Hi everyone.. I have a question about fat and ketones.
Iīve heard that when your body starts using the stored fat you produce ketones that are released by urine. So you can check if you are using the stored fat by using ketone strips. Ok, so thatīs a kind of "direct fat lose". But is there another way to lose fat? I mean is there an indirect way? In other words is it possible to be loosing fat even though you are not producing ketones?
I'm not sure if there is any way to know that your body is burning FAT, but as long as you create a deficit between calories eaten and calories burned, you should be losing weight. If you do conditioning and weight training exercises along with the calorie deficit, you will notice fat coming off... common sense, but that's the closest thing I can think of in regards to indirect fat loss
The only way I know of to lose stored fat is to create a calorie deficit. That is, to use more calories in a day than you take in. Then your body is forced to turn to its fat reserves to make up the calories you burn in a day.
So if I burn 2000 calories a day through basic metabolism and activities and I eat 1500 calories, then I've created a 500 calorie deficit (2000 - 1500 = 500). My body will use 500 calories of stored fat to meet its daily calorie needs.
It really doesn't have anything to do with ketosis. It's all about calories in and out. I used up more than 122 pounds of stored fat without once being in ketosis.
When I was in college, the biology professor taught that ketosis was a dangerous condition and could harm the kidneys, and even cause death. Atkins and other low carb diets said ketosis is a good thing and "proof" that you are burning fat.
I'm not going to weigh in on either side of the ketosis argument, except to say that extremely low carb diets and ketosis are by far not the only way to lose weight/fat. And if you do choose a diet that is low carb, drinking a fair amount of water is very important.
Ketosis on liquid protein diets - low-fat, high-protein diets - caused deaths from heart failure because protein from the heart muscle was used for blood sugar. I've heard that people have had to make an effort to eat enough fat to make this way of eating work to the max.
I don't think it's generally dangerous to be in ketosis, but there are definitely other ways to make weight loss happen.
KETOACIDOSIS is harmful to the kidneys. It's something diabetics, especially, have to watch out for. Ketosis is natural, it's the process of breaking up fat cells. Most people at some point in their day will undergo a little tiny bit of ketosis, it's normal. Those strips tell you when you've got broken-up fat cells in your urine, yes. But the color "density" doesn't mean anything--darker doesn't mean better. Like Meg says, just keep watching your calorie deficit and go by that.
As for how broken-up fat cells are lost, there are actually several ways. One is in your urine, yes. One is in BMs. One is in heat energy (that's what "burning up fat cells" is referring to). You don't have to be "in ketosis" (have measurable levels of ketones in your body) to lose fat. People use fat every day for energy--usually just not very many!
I wasn't confusing the two. As I remember the lecture (granted, it was over 20 years ago now), the professor (with a doctorate in biology) described ketoacidosis as immediately life threatening and usually caused by diabetes (causing the acetone smell on the breath that is sometimes confused with the smell of alcohol, which is why diabetics in diabetic shock are sometimes mistakenly thought to be drunk).
The professor described ketosis as being much more a problem in terms of damage done over time. He described ketosis as a state that was not a normal state, but one of starvation, and a result of an insufficient intake of carbohydrates. The body prefers to use glucose (blood sugar) but if there aren't enough carbs to create glucose, then the body will digest muscle and fat directly (ketosis). If I remember correctly, he talked about a good deal of water needed in high protein diets to prevent the damage ketosis can do. He gave an example of wolves and other carnivores sometimes dying in the winter because they were not able to get enough water (because of water sources being frozen) to prevent kidney damage.
To check my facts I did some online digging (just googled ketosis) and there is by no means consensus among physicians and scientists as to whether ketosis is harmful and to what degree.
Question about fat and ketones
