#89 Keto Adaptation and Fasting - Q&A

Siim Land (0:00)

What are the differences between ketosis and keto adaptation? How does eating the keto diet and doing a little bit of fasting affect this?

This is gonna be the topic of this Body Mind Empowerment Podcast, and it's another one of those live Q&A sessions that I had on my YouTube channel. So, instead of just keeping it there on video, I decided to put it on audio as well, because it's a good listen.

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Siim Land (0:25)

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Siim Land (0:39)

Okay, so keto adaptation and fasting. So, I'm gonna basically start by talking, telling you about what is keto adaptation. You probably heard a ton about what is ketosis, what is the keto diet, and you also heard what is keto adaptation. But in my opinion, there is, well, there is like a significant difference between being in ketosis and also like eating a keto diet as well as being keto adapted. And the term keto adaptation can also overlap with basically the same as fat adaptation. And it quite definitely simply means that you're using fat and ketones as a primary fuel source, or you're able to convert fat acids into ketones without running into any energy deficiencies or deficits or kind of bonking, so to say, physically while doing exercise, you can simply tap into your fat burning and you can tap into the adipose tissue quite easily without having to go through some sort of a refeed during the exercise period or such. And when you can kind of quantify the state of nutritional ketosis or the state of fasting ketosis with like measuring your blood ketones or measuring your breath ketosis and such, then the amount of keto adaptation cannot be measured that specifically. And it's not like a specific thing. It's more of like a matter of degree. Everyone is keto adapted to a certain extent. Even people who are eating a bunch of carbs and such, they are still fat adapted, but their fat adaptation is somewhat limited and their fat adaptation is lower than someone who has eaten high fat low carb diet for a more longer period of time. And they've also actually done some studies. And if you can recall, one of the biggest study on these keto adapted athletes by Jeff Wallach and Steven Finney a few years ago called the Faster Study, then they did show that those athletes who ate the low carb keto diet for like six months or so, they showed significantly increased rates of fat oxidation during exercise. So they were basically burning more fat instead of glucose compared to conventional athletes. So they didn't like necessarily burn their body fat, but the idea of burning fat is showing of what kind of metabolic processes are going through in the CREP cycle when you're doing physical exercise, so to say, like there are different pathways of producing energy and producing ATP. The main one when you're eating, like when you're carb adapted, let's say when you're not keto adapted, then the main pathway is glycolysis or where you're converting carbohydrates and glucose into pyruvate and that's going to give ATP. But the opposite to that is beta oxidation, which is basically converting fatty acids into ketones and using them for energy instead. So that's the different side of the coin, so to say. And when you are becoming more, increasingly more keto adapted, then you will be able to sustain physical exercise at higher rates of intensity with more beta oxidation, so to say. So there's the crossover effect that describes fuel utilization during exercise.

When you're not doing anything at that high intensity, you're like walking only, you're doing some daily chores, you're walking the dog, then you are already burning primarily fat because your body prefers to burn fat at low intensities because your body can store almost like infinite amounts of fat in the adipose tissue and there's like so many calories for it to store and it's basically expandable versus glycogen is somewhat limited. You can only store a limited amount of glycogen, only like 2000 calories worth of glycogen in your muscle glycogen stores and liver glycogen stores. So the idea is that your body wants to spare glycogen for only high intensity exercise when you are lifting weights, when you're sprinting or jumping up and down, whatever it is. And when you're doing like easy exercise, low intensity, you're burning fat, high intensity, you're burning glycogen and the crossover effect occurs usually around 65 percent of your VO2 max. That's the textbooks. That's what textbooks usually say that in somewhere in the 65 percent VO2 max mark, when you're starting to breathe through your nose or your mouth, you can't maintain nasal breathing anymore. You're starting to gasp for air. That's the point where you convert over into glycolysis and you're you're shifting into the glycogen burning state, so to say. And you're stopping, you're starting to burn less fat. But if you are becoming keto adapted, then you can increase the seedling, so to say, where the crossover effect occurs. And even in the faster study that I just mentioned, in that study, those athletes, they were able to still maintain beta oxidation at intensities of about 80 percent and such. And, you know, they were burning almost like 90 percent all fat in between, like 70 percent and 80 percent of the Rio2 max. So it comes to show that with keto adaptation, your body becomes increasingly more prefer, it wants to prefer more fat even at higher intensities with proper keto adaptation and with kind of teaching the body to use the fatty acids as a fuel source instead of relying on glucose all the time.