Keto vs Metabolic Flexibility
Welcome to another weekend episode of The ZecoHealth Show.
In this weekends short, I will explain the benefits and downsides of ketosis and metabolic flexibility for sustainable weight management
By the end of this episode you will have a better understanding of your metabolism and will have more information to make changes so you can eat food you love while burning bodyfat.
Let’s start with keto.
I do not think of keto as a fad diet and it has many benefits.
So let’s begin by explaining what they are:
- High fat diets like keto will aid your body to develop adequate enzymes like lipase to break down fat.
Most ppl who are overweight, especially if you eat a western diet that is higher in sugars and carbs have more amylase and other enzymes to break down carbs and sugars, but not enough enzymes to break down carbs.
If this is you, I recommend a gradual approach, instead of jumping into a high fat or keto diet.
Reason being that if you lack adequate fat burning enzymes then your body will store most of the fat you eat.
- Keto diet can train your body to break down fats or use ketones for endurance training
Once you are able to eat a high fat diet or in ketosis then it can improve how you perform in aerobic and endurance training.
Endurance training, as long as you do not cross the anerobic zone, promotes fat utilization.
In fact here is a guide, zone 2 training is ideal for using fats and is the most ideal training in a fasted state
Zone 2 comes down to your heart rate
The math is .60 to 75 of your max heart rate
You can either do the math and stay in that zone or get a watch that tracks hr%. My SUUNTO watch does and I believe Apple does too.
- Keto diet is generally a low inflammation diet.
Reason being that glucose uses mitochondria pathway 1, 3 4 & 5. While fat uses mitochondria pathway 2 which is a lower inflammation pathway.
Lower inflammation is always better for your gut, anything better for your gut it better for your health and of course energy and your body’s ability to burn fat.
Now let’s talk about Metabolic Flexibility :
First, let’s explain what it is.
Unlike keto, being metabolically flexible means your body can burn fats or carbs as needed for energy.
This is so important because if you want to maintain a healthy body weight, your body needs to be able to burn both nutrients efficiently.
This means your body can adapt to energy demands.
For example, my body primarily burns fat when I am sleeping, I know this because I take a test every morning using Lumen
On the other hand my body uses carbs to fuel my anaerobic workouts. Again I know this based on my Lumen readings.
Lumen is the first product on the market that reads the state of your metabolism and gives you nutrition recommendations to improve the flexibility of your metabolism.
I recommend it to almost everyone.
You can get it at https://lumen.me/ and use code zecohealth for 10% off their services.
Now, let’s talk ways to make your metabolism flexibile:
- You need to know if you are primarily a fat or sugar burner.
There are couple ways to do this. As I mention above you can get Lumen because it takes the guessing out of it.
You can so listen episode 45, it is a short on gut enzymes and metabolic flexibility.
It guides you on how to know if you are a sugar or carb burner.
- If you are a sugar burner, then you want to think of a diet to temporarily shut down the glucose pathway.
This usually means a medium fat, low carb diet while tending toward a keto friendly diet.
As I mention earlier, do not jump into a high fat diet if you are a sugar burner since you yet do not have enough enzymes to break down fat for energy.
- Do not stay on a high fat diet, but cycle
I see this alot with individuals who have been on keto for a while.
You will lose many of the enzymes to break down carbs.
Your body is very smart & if you do not feed it carbs, it will produce less of those enzymes.
Lumen has a fantastic approach to this and based on your readings will recommend carb load days so you can maintain those enzymes.
Again the website is https://lumen.me/ & use code zecohealth for 10% off their services.
However, you do not need Lumen to have a flexible metabolism, but again, it reads the state of your metabolism and takes the guessing out of the equation.
- You can carb cycle
Regardless of being a sugar or fat burner, you want to fuel with carbs for workouts that pass the anerobic threshold.
Examples are weight training or high intensity workouts.
For quick burse of energy your body prefers glucose so fueling up before your workouts will give you energy to crush your workouts
This doesn’t take much.
Especially on my high fat days, I usually drink a serving of liquid-iv 10 to 15 minutes prior.
It fuels me with glucose and it has a great mixture of electrolytes to aid muscle performance and recovery.
You can get Liquid-iv @ https://www.liquid-iv.com/ and use code zecohealth for 25% off.
So, now you can see that you can use carbs for quick burst or demanding workouts while fats for endurance and low intensity work.
Training your metabolism to be more flexible.
In summary, as you can see, there are benefits to ketosis or high fat diets and it can even help you along the road to a flexible metabolism, however, training your metabolism to respond to energy demands by burning the right nutrients for fuel is the most sustainable habit to manage your body weight.
