Carpender - The Keto For One Cookbook

Ketogenic diets were first devised to mimic the effects of fasting for treating epileptic seizures. When a person fasts, they tap into their body fat for fuel. That fat-burning creates ketones, which in turn fuel those tissues that cannot burn free fatty acids, especially the brain. This is why our hunter-gatherer ancestors didnt curl up into fuzzy-headed blobs and starve to death when they ran short of foodthey could run off body fat efficiently enough to go hunt and gather.

A ketogenic diet, by cutting carbohydrates, and therefore glucose, to a bare minimum, forces fat burning. But be aware of a few caveats.

Testing positive for ketosis proves that you are running a fat-burning metabolism. However, it says nothing about the source of that fat. You could be burning body fat, sure, but you could also be burning dietary fat, the fat from your last meal. You simply do not, cannot, know.

A ketogenic diet will be a high-fat diet, but how high in fat? To some degree, that will depend on your purpose for eating keto. If youre eating keto for improved brain healtha great ideathen it doesnt matter whether youre burning body fat or dietary fat. The same goes for keto-adapted endurance athletes. But if youre eating a keto diet to lose weight, the most common purpose, it matters.

I point this out because fat bombs, butter- and oil-laced coffee, and other very concentrated sources of fat, have become popular in the keto world. Ive used them myself, especially when fat fasting (eating 1000 calories per day, as close to 90 percent of them from fat as possible). These can provide energy and quell hunger, which is great. But if you overconsume them, your body may very well never bother to tap into its fat stores. In other words: One cup of butter and coconut oillaced coffee, such as Bulletproof Coffee, can get you going in the morning and suppress hunger for much of the day, but drinking it all day may well prevent weight loss (and could make you jumpy, too).

Yes, this is Calories In, Calories Out, but a ketogenic diet changes the math. In their landmark 1956 clinical trial published in The Lancet, researchers Kekwick and Pawan demonstrated that a very low-carbohydrate diet lets people eat more calories than they could on a mixed or balanced dietroughly 600 calories more per dayand still lose weight. This allows weight loss without hunger. Thats a real advantage, especially when coupled with the appetite suppression of ketosis. But, of course, there are individual differences in metabolisms, which cause people to respond differently to the same diets.

What this means is that stating that a ketogenic diet must provide X percent of its calories from fat is too broad. If you want to lose weight, some of the fat that is burned must come from your own fat stores.

Im unconvinced that being in a very deep state of ketosis is essential for weight loss, although it is needed for some therapeutic purposes, such as seizure control and combating dementia. So as long as youre testing in at least a mild-to-moderate state of ketosis, you know youre burning fat for fuel.

Ketosis can be tested by urine strips, blood ketone meters (similar to, and often combined with, blood glucose meters), or breath meters. Urine strips are cheapest and most widely available, but least accurate. Blood testing is the gold standard, but involves finger-sticks and its priceythe test strips run about $5 each. Breath meters are reasonably accurate and coming down in price. I use a breath meter, but it only tells me mild/moderate/deep ketosis (or none at all, but that hasnt happened).