How Often Should You Take a Break From Keto?

If you’ve done keto, you probably know how hard it is to not eat carbs. 

So, you might be wondering how often you should take a break from keto. 

In this article I’ll discuss how often you should take a break from keto, and if you should or shouldn’t carb cycle on keto.

Why Do You Lose Weight With Keto?

Keto helps you to lose weight because when you eliminate carbs, your body goes into ketosis. In ketosis, your body starts using its own body fat for fuel instead of carbs.

To get into ketosis, you must eat under 50 grams of net carbs per day. This basically means no high carb foods like pasta or cookies.

But, even if you didn’t consider the benefits of ketosis at all, keto is still a great way to lose weight.

Just by completely eliminating high carb foods, you’d automatically have less cheat days.

That’s because most foods that we binge eat are high in carbs. 

Think about it, when was the last time you binge ate broccoli? Never.

The most addicting foods, like ice cream, cake, pizza, etc, are always high in carbs or sugar. 

Just by removing carbs from the diet, even without considering the benefits of ketosis, you’d automatically lose weight since you’d have less temptations to binge eat.

Why Do People Cheat on Keto?

People have cheat days on keto because they want to satisfy their carb cravings. But, this will kick you out of ketosis, making it much harder to lose weight with keto.

A lot of people, including me, had cheat days on keto because they used to binge eat when they were overweight.

But, it’s important to break that bad habit of binge eating & instead to focus on eating healthily forever.

How Long Does It Take to Get Back Into Ketosis After a Cheat Day?

After having a cheat day on keto, on average it would take around 2 – 4 days to get back into ketosis. This is because your body needs time to burn through the carbs you ate. But, if you limit your carbs to under 50 grams per day & wait 2 – 4 days, your body would get back to using its own body fat for energy.

If you are a bigger person, or if you exercise more frequently, then you may get into ketosis in around 1 – 2 days.

This is because your body can burn through the carbs in its system faster if you burn more calories. 

But, if you are a smaller person, or if you don’t exercise often, then it may take closer to 3 – 4 days to get into ketosis.

This is because your body would need more time to burn the old carbs in its system.

How to Get Into Ketosis Faster After a Cheat Day?

If you want to get into ketosis faster after a cheat day, you just need to burn more calories. The fastest way to do this would be through fasting & exercising.

Fasting

Fasting, either with prolonged fasting or intermittent fasting, can help you to get into ketosis faster because it not only lowers your insulin, but it also burns a lot of calories. 

This makes fasting the quickest way to burn through the old carbs in your system & to get into ketosis.

Exercising

Exercising also helps you to get ketosis faster because it burns calories. 

Though it may not be as fast as fasting alone (pun not intended,) if you do exercise on top of fasting, you’d get into ketosis really quickly.

What Is the Fastest Way to Get Into Ketosis?

The fastest way to get ketosis is by fasting and exercising. This is because if you don’t eat and if you exercise at the same time, you’d burn through the old carbs in your system really quickly. If you fasted and worked out, you could expect to get into ketosis within a day.

Also, if you did a dry fast, it would take even less time. 

Dry Fasting

Dry fasting is around 2x more effective than wet fasting, so it’s great for weight loss.

This is because with dry fasting, your body combines the hydrogen in your fat with the oxygen in the air to create H²O. 

This is why camels have fat humps on their back; it’s to survive whenever there’s no water.

So if you wanted to get into ketosis & lose weight really quickly, you should dry fast.

Can You Lose Weight on Keto If You Have Cheat Days?

Though it is possible to lose weight on keto if you have cheat days, it would greatly hinder your success. This is because your body needs time to get into ketosis. So, whenever you have a cheat day, for the multiple days after, you wouldn’t lose weight. 

That’s why it’s much better to stay disciplined and not have any cheat days on keto.

Keto vs. Other Diets

Keto isn’t like most other diets because with other diets, if you have a cheat day, the only negative is that you went over your calories. 

But with keto, not only do you over eat calories on a cheat day, but you also get kicked a ketosis for multiple days.

This is why it is much better to stick to healthy eating and not to have any cheat days or binges on keto 

Creating Healthy Habits

Another big goal of keto is to break your old bad habit of unhealthy eating.

Keto isn’t just about losing weight, it’s also about building the habit of healthy eating for life.

Should You Have Cheat Days on Keto?

No, you shouldn’t have cheat days on keto. This is because it takes your body multiple days to get back into ketosis after eating carbs. So, in the time that you’re getting adjusted back into ketosis, you won’t lose any weight. 

Instead of binging some days & feeling guilty, it’s much better to stay disciplined and just consistently eat healthily.

What Is Your Goal on Keto?

Most people’s goal on keto is to lose weight and build the habit of healthy eating. 

But hold up, cheat days don’t align with either of these goals!

That is why even if you do a less strict version of keto, for example eating artificially sweetened foods and processed meats, in my opinion it would be much better than yo-yo dieting or binge eating.

How Often Should You Take a Break From Keto?

You should only take breaks from keto if you’ve lost all the weight you wanted to lose. This is because if you take breaks on keto before you’ve lost all the weight you wanted to lose, you’ll stop losing weight. But, if you’ve lost all the weight you wanted to lose, you can afford to have some months of the year where you eat high carb.

Should You Quit Keto If You Cheated?

You shouldn’t quit keto if you had a cheat day. Even though it will take a couple of days to get back into ketosis, as long as you keep eating low carb, you’ll continue to lose weight. It’s much more important to eat healthily in the long run than to quit whenever you get urges to binge.

Even if you take a long break from keto, as long as you come back, you’d start losing weight again.

Who Should Take Breaks From Keto?

If you’ve lost all the weight you want to lose on keto, you should consider long-term carb cycling. This is because with long-term carb cycling, your body can get adjusted to using both fats and carbs as fuel. Carb cycling also gives you more dietary freedom during the two months, so it’s a win-win.

How to Carb Cycle Correctly

To carb cycle correctly, you should eat high carb for two months of the year, and then eat low carb for the rest of the year. This gives your body enough time to fully adapt to using both fats and carbs.

Why Is Short-Term Carb Cycling Worse Than Long-Term Carb Cycling?

Short-term carb cycling is worse than long-term carb cycling because your body needs time to adjust to using either food type. It takes your mitochondria around six weeks to go through their lifecycle. So, if you go on and off on carbs, your body would never be able to get the benefits of either food type fully.

This would likely result in you being tired whenever you eat carbs, so you’d probably quit your carb cycle before you get the benefits of being “dual-fueled.”

If you want to learn more about how to carb cycle, here’s my article where I go more in depth on how you should start carb cycling.

Conclusion

In conclusion, if you haven’t lost all the way you want to lose, you shouldn’t take a break on keto. Straying away from keto can take multiple days to recover from, so it’s much better to just stick to eating healthily until you’ve lost all the weight. But, if you’ve lost all the weight you wanted to lose, you can do long-term carb cycling to make your body “dual-fueled.”

If you want to read my full guide on how to start keto and intermittent fasting, here’s my article where I share everything I’ve learned over my 40 pound weight loss journey and how you can lose weight as well.