Mark's Daily Apple Blog Keto for Men: 6 Tips to Optimize Your Results

Men occupy an interesting place in the health sphere. While there's a disparity-albeit one that's approaching parity-between men and women in the conventional medical literature, in the alternative health world, it's flipped. Women are a "special interest" group, and their specific health issues and special considerations related to diet and exercise receive a lot of attention, often as a way to counteract the conventional imbalance-and because women tend to be higher consumers of health information. I have far more posts (including a post on Keto For Women) explicitly directed toward women and women's issues (and the same can be said across many ancestral health sites). Men are assumed to be "the default," requiring no special consideration, but is that actually true? Today, I'll be talking about any special considerations men should make when following a Keto Reset plan. Play At the Margins Historically, anthropologically, and biologically speaking, men can tolerate great variations in environmental intensity. They're usually (not always of course) the ones going to war, performing great feats of physical endurance and strength, willingly subjecting themselves to misery and pain, as well as being more violent and getting into the most trouble. (On the whole) carrying more muscle mass, secreting more testosterone, and being physically larger than the opposite sex will tend to make all that possible. We see this kind of sexual dimorphism play out across most mammals, and there's no reason to think humans are any different. Most of us don't have these extreme situations foisted on us any more, but we still thrive doing them. Try a 2-day fast. Do one meal a day. Eat a 3-pound steak, then no meat at all the next day. Eat a dozen eggs for breakfast (whenever that happens). Try lots of seemingly extreme experiments to see what works. It may be that you thrive doing the occasional intense bout of keto bravado. Only one way to find out. Whereas women tend to have a lower tolerance for perturbations in caloric intake for their potential impact on fertility status, men have far more leeway. Take advantage of that. Be As Strict As Possible Early On I'm not going to mince words. Get strict. Most of the men I encounter who are having problems with keto do better the stricter they are. For women, it's often the opposite-they need to relax their keto adherence and just eat. Don't mess around with carb refeeds, pre-workout carbs, or "just one donut hole" until you have a good thing going. Get those fat-burning mitochondria built. Stay strong and stay strict. Manage Your Stress Levels This is good general advice for everyone on any diet, but it's especially so for men eating keto. A big part of traditional masculinity (for better and worse) is stoicism-the ability to soldier on through a difficult situation. This is, on balance, often a good yet misunderstood trait that gets a bad rap that it doesn't always deserve. Stoicism isn't unfeeling. At its healthiest, it's the ability to address the ... Continue reading "Keto for Men: 6 Tips to Optimize Your Results"The post Keto for Men: 6 Tips to Optimize Your Results appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.