glycogen stores, it’s not uncommon to quickly burn through 10, 15 or even up to 20 pounds!

But when you lose that much water that quickly, you can get crazy dehydrated. Not only that, but lower levels of insulin will trigger your kidneys to dump sodium, but you need that sodium to maintain normal water balance in the body. So this amplifies the effects of your dehydration.

That’s ultimately what causes keto flu.

The great news is that once you understand what causes it, curing it or preventing it is pretty simple.

Step 1 is to drink more water. This will help you to compensate for all the water you’re losing as you dump your glycogen reserves. Don’t go nuts. There is such a thing as over hydration. But try to be aware of the color of your urine and make sure it’s clear instead of deep yellow.

While you’re at it, make sure to supplement your electrolytes. Sodium, magnesium and potassium all work together to regulate muscle function and fluid balance within your body.

For sodium, an easy fix is just adding a bit more salt to your food. There are potassium supplements that you can use for this same purpose. We like to supplement our magnesium in capsule form every evening before bed  because it helps us to get some of the best sleep we’ve had in years.

Another super convenient trick that has been a life saver for us is zip fizz. Zip fizz is a sugar free vitamin and electrolyte supplement that’s packed with potassium and a moderate amount of magensium and sodium. It’s also got vitamins C, E and B and some antioxidants. A couple of these a day will help you keep the keto flu away.

Some people also swear by bone broth for similar reasons. Great bone broth extracts tons of minerals from the bones and it’s super convenient and easy to have a mug full of broth every day.

Getting more water and electrolytes should be sufficient to address any keto flu symptoms you have, but it’s important to make sure that you’re getting enough fat and that you’re taking it easy from physical activity while you’re getting fat adapted. Your body doesn’t yet completely know how to burn fat for energy, so you’ll probably experience a temporary degradation in physical performance if you happen to be the athletic type.

That said, studies show that performance ramps up and people typically perform even better after they become fully fat adapted, which normally takes around 4-6 weeks on the diet.