Can Keto-Adaption Make You Lose Weight Faster?

Keto-Adaption and Fat-Adaption
are not the same thing!

In 2012, Jimmy Moore tried a Nutritional Ketosis Diet.

At the time that I read the n=1 Nutritional Ketosis report that he posted at his blog, I didn't realize he was following a diet designed for insulin-sensitive endurance athletes.

I thought the Nutritional Ketosis that he had been talking about was a weight-loss diet created by Dr. Phinney for people with extreme insulin resistance.

I didn't realize Jimmy was doing his own thing and that his followers were just being the groupies that they are.

What Jimmy tried was very different from what's recommended on Phinney's videos or in The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living, but I didn't know that when I first wrote this post.

From the way the whole low-carb community was on fire about Nutritional Ketosis, Keto-Adaption, and eating very high fat, I thought everyone knew what they were talking about.

Silly me.

There is a huge difference between The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living versus The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance.

The first book was written for physicians caring for those with insulin resistance, who want their patients to switch to a ketogenic diet for weight loss and better health.

These individuals need a lower fat and calorie intake than performance athletes because their body fat makes up a huge portion of their daily dietary fat needs.

The second book is for endurance athletes, who are not overweight, so the ketone and dietary fat recommendations are quite a bit higher.

While the difference might seem minimal to you, it's not.

If you have insulin resistance and try to do a maintenance plan created for those who are insulin sensitive, you won't have much success because insulin resistance will fight you every step of the way.

Why Did Jimmy Lose Weight on Very High Fat if He's Insulin Resistant?

About the time that Jimmy made his n=1 post about Nutritional Ketosis, I discovered that Regina Wilshire, author of the Weight of the Evidence blog was posting again. I thought that she might be around because someone with that name had liked my author fan page at Facebook, but I wasn't sure.

I’ve always enjoyed reading Regina’s posts because she’s not fanatical about a low-carb diet. She’s extremely realistic.

Since Regina is a professional nutritionist, her focus has always been on the nutrient density of food rather than typical low-carb topics, such as ketosis or keto-adaption. Neither does she perceive most carbs to be evil.

Her approach is what I would call The Middle Path. She doesn’t subscribe to extremes. She simply calls it like it is.

I wish I would have known that she had returned to blogging. It would have saved me much of the misery and weight gain I suffered from experimenting with Nutritional Ketosis.

She gave some excellent advice to a low carber who had stalled part way to her goal. But at least, I now have something I can work with – a real, honest, down-to-earth method for correcting my current weight problems.

Today, I want to talk about a misconception within the low-carb community that keeps surfacing – this time, in Jimmy’s response to one of Regina’s blog posts about his experiment.

Regina has a couple of ideas as to why Jimmy’s low-carb high-fat diet plan worked so well, but Jimmy interpreted her post to be an attack on him personally. In Jimmy's latest report, he tried to save face by explaining his opinion about what Regina thinks might be going on.

“So one question remains: Was it the keto-adaption or the calorie-cutting that has worked in producing the weight loss success I’ve seen? 

"If you ask me, I say WHO CARES?!

"The fact is it’s working. Whatever the mechanisms for bringing it about, the bottom line is I’m burning stored body fat and improving every measurable health marker I have tested so far. 

"At the end of the day, the results are much more interesting than any attempt to explain why they happened. It’s my contention that becoming fully adapted to using ketones (fat) for fuel has allowed my body the opportunity to run as it was intended to without the need for arbitrarily counting calories, carbohydrates or really much of anything.”

This response to Regina’s post is loaded with things I could talk about. But today, I want to address Jimmy’s opinion about keto-adaptation being responsible for his weight-loss success.

He's a strong player within the low-carb community, and a lot of folks accept his opinions and ideals as Truth without experimenting with them for themselves.

Granted, that isn’t Jimmy’s fault.

Experimenting with suggestions and ideas that we are presented with on a daily basis is our own responsibility, but a lot of folks within the low-carb community hold similar misunderstandings about ketones and fat that Jimmy does.

What is a Ketone?

Ketones are not fat.

They are the waxy by-product that’s left over when the liver breaks down triglycerides into fatty acids.

Fatty acids are used to fuel the process of gluconeogenesis after your glycogen reserves (the storage form of carbohydrates) fall below a certain level.

Ketones are a signal that the body is predominantly burning fatty acids for fuel, rather than glucose.

However, the presence of ketones in the urine or blood do not signal that your body fat stores are being used for fuel. They simply show that glucose is in short supply. Nothing more, as ketones are also made from dietary fats, so their presence doesn't mean you're burning body fat.

What is Keto-Adaption?

When the body enters a famine situation, most of the body’s tissues can use fatty acids for fuel, but there are a few exceptions. The:

• brain
• kidneys
• red blood cells
• bone marrow
• and certain muscle fibers

cannot use fatty acids. They require glucose.

However, the fact that the brain cannot use fatty acids doesn’t mean that the brain can only use glucose because certain portions of the brain can use ketones.

When glucose is in short supply and ketones are readily available, the brain will adapt to that situation and begin using ketones for up to three-quarters of its energy needs.

The purpose of keto-adaption is to save what little glucose there is for body organs and tissues that cannot use ketones or fatty acids for fuel.

Ketone adaption is a life-saving mechanism designed to come into play during those short periods of time when carbohydrates are not available.

Initially, when carbs run short, most body functions can use ketones for fuel. That’s where the idea that a low-carb diet is fueled by ketones comes from. However, this only holds true for the first three weeks, or so.

After three or four weeks, most body tissues including muscle become insulin resistant. They begin using fatty acids for fuel – not ketones. This allows the glucose and ketones in the bloodstream to be saved for the brain.

This form of physical salvation is called keto-adaption.

It is very different from fat-adaption.

When you first become keto-adapted, you are not fat-adapted. You're just in a deep state of ketosis. Fatty acids are not burned efficiently.

Ketones in the blood don't fuel the body. They are a life-saving mechanism that keeps the brain functioning, so the body can survive a famine situation.

The ketone build-up in the blood has absolutely nothing to do with weight loss, but everything to do with brain and heart function because when you have an excess of ketones over what the brain needs, the heart can use what’s left over.

Keto-Adaption is simply when the body stops using ketones for fuel and saves them for the brain to protect your life.

This saving mechanism works independently of the body mechanisms that determine fat loss, energy balance (maintenance or energy equalization), and increased body fat storage.

So What Good is Being Keto-Adapted?

A ketogenic state works to correct hormonal imbalances, such as insulinemia, so ketones can be made more readily available to the brain. For the liver to break down stored triglycerides into fatty acids the body can use, insulin levels need to be either normal or low.

While all dietary fats are initially stored as body fat and then drawn out of the fat cell throughout the day, as needed, this in-and-out flow of fat can become blocked if insulin levels do not return to normal shortly after meals.

Despite what most low carbers believe about insulin, nutrients cannot get into your body’s cells fast enough without that initial insulin spike. It isn’t the spike that locks up stored body fat. It’s the way your body responds to the insulin you produce.

In individuals who have problems with insulinemia or insulin resistance, being keto-adapted can help reverse these abnormal situations. However, low insulin doesn’t guarantee that you’ll burn stored body fat.

As Dr. Michael Eades has stressed time and time again:

Low insulin keeps the doors to your fat stores open, but if you eat more fat than your body can use in a day, or if you eat the exact amount of fat that your body can use in a day, you will not see weight-loss success.

It cannot happen.

A low-carb diet doesn’t negate the laws of physics. It simply teaches you how to use them to your best advantage.

Why Does it Matter? WHO CARES?

While some people like Jimmy don’t care why their current low-carb program works, ignoring the principles of why and shoving them aside as being insignificant can create disastrous effects for those who try to duplicate the same success.

Why?

Because in Jimmy’s case:

He consistently tells his readers that he has raised his dietary fat and lowered his protein. He consistently tells his readers that dietary manipulation, along with keeping his blood ketones high, has been the way to his salvation – even though that isn’t what he’s actually doing.

When someone decided to take a look at what Jimmy was doing and raised a few ideas about what it might be – to help some of the rest of us understand – Jimmy’s reaction was to perceive attack and brush off those ideas with a simple “who cares.”

His reaction was that the Truth of the matter doesn’t matter.

Well, you know what? 

I care! 

And it does matter because when I attempted to implement his advice into my life, mirroring what he said he was doing, it completely backfired on me.

• Why?
• Why didn’t it work?
• Why did Jimmy insist on Twitter, in front of all of his Twitter fans, that if Nutritional Ketosis (as he defined it back then and not how Dr. Phinney defines it) wasn’t working for me, then there was something metabolically wrong with me because it has to work?

Maybe . . .

Because, as Regina hypothesized, raising fat might not be what Jimmy was actually doing. He might not have raised his fat grams per day. He might have merely raised his fat percentage.

If that's true, then it could explain why I gained 22 pounds when I raised the number of fat grams I was eating per day.

Percentage isn’t the same thing as fat grams. Percentages change when you manipulate the other macronutrients.

Regina’s hypothesis is that Jimmy’s meals are probably lower in fat grams and calories, even though his fat percentage is higher.

This might be why his high-fat, low-carb diet program is working so well for him, and why my own high-fat, low-carb diet program did not. 

They were not the same thing. 

Either way, it’s not about Keto-Adaption. 

Keto-Adaption is about saving your brain cells from destruction when glucose runs low. It isn’t about weight-loss success or failure.