Ketosis

Ketosis is something that is part of the low-carb craz but, there wasn't really a lot of discussion on it when it came to fat loss even though it might very well be the biggest contributor to fat loss when on a low carb diet. So I'll try to break it down as to what it actually is.

This is a pretty good description of what Ketosis is but I'll see if I can summarize it.

During most of human history, carbs weren't part of the "normal" diet. We pretty much lived on what we hunted, fished, trapped, etc. There's not a lot of carbs in rabbit, deer, mammoth, or anything else that Fred Flintstone would have eaten.



The goal back in the day of Freddy's time was to still be able to function without a lot of food on menu each night. But the body needs glucose in order to keep the brain and other tissues functioning, keep alert, to be able to react quickly, etc. when out looking for food.

But if you're body is running on a bare minimum of glucose with no carbs to eat, it has to breakdown protein (muscle) in order to supply it with the glucose it needs.

But that would lead to a problem if the body kept breaking down all that muscle: You wouldn't have the strength, speed, etc to hunt down your next meal. (I wrote about this last week here when talking about starvation mode).

The breakdown of the protein into glucose happens in the liver. The liver needs energy in order to break the protein down into that glucose (a process known as gluconeogenesis).

What is the energy source used to power the liver for gluconeogenesis? Body fat.

So the liver breaks down body fat so that there is energy to break down protein to make glucose. But there is a byproduct of that breakdown of fat: Ketones

Basically, Ketones are a standby energy source for the brain when sugar is not around but it also works as an energy source for all the other tissue and muscle in the body.

This is best part: when the ketones kick in as the energy source, then the tissues, brain, heart, etc doesn't need as much of that glucose that was being broken down from protein in the muscle, hence, there is less muscle breakdown at that point going forward.

If you're on a low-carb diet, you even get the added bonus of eating protein, which that is converted first to glucose to be used for the energy and not the protein from your muscle. So you get the best of both worlds: fat being broken down to fuel gluconeogenesis but the protein that is being broken down is from the protein you're eating, not the protein from your muscles, thus you preserve your muscle mass while at the same time breaking down fat to convert the eaten protein into glucose.

What level of low carb will turn this whole process on? If you keep your carbs at no more than 60 grams a day, that should get you into ketosis and keep you there.

You can check the status of whether you're in ketosis as well by using Ketostix. Bascially, you pee on the stick, wait 15 seconds, and then compare the stick to the graph on the side of the box and that'll tell you what level of ketones are in your urine (ketones are expelled through either urine or breath).

Give it a try sometime and see what you think. It's going to be on my experiment list in the near future so I'll make sure to share the results with you.

www.leanbodyfitness.com
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