What is The Best Way to Prevent The Keto Flu and Other Keto Side Effects?

What is the Keto flu and how do you prevent it?

There's two main causes. We're going to talk about how to prevent it and why potassium and other specific electrolytes are crucial on your ketogenic journey.

As the best selling author of three books & founder of Keto Kamp where our mission is to educate and to inspire 1 billion people, it is my duty to help you succeed in your health goals.

As we continue to work our way through this ten part series, we have already covered the very important details around the history of Keto and nuances that define clean keto foods & dirty keto foods. So if you haven’t already caught up on the previous articles, I highly suggest you do. Below are the links.

What is the keto diet and how to do it for weight loss?,

Eat These Keto Foods | Ketogenic Nuts, Cooking Oils, Beverages and More!

Let's talk about the elephant in the room. The keto flu. A lot of people are scared of trying keto because they hear these negative connotations associated with the ketogenic diet. One of them is the Keto flu, which is not fun. When you experience it, it feels like you were hit by a truck, as though you were actually sick, and you may think that keto makes you feel worse as opposed to feeling good.

We obviously don't want that. I can tell you that of the thousands of members that have gone through my Keto Kamp Academy, guess what? Not one of them has experienced the Keto flu! When you do it the right way, you can prevent it and feel like a Keto Rockstar. That is what I'm going to teach you.

You want to make sure you get through all the information because I have a very powerful bonus tip on how to replenish your electrolytes every single day. And if you do it, you're going to feel so good.

So what is the Keto flu? There's two primary causes for the Keto flu. The first one happens when people go “all in” and jump cold turkey into keto, eliminating all carbs, causing a major shift in your body that causes the Keto flu. Not good. The fact is that people are actually experiencing carbohydrate withdrawal symptoms.

The second one is most common. It is an electrolyte deficiency. I call this process electrolyte dupming.

When you are a sugar burner, eating over 200 grams of carbohydrates per day, your kidneys are going to hold on to a lot of water weight. Which is not good because it's gonna make you feel bloated and look bloated & puffy. We don't want that.

But now that you're transitioning into the great land of ketosis, your body is burning fat and what's going to happen is your kidneys are going to release a lot of that excess water weight. This is wonderful because you're going to feel lighter and look lighter; however, there is a problem here. Your kidneys also dump a lot of electrolytes in the process. I call this “electrolyte dumping”. What we want to do is be very strategic with replenishing these electrolytes.

This is why I created something called the Keto Kocktail that I made and I created for the members of my Keto Kamp Academy.

Every single morning consume the Keto cocktail, which consists of: 16 ounces of high quality water, two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, (Apple Cider Vinegar is great, it can help hydrate you, it can help with fatty liver, it can help alkalize your body and has many other benefits) and one teaspoon of cream of tartar. Wait a minute, Ben, I bake with cream of tartar. That’s right, well cream of tartar is also fantastic because it has a good amount of potassium (I will get into more detail on the importance of potassium later on). So we want to throw in one teaspoon of cream of tartar and then a pinch or two of high quality salt.

I personally use 'Redmond Real Salt’ and I put a pinch or two in my water with the apple cider vinegar and the cream of tartar. Mix it all together. That is a great way to replenish your electrolytes and minerals on keto, have that every single day, at least for the first 30 days as you transition into the great land of ketosis.

Another little hack for you is high quality electrolyte powders. Many of them out there have the wrong sweeteners and wrong artificial things in there. I searched and found ‘Redmond Re-Lyte’, and it is now one of my favorites. My fiance Natassia & I, fight over which one of us is going through it too fast, haha, because it just tastes really good. Well, it also has 1000 milligrams of high quality sodium, 500 milligrams of potassium, 1500 milligrams of chloride and over 60 trace minerals. So it tastes delicious and it hydrates you.

I do have a special coupon code for you for Redmonds Real Salt & Electrolytes. Click this link, and use the coupon code Azadi for 10% off your entire order. 

Now it’s time for two very powerful bonus tips.

Before I get into it, I want to ask you the question of the day. Have you ever heard of the Keto flu before? Have you experienced it? Or has it stopped you from starting keto because you were scared of experiencing it. Let me know, in the comment section below, if you ever got the Keto flu or if it stopped you from starting keto, because you were afraid of it.

My first bonus tip is going to be, ‘Eat my top five sources of Keto potassium’. Potassium is one of the most important electrolytes that the human body needs. We require about 4700 milligrams of potassium every single day. If you're more active, you need a little bit more.

Here are my top five sources of Keto potassium:

#1. Beet tops. You're thinking, “wait a minute beets are not keto friendly. They're high in sugar!” I'm not talking about the red beet. I'm talking about the green leaves and the stems that come with the beet. It turns out they are loaded with potassium, a vital electrolyte. A little tip I got from Dr. Eric Berg, chop off the leaves & stems and put it in your freezer then put it into keto smoothies and that's a great way to get some extra potassium. Just one cup of cooked beet tops is loaded with about 1300 milligrams of potassium.

#2. Avocados. I love avocados, not only do avocados have double the amount of potassium in bananas, avocados are also loaded with something called phytosterols, which actually help reduce inflammation in the body. They also have a good amount of vitamin B five which helps the adrenal glands that helps with stress. One whole avocado has about 975 milligrams of potassium, so have one per day.

#3. Spinach. Now this one is a little tricky because for the first 28 days on keto, I advise the members of my Keto Kamp Academy to stay away from spinach because it has high amounts of oxalates. After 28 days have some spinach and if you lightly steam and sauté your spinach you can break down those oxalates. One cup of cooked spinach has about 839 milligrams of potassium. If you are sensitive to oxalates, you might want to skip the spinach. 

#4. Wild Caught Salmon. A favorite, I have this once or twice a week. Wild caught is highly preferred over farmed. Farmed fish has high amounts of something called polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). This is a known carcinogen. At Keto Kamp we stay away from farmed fish. Instead we get wild caught fish. One eight ounce filet of wild caught salmon has about 839 milligrams of potassium. It also has great omega six & omega three fats for you and lets face it, it is delicious. So have salmon once or twice a week on a ketogenic lifestyle.

#5. Brussel Sprouts. I love Brussel sprouts sautéed with olive oil, garlic & sea salt - delicious! Oh my gosh. One and a half cups of cooked brussel sprouts has a little over 500 milligrams of potassium.

I do have one more bonus tip here for you. I hope you're getting much value from this. I'm having so much fun educating on this.

My second bonus tip here is this: we actually need glucose to help deliver sodium into our cells in order to actually utilize the sodium. Sodium/Salt is not the bad guy, if it is high quality salt. The problem is that when we're doing keto we have low amounts of glucose in the bloodstream, which is good, but how do we deliver the sodium into our cells then?

Here's what I do. I carry a little sea salt case with me, after my workout I lick a pinch of salt off my hand (you may have practiced this in college), because exercise raises cortisol in the body and glucose follows which will help deliver the salt into your cells

So if you're going for a walk, if you're going to go do a workout, any kind of exercise have salt with you. That'll be a great way to accelerate your electrolytes getting into your cells.

Some of your next questions may include, “how many calories do I eat on keto? What are the specific macros? How do I know if I'm having too many carbs or too much fat?” Well, the next article in this series is going to break it all down.

If you have any questions from this article, feel free to post it down below!

If you'd like to watch the video version of this article, click the link below.