CHAPTER 1: MORE THAN JUST KETOSIS

CHAPTER 1

More Than Just Ketosis

Ketosis is all the rage. Since you picked up this book, I’m guessing you’re on the bandwagon. You’re in good company here! Maybe you’re on a ketogenic diet or considering it. And if you want to jump start ketosis, then intermittent fasting is your ticket.

Truth be told, a ketogenic diet can be hard to maintain, simply because there are so many foods you can’t eat. Even kale, the star vegetable of the 21st century, is only allowed in small amounts. I understand when clients say they’re not up for the challenge of going keto. But I will tell you this: ketosis is divine.

Thankfully, if you don’t want to do the ketogenic diet (or even if you do), there’s a shortcut to ketosis— you can fast. Ketosis occurs when your body is burning ketones and fat for fuel instead of glucose. That happens in two situations: 1) no food is coming (fasting), or 2) few to no carbs are coming in (ketogenic dieting). When your body is in the fat-burning state, it makes lots of ketones in the process; hence, you are “in ketosis.” It’s completely normal for the body to be in ketosis, and it was certainly a common experience for humans throughout history who had intermittent access to food and periods of fasting in between. But the metabolic state of ketosis is very rare for anyone on a Western diet because (if I may speak for the crowd) we are always eating. When you’re eating anything other than a ketogenic diet, you have effectively zero ketones in your blood. So it’s quite uncommon for our generation of humans to be in a state of ketosis, unless you deliberately seek one out.

When you wake up in the morning after 8 hours of fasting, ketones levels are just beginning to rise. If you extend your fast until noon, ketone production will ramp up to supply some of the energy you need and your body will officially be in the famed fat-burning state of ketosis. Hooray! If you want to keep burning through body fat at a high rate, you need to stay in ketosis by sticking with your fast—for 16 or 24 hours, or a couple of days—and not by eating something ketogenic! There’s a lot of attention on achieving ketosis with ketogenic foods, but if you’re consuming keto foods, then where do you think some of the ketones are coming from? Not the fat on your hips and thighs. Fasting for ketosis ensures that the ketones fueling your brain are coming only from your body fat, thus getting rid of it. You’ll learn all about how ketosis works in Chapter 3.

What Fasting Does for Your Body

Before we set our focus too narrowly on ketosis, let’s consider the bigger picture. Yes, when you fast, fat will be burned and ketones will be made. But so much more happens when you’re fasting—great things for the cells, tissues, and organs of your body, and some would say your mind and soul, too. If you have never fasted for even half a day in your life, then you may be thinking, “There’s no way I can go 12 hours without eating!” But I am willing to bet that once you get started, you’ll find it’s a lot easier and way more fun than

you ever thought possible, and you’ll love it for a dozen reasons besides how quickly you’ll lose your belly fat.

Fasting makes you burn through stored body fat when you haven’t eaten for a while. You’ll be burning so much fat that you’ll be in ketosis. But fasting also trains your body to burn fat instead of glucose even when you’re not fasting. In other words, fat burning isn’t unique to the state of ketosis. Many cells in the body use fat all the time. The heart, muscles, liver, kidney, and other cells burn fat quite often. The trouble is that most of the time, while some fat is being burned, there’s also new fat being made for storage because you’re eating too much. Also, the cells that like to use fat rarely get the chance to do so for very long, because as soon as glucose comes in from a meal, they have to grab it instead. Too much glucose in the bloodstream is toxic, so it can’t be left sitting there. So the priority for cells is to burn glucose first, leaving the fat untouched.

Most cells in the body can use fat directly for energy, no ketones required. But if you’ve spent a lifetime eating six times a day and you don’t exercise at all, then they probably won’t be doing that, simply because they’re out of practice and you’re out of shape. But they can. And that is really the end game when it comes to intermittent fasting: losing fat and building muscle while improving your ability to use both fat and glucose efficiently.

The ability to switch between the two main energy sources and easily use either fuel when appropriate is known as metabolic flexibility. If your cells are healthy and already accustomed to burning fat when needed, then intermittent fasting will accelerate your fat burning and help you lose much more of it by forcing your body to rely on fat as its sole fuel source. This is what people are talking about when they say the ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting will turn you into a “fat-burning machine.” If your cells are not metabolically healthy and have trouble using fat for energy, then you need to exercise to prime the fat-burning pathways in your cells. So as you may hear a lot around the intermittent fasting conversation, exercise is important not so much for the number of calories it burns but for the fact that it improves the ability of your cells to burn both glucose and fat when they are available or needed. Metabolic flexibility allows your body to use the food energy you give it, in whatever form, to actually provide your cells with energy—instead of using it to bulk up your fat stores and leaving you tired and hungry as a side effect.

When the metabolic machinery is working right—when you’ve been intermittently fasting and exercising for a while—you’ll be better at burning fat anytime. And you don’t necessarily need to be in ketosis for this to happen, although you’ll accelerate the process if you spend a good amount of time there, as you do on a fast.

If cells can use fat directly for energy, what’s the point of ketones? Ketones are made largely to protect against muscle wasting during a period without food, i.e., an extended fast. Here’s why: the brain is not as metabolically flexible as the other organs, and it can’t use fat. The brain uses glucose when it’s around, and the brain uses a ton of energy. So what happens when we don’t eat for a few days and glucose supply is tapped? It turns out that humans can make glucose inside our bodies and don’t have to eat it at all. But we can only make a small amount, and it costs us some valuable amino acids from body protein (muscle) to do so. We don’t want to lose muscle when we find ourselves without food for a few days, because that would weaken our arms and legs and other important functions our bodies deem necessary for survival. So the body developed the neat trick of turning body fat, stored just for this very purpose, into ketones for the brain, without sacrificing other important things.

Voila! Ketosis became the thing everyone’s chasing, the holy grail of fat loss. We’re on message boards boasting about beta-hydroxybutyrate levels and posting videos of ourselves drinking fat coffee in the

morning to put us into nutritional ketosis before a workout—after which we may just go eat a normal meal. We have “keto bread” and “keto cookies” (anyone else getting flashbacks of SnackWells from the 1980s?), and if you don’t ask too many questions, it’s easy to conclude that as long as you’re in ketosis, the fat is just melting away.

Is nutritional ketosis a marker that you’re in a fat-burning state? Typically, yes. Does that mean you’ll be skinnier next month? Maybe. But how much are you eating?

Ketosis Doesn’t Always Equal Fat Loss

A person on a ketogenic diet can have high levels of ketones and never lose an ounce if they eat too much. Granted, overeating while in a state of ketosis is hard to do, because one of the benefits of ketones is that they significantly dampen your appetite. But people do it. And I don’t care what mix of nutrients you’re burning for energy; if you keep eating more than your body can use, you’re not going to lose weight. In an attempt to trick the body into thinking we’re fasting, a lot of us gorge on fat. But we never consider what ketosis is meant for in the first place. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors did not have stevia-sweetened fat bombs or bacon-wrapped, cheese-filled burger bites or MCT oil shakes when they were in ketosis. They were in ketosis because they just had no food.

The reason the term “ketosis” even appears on the cover of this book is because it’s the one that you know to look for—and without it, you wouldn’t know that this book is full of strategies to help you train your body to burn more fat. Am I a fan of ketosis? Yes! But I urge you not to chug ketone supplements and drink fat coffee all day and expect to shed pounds of fat. Being in a state of ketosis should mean that body fat from your belly, hips and thighs is providing most of the energy you need. However, if you’re meeting all of your energy needs with keto foods you’re consuming, then the body won’t need to turn to your fat stores for anything at all. If you’re careless, or overindulgent, you may net out on the positive side—storing more fat than you’ve burned!

If you’re interested in ketosis and want to be sure that you’re burning body fat instead of fat from your bacon breakfast, I recommend intermittent fasting. If you want to combine intermittent fasting and eat a ketogenic diet on the days you’re eating, then go for it! Most of the recipes in this book can be used on a ketogenic diet, and we’ll cover how to do it properly in Chapter 9. Remember, you don’t have to follow a ketogenic diet to achieve ketosis through fasting. But even if you do decide to go keto, don’t skip the fasting part. That is the really good part—and it’s likely to get you where you want to go faster.