For years, low-fat diets were promoted as the best option for weight loss. If you eat less fat, you won’t gain as much, right? Unfortunately, we were totally wrong about that. Our bodies are pretty smart. While most of us prefer muffin tops as a treat, not around our waists, that extra fat has a purpose: survival.
Our ancestors didn’t have a Trader Joe’s down the street. When food was plentiful, we ate more of it. The excess energy was stored as fat, which helped us survive famines down the line. The same metabolic mechanisms exist, but most of us are lucky enough to never experience a serious food shortage.
The downside is that if we continuously consume more calories than our bodies use, we continue building fat reserves that we don’t actually need. While simply reducing calorie intake is enough to force our bodies to use stored fat for energy, what you eat is just as important as how much. When we consume plentiful carbs, like those found in bread, pasta and fruit, our glucose levels rise. That glucose is then used as fuel.
On a ketogenic diet, however, carbohydrate intake is drastically reduced, with a high fat intake and a moderate protein intake. With little available glucose, your body uses stored fat as backup fuel instead. Effectively, it mimics the effects of fasting without actually doing so.
