I hear advocates of keto and fasting say that over time your body can become “fat adapted” and get more used to burning fat over carbs, even if you return to your previous diet. Is there truth to this? And if so, what is actually happening in the body that is making you “better” at burning fat over the long term?
You’re essentially stabilising your blood sugar out when you do low carb/lower carb.
Fats get used more as they are higher and easier to access when you’re not chugging sugar and carbs.
Then you’ll start to feel more baseline. The fatigue from the initial drop in carbs goes away and the energy from fat becomes more reliable.
Electrolyte balance also stablises with the change in carb intake.
It’s the same thing as adapting to Keto adaptation but it’s more relevant to fat as a whole.
You have been eating fat your whole life. Fat is probably the macronutrient people eat the most. Congratulations, you’re fat adapted.
Your body will produce a lot of bile in expectation of all the fat you are going to consume, and if you don’t consume it, you might have health complications that lead to a gallbladder surgery
yes this is absolutely true, I got super into fasting like a year ago and now I barely gain weight no matter how much I eat, and if I feel I need to lose weight, I just do a 3 day water fast and it’s gone. Highly recommend. Basically your body becomes more efficient with the nutrients and you become more sensitive to insulin so weight regulation becomes much easier for the body. also, you poop far less.
Keto practitioners tend to think in absolutes in my experience. Keto has its merits and it’s flaws. In my experience no matter what I did I could NEVER get “adapted”. I always felt extremely irritable and weak. Summer heat just killed me. Like to the point I couldn’t even think straight. And attempting to work out I had the energy/strength/endurance of a wet noodle. I did all the recommended things too like magnesium supplements, sodium/potassium electrolyte supplements, etc. I finally stopped keto because of those issues. That’s just my experience but others report different experiences. That’s why I you can’t say with absolute certainty that everyone will respond as “fat adapted”Now I’m eating more balanced and feel SO much better and can handle strenuous activities outside in the heat and work out at the gym no problem.
It looks like sort of a gray area to me; I think the western diet is so pathological that we changed how we use the term ‘fat-adapted’ to just mean “not chronically abusing carbohydrates”, where Wikipedia still thinks it means ‘starvation response’… I’d look first at the endocrine system, specifically insulin and insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, etc., first, if you want to understand what the changes are.
I’ve been pretty solidly fat-adapted. I water fasted for weeks, once. For the last year, I’ve been keto about eighty percent of the time, maybe. So, by any definition. There is something there, but I guess I’d need someone to pick a definition for me before describing it in too much detail.
fat adaptation is a convoluted way of saying you “get used” to eating proportionally more fat than carbohydrates but that’s largely irrelevant. a good ilustration of this phenomenon is how many people anecdotally report a couple (3-4) weeks of decreased performance during intense physical activities when switching from a high-carbohydrate to a low-carbohydrate/high-fat diet before they actually get “adapted” to it
You only maintain fat adaptation as long as you encourage it.
You could do strict keto for a year but if you go back to eating pure carbs you’ll lose all that adaptation.
I cycle keto throughout the year and do it for insulin control purposes. Plus I just feel way better on keto.
Fat adapted just means you can more easily enter in and out of ketosis.
You go into ketosis a state you can be in from either no eating carbs for a few days or not eating any food, your liver makes ketones out of fat that are around 6 cals instead of 9 so you now have to burn less calories to lose a lb. It’s perfectly healthy and everyone should try it once at least , if you fast it will happen and fasting is healthy from time to time everyone know that
Although the signs and symptoms of fat adaptation are primarily based on anecdotal accounts, many people report experiencing fewer cravings and feeling more energized and focused.
The onset of fat adaptation is not well described in scientific literature, though there is some evidence of it in endurance athletes.
While a few studies have shown these effects, they’re limited to a timespan of 4–12 months. Thus, comprehensive, long-term studies on fat adaptation are needed.