Your body can burn two types of fuel: fat and carbs. It’s important to realize that when your body is adapted to burning carbs, you’re quite inflexible, metabolically speaking. Without fail, your body will be screaming for food about every two to three hours. These kinds of hunger pangs vanish once you become fat adapted, then, you can go all day and not be hungry, because you have far more fat in your body to burn than glucose.

The body’s supply of stored carbohydrates (glycogen) only lasts for a couple of hours of intense exercise or less. But your fat stores carry enough energy to easily last for weeks or even months.

Ketogenic diets can vastly increase your physical endurance, by giving you constant access to all the energy of your fat stores. Many champion athletes follow this diet for this reason.

When you’re adapted to burning primarily carbohydrates – like most people are today – your fat stores are not easily available, and they can’t fuel your brain. This results in constantly having to fill up by eating every 2 to 3 hours and also before, during and after longer exercise sessions. Or even just to fuel your daily activities and to avoid being hungry and irritable.

On a Ketogenic diet this problem is solved. As the body and brain can easily be fueled 24/7 by your powerful fat stores and whether you are competing in a physical endurance event, or just trying to stay focused on reaching some other goal, your body has the fuel it needs to keep you going all day.

So contrary to the common belief, carbs are not really necessary to perform exercise. However, to unlock the power of Ketogenic diets for physical endurance, and not instead suffer reduced performance, you need: enough fluid and salt and perhaps a week or so of adaptation to the diet that, instead of carbs, burns fat.

The ketogenic diet increases mitochondrial function and your metabolic rate, which means you burn more calories even in your resting state.

The New Balance Foundation Obesity Centre found that those on the ‘Atkins’ – low carb diet, burned 350 calories more per day – equivalent to an hour of moderate intensity exercise, than those on a standard low-fat diet. Those on a low glycemic index diet burned 150 calories – equivalent to an hour of light exercise.

There are many studies showing that Low-Carb diets improve markers of metabolic syndrome such as blood lipids, insulin levels, HDL-cholesterol, LDL particle size and fasting blood sugar levels. Improvements have been shown to be even greater when carbs and protein are restricted in the Ketogenic Diet to a point of keeping the body steadily in nutritional ketosis. Ketones, compared to glucose, leave fewer free radicals in the mitochondria. This means better neural repair and recovery.

Meanwhile, military researchers are focused on keto diets as well, believing soldiers would operate optimally on fewer, denser meals. Currently, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Department of Defense, and NASA are all running ketogenic experiments. NASA believes the diet will be important in manned missions to Mars because it protects against higher levels of radiation in space by increasing the brain’s resilience to stress. Plus, “the energy density of a ketogenic diet is higher, so you have to carry less weight,” – D’Agostino.

“This (The Ketogenic Diet) is the single most important health intervention we can make as doctors” – Dr. Timothy David Noakes, Emeritus Professor in the division of Exercise Science and Sports Medicine at the University of Cape Town and author of the book ‘The Real Meal Revolution’.

*Note the trash-can in the upper-right

You may checkout the site – “www.mydreamshape.com” “www.cronometer.com/mercola” for a Ketogenic Diet calculator and plan.

You may also check the website – www.ketodietapp.com by Martina Slajerova for more information on the Ketogenic Diet.

Note:

1. Authority Nutrition reviews 15 health conditions shown to respond favourably to nutritional ketosis over a period of 4 to 6 months. Some of which are given below

• Epilepsy in both children and adults in the 4:1 (Fat: protein + carbs ratio) ketogenic diet. Even the less restrictive 1:1 proportion diet is found to be equally effective in most adults and children over 2 years of age.
• Lowers markers of systemic inflammation
• Improves cognition and mental acuity and helps those affected by Parkinson’s, Alzherimer’s and perhaps even ALS, because in these diseases certain neurons would have become insulin resistant or would have lost their ability to efficiently utilize glucose, which causes neurons to be off. When ketones are present, these neurons have a better chance of surviving and thriving as ketones can even enter cells that have become insulin resistant.
• In one study, Parkinson’s patients who followed a 4:1 ketogenic diet experienced, on an average, a 43 percent improvement in their symptoms. For Alzheimer’s supplementing with MCT oil appears to be particularily beneficial.
• Studies also support the use of nutrional ketosis for Autism.
• Migrane headaches.
• Recovery from traumatic brain injuries.
• Obesity, metabolic syndrome (pre-diabetic) and diabetic. Also lowers triglyceriods, improves HDL, lowers high blood pressure and fasting blood sugar levels.
• Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) as it improves liver enzymes and reduces liver fat.
• Glycogen Storage Disease (GSD) and Glucose Transporter – 1 (GLUT-1) deficiency syndrome.
• Helps against hormonal and nervous system disorders, such as Poly Cystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) and Multiple Sclerosis (MS).
• Cancer prevention.
• Optimizes mitochondrial functioning, thus correcting the metabolic dysfunctions of insulin and leptin resistance.

In those rare people who have a mutated gene in one of the two copies of the enzyme that produces heme or those having very low sodium levels (Hyponatremia) a strict Ketogenic Diet may trigger faulty heme production in the body, causing Acute-Intermittent Porphyria (AIP). Do consult your Physician.

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