People who want to lower their body fat % have been relying for far too long on consistent carb consumption throughout the day in order to sustain stable energy levels vs relying on stored carbs in muscles/liver and then tapping into stored body fat for energy.
Ingesting too many total carbs per day, too frequently throughout the day, and for too many months/years results in the following:
Makes you inefficient at breaking down ingested fats
Reduces your fat burning enzymes
Dials down your fat burning genes and hormones
High insulin levels
Elevates your triglycerides
Transforms your large LDL particles into small ones
Weaker immune system
Lower testosterone/estrogen
Low energy
Accelerates aging of your cells
Takes longer to recover from exercise
Less mobility and flexibility
Cells constantly exposed to carbs and insulin get resistant overtime and will reject the carbs from entry into cells so they stay circulating the blood stream leading to prediabetes, type II diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, glycation, Advanced Glycation End Products (AGE), inflammation, damage to your DNA, and reduces your joint flexibility.
When the carbs can’t get into your cells, the brain gets the signal that the body is starving for nutrients because they aren’t getting in the cells and the cells have room for energy. This causes you to get hungry and eat more with the hope that the next batch of carbs will get into the cells, and drive your insulin levels higher.
These carbs will try and get jammed into your muscles first, which can store 350-500g of carbs. Then your liver gets filled up next, but it only can hold 100g of carbs. Once that is full any other carbs you eat that day, tomorrow, and the next gets converted into triglycerides (fat), which gets shipped off and wrapped around your organs or other places your genes tell fat to accumulate.
To avoid the fat loss struggle, avoid plummeting your energy levels, and avoid metabolic disease, your body must become fat or keto adapted
Keto is a fad word that you may have heard of, however it is far from new. Humans have evolved for over 2.5 million years consuming mostly fat to survive, and tapping into stored body fats as fuel for sustained energy throughout the day, be free of disease, look lean, have defined muscles, and perform very well.
Being fat or keto adapted means you can upregulate fat burning genes, which tell your hormone glucagon (the opposite of insulin) to grab some stored body fat (triglycerides) and send it to the liver to get split in half. One half is used to make a small amount of sugar that the brain is going to use, the other half are ketones. The 2 ketone bodies that get made are acetone (which you breathe out or piss out) and beta hydroxy butryate (BHB) (gets burned by your muscles and organs as fuel)
The way you become fat adapted is by thriving in a low carb state. If you want to become fat adapted and reclaim the ability to lose body fat, is to reprogram your genes to be able to burn fat for fuel again. To do this you have to reduce your net carb consumption down to the 50-100g range (the closer to 50g you go the more impactful and faster you’ll reprogram your genes and hormones to burn stored fat). This takes healthy people 3-6 weeks minimum to achieve if you hit your carb targets every day. If someone has higher than optimal insulin levels (reference ranges in my blood tests educational lesson), past metabolic damage, prediabtes, or type II diabetes these conditions need to be delt with first (this could take months to multiple years).
If you have already achieved being fat adapted and want to upgrade this to becoming keto adapted, which gives an additional laundry list of benefits, and pushes the pedal to the metal on fat loss, you must keep your net carbs below 50g per day.
Here are some benefits of being fat adapted and in ketosis:
Improves brain fog
Improves memory
Makes you happier
Burn the visceral fat around your organs lowering your disease risk
Lower blood pressure and avoiding hypertension
Decrease our fasting blood sugar and avoiding type II diabetes
Improve insulin sensitivity and avoiding type II diabetes
Reduce our hemoglobin A1c improving flexibility and avoiding type II diabetes
Lowers triglycerides, transforms small LDL particles into large ones, and lowers total LDLs
Lower our level of inflammation combating heart attacks and strokes
Boost our body’s natural antioxidant production helping combat heart attacks and strokes
Increase sirtuin enzymes that increase lifespan
Improves the amount of deep sleep you get at night
Here’s what happens next, if you’re curious:
After you’ve made the switch to eating very low carbs for a minimum of 3-6 weeks (remember, the length of time it takes to shift back to being a fat burner is different for everyone), you will start burning stored body fat for fuel.
The hormone Glucagon will release and transport your body fat to your liver to get made into ketones and some sugar
The ketones get sent to your muscles, heart, and brain for fuel to burn just like the carbs you use to eat would and your body carries on without a care in the world
How will I know when I’m fat or keto adapted?
You can wake up and you're not hungry
You can skip a meal or snack and keep going with steady energy and focus and feel fine.
You will be able to stare sweets or the candy bowl in the eyes and not care
You will lose the ability to be hangry
People may complain that you have bad breath not just in the morning but at other times of the day due to the ketone acetone being produced
*Some people like to measure their blood ketones using a handheld device in the morning. A good measurement tool is the keto mojo. The test strips are $1 vs $3-4 by competing brands.
It is a good recommendation to measure your blood ketones 1x per week, 2 hours after waking up, without eating/drinking any calories. A healthy and effective blood ketone level is .5-3mmol.
A couple supporting studies just to show you that eating low net carbs works:
Benoit and colleagues published the first study where they fed people only 1000 calories per day and only 10g of carbs per day for 10 days. The subjects lost 1.3lbs every single day.
Young and colleagues gave everyone 1800 calories, 115g of protein, and then you either got 30, 60, or 104g of carbs every day for 9 weeks.
-The 30g group lost 35lbs (95% of that was body fat loss)
-The 60g group lost 28lbs (84% of that was body fat loss)
-The 104g group lost 26lbs (75% of that was body fat loss)
You notice that the 30g lower carb group lost the most weight of 35lbs in 9 weeks from stored body fat and least amount of muscle.
As they kept increasing their carb intake, they lost less amounts of weight, and a higher percentage of it was from muscle.
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References
Clement, J. and Loberg, K., 2019. The Switch. New York: Gallery Books.
Di Pasquale, M. (2002). The anabolic solution. [Coboury, Ontario]: Mauro Di Pasquale.
Falkenhain, K., Roach, L. A., McCreary, S., McArthur, E., Weiss, E. J., Francois, M. E., & Little, J. P. (2021). Effect of carbohydrate-restricted dietary interventions on LDL particle size and number in adults in the context of weight loss or weight maintenance: a systematic review and meta-analysis. The American journal of clinical nutrition, 114(4), 1455–1466. https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqab212
J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2011 Mar; 96(3):E463-E472