Everything You Need to Know About Exogenous Ketones

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I’ve been writing a lot about my use of exogenous ketones in my weight loss journey, so I wanted to explain exactly what they are and the benefits.

This post contains affiliate links.

I feel like in the keto community, exogenous ketones are kinda like cilantro – you either love them or you hate them. And people have very strong opinions about them on both sides. If you have been following my weight loss journey from the beginning, you know that 2021 was my first time trying them and I honestly do credit them for helping me along with my weight loss. You may not need them or have any interest in them, but for someone like me, who has a body that tends to hold onto the extra pounds for dear life, they are a godsend and worth every penny.

In all honesty: exogenous ketones just make the whole weight loss process easier. And couldn’t we all use a little bit of easy in our daily lives right now? I think yes.

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Everything You Need to Know About Exogenous Ketones

As I always say, first and foremost, I am NOT a doctor and don’t pretend to be. This is not medical advice that I’m giving you, I’m just sharing what I know and my experience using these. I’m sharing this information in further detail, separate from my regular weight loss posts because there is a lot of information and I want to help anyone who might be considering adding exogenous ketones to their own weight loss journey. This information is coming at you from a friend, so take it into consideration and then apply it to your journey as you see fit. No matter what path you take, you’ve got this!

Below I have outlined some of the most popular questions about them and have done my best to answer them all through experience and some research.

What are exogenous ketones?

Okay, so we obviously can’t go any further without me explaining exactly what they are. We know at this point that whenever you follow a keto diet that your body naturally produces ketones and uses fat for fuel instead of carbohydrates. This is why people love keto + intermittent fasting so much because results tend to be quicker as you are burning all that unwanted fat.

The exogenous ketones come from a synthetic source outside of your body where you ingest only the beta-hydroxybutyrate ketone that puts your body into a state of ketosis in one hour or less. Basically, they need to be drunk within a 30 minute period after mixing them with water and spike your blood sugar. They can then keep you in a state of ketosis for about 2-3 hours unless you drink more or continue eating a keto diet.

What are the benefits of exogenous ketones?

There are so many wonderful benefits of drinking these and this is the reason why once many people start incorporating exogenous ketones into their daily life that they don’t want to stop – they are life-changing in my opinion. By drinking these on a daily basis, you will have increased energy, focus, mental clarity, and of course – a suppressed appetite.

While yes, these are all things that come along with following a strict keto diet, but you just get an extra burst of them whenever ingesting extra ketones.

Important Reminder: Not all exogenous ketones are treated equally.

Ketones are expensive. Yes, it sucks, but I look at them as an investment in myself. I’ll share more about the cost of them later on in this post, but the point here is that not all exogenous ketones are the same. Nope. Far from it. And to be completely transparent, if you hop over to Amazon and search for them and think to yourself “wow, these are super affordable” then you are most likely trying to buy from a company that is pulling a fast one over on you.

If you invest in cheap ketones, you are basically just paying for expensive urine.

The only exogenous ketones that I have invested my hard-earned money on come from a company called Pruvit, where their patents were actually funded by NASA and the Department of Defense. Yup, this is an incredibly innovative technology to have access to. These are the only bio-identical ketones on the market that you can actually buy, meaning that they are the only ones that match the ketones your body produces.

I was gifted products from a company called Real Ketones (which you can see in photos in this blog post) and they are significantly cheaper, but I am currently in the process of testing them out to see if they work the same way.

Photo by Jenna Hamra from Pexels

Why would I take them and how would they fit into my day? Especially if I’m already following the keto diet.

So I totally get it. You are already following a keto diet, why take ketones? I asked myself this for a looooooooong time before I actually made my first purchase. I’ve been doing keto since Blake was about 12 weeks old and was introduced to exogenous ketones by my sister and mom and wasn’t impressed at first. Then, as you all know, I started gaining weight in 2020 and knew that I needed to change up my routine.

At first, I started small. I wasn’t taking them every day. I started gradually by just having them on hand in case I ate extra carbs in one day or had a couple of glasses of wine. I would then drink them before bed and know that I would get up the next day and still be in ketosis.

Then, as I moved further into my weight loss journey this time around, I could tell that because I was getting older that my body needed a little bit of extra help. So I started taking them each morning after I had my black coffee, while I was still in my intermittent fasting state.

Now, since I’ve gone from working out 3-4 times a week to 6-7 days a week, I drink my exogenous ketones about an hour and a half before I plan on doing my workout. This way, I know that I am in full ketosis and have an extra burst of energy to push through my workout.

Lastly, I just want to point out that sticking with a ketogenic diet and actually being in a deep-burning ketosis state every single day isn’t always the easiest thing to do on our own. For the most part, I do track my macros in the Carb Manager app each day, but sometimes I get lazy or busy and I just grab food that is keto-friendly and hope for the best. Having exogenous ketones in my life gives me the reassurance that I’m always in ketosis without having to stress about any numbers and to me, that’s golden.

Are exogenous ketones expensive?

As I mentioned above, Pruvit ketones are the only ones that I have actually purchased (you can shop them HERE, too!), and yes, they are expensive. They cost $130 for a box of 20, which I do drink every day. I tend to watch out for sales and you can also save 22% if you add them as a smartship to your account, which helps bring the price down.