Eat fat to lose fat?
So I saw a post on Instagram saying you don’t have to get your fats in. Ketosis is caused by the absence of carbs, not the presence of fat. Reading more on this made me think of how much my eating has changed while I’ve started Keto and how I am trying to add more fat and could be over eating the fat. I may not need to be adding it like I am. Anyone else have any thoughts on this?
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Deborah Martin At least it was on veggies and not bread or anything. I drink bulletproof coffee in the morning with 1tbsp butter and 1tbsp coconut oil and some heavy whipping cream. But that’s probably the most fat I have in a meal for the rest of the day. There’s a little in my veggies or on some of my meat but no where near the same amount.
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You are essentially correct, Ketosis is caused by a lack of glucose which is primarily derived from the breakdown of carbohydrates. The body will still try to maintain a base amount of glucose in the blood stream since there are a few cells that cannot process ketones and rely on glucose as a fuel source.
The body will synthesize ketones from "fat" when there is not enough carbohydrates to convert into glucose. That fat can come from either the food you eat or from stored fat. The body will generally convert the fat you eat first before converting stored fat to ketones, so if you want to lose weight you still need a calorie deficit.
You might get away with eating more calories than you burn early on since it takes the muscle cells a few days at least to adapt to using ketones and fatty acids instead of glucose. It can take weeks or longer for the cells to get efficient at processing the ketones so in the meantime some of the excess ketones can get excreted in the urine. However I believe that once the body gets more efficient and reaches an equilibrium excess calories from fat will still get stored as fat.