The Scientist
Level 3 Valued Member
Matt,
My thoughts come out in discrete packets, so I'll number them off:
1. The benefits of being fat-adapted are not necessarily just an ability to better use fat. People that eat lots of glucose can still use body fat, it is just in a edition to their glucose intake. Being "fat-adapted" really means that you can get by without dietary glucose or stored glycogen. This is the big advantage for anyone with endurance goals.
2. You said:
"Then normally it is recommended to eat high fat – odd as you want to use your own fat reserves, so why would the body do that when it has all it needs in the blood from digestion. You’d think you’d want to eat less fat so you are forced to use your own body fat."
This could be said for eating wither fat or carbohydrate. Ingesting wither one will inhibit lipolysis from adipose tissue.
3. This means that the benefits of eating a high fat diet are not about fat burning directly, but indirectly. When you ask most people how to lose weight, they say "easy – eat less calories than you burn". This can conceivably be done by eating carbohydrate, fat or protein in any combination, as long as the total caloric intake is less than expenditure. The problem is that during prolonged caloric deficit, your RMR (BMR) slows and you become hungry, thwarting your plans. So the benefit of a high fat diet really seems to be that it allows you to eat in a caloric deficit without becoming as hungry and metabolically depressed as you would eating an equivalent number of calories from glucose. The unfortunate thing is that nobody knows exactly how this happens physiologically, but it is clear that it does happen somehow.
My thoughts come out in discrete packets, so I'll number them off:
1. The benefits of being fat-adapted are not necessarily just an ability to better use fat. People that eat lots of glucose can still use body fat, it is just in a edition to their glucose intake. Being "fat-adapted" really means that you can get by without dietary glucose or stored glycogen. This is the big advantage for anyone with endurance goals.
2. You said:
"Then normally it is recommended to eat high fat – odd as you want to use your own fat reserves, so why would the body do that when it has all it needs in the blood from digestion. You’d think you’d want to eat less fat so you are forced to use your own body fat."
This could be said for eating wither fat or carbohydrate. Ingesting wither one will inhibit lipolysis from adipose tissue.
3. This means that the benefits of eating a high fat diet are not about fat burning directly, but indirectly. When you ask most people how to lose weight, they say "easy – eat less calories than you burn". This can conceivably be done by eating carbohydrate, fat or protein in any combination, as long as the total caloric intake is less than expenditure. The problem is that during prolonged caloric deficit, your RMR (BMR) slows and you become hungry, thwarting your plans. So the benefit of a high fat diet really seems to be that it allows you to eat in a caloric deficit without becoming as hungry and metabolically depressed as you would eating an equivalent number of calories from glucose. The unfortunate thing is that nobody knows exactly how this happens physiologically, but it is clear that it does happen somehow.