I have been fat adapted for over a year now and had no idea how my body really metabolizes fat. Good thing that head-knowledge isn’t required for one’s body to function correctly.

From an interview with Jean-Pierre Flatt, a highly respected researcher in the fields of energy metabolism and weight regulation:

Is dietary fat burned immediately after it is consumed, if needed?

No. Dietary fat is not absorbed in a form that utilized immediately for energy. First it must be deposited in adipose tissue. Then later, between meals or during exercise, fatty acids are released to be burned.

All the articles I had read previously about fat adaption and why the LCHF family of diets are actually better for you than the standard diet touch on the high-level benefits of fat-adaption and its effects in the body, but not how the fat is actually digested and metabolized. The talking points, but not the biochemistry.

Sounds like I need to find myself some better sources.

Okay, here we go: The Science Behind Fat Metabolism. I’m waaay over simplifying here, but as fat is digested, it’s broken down into fatty acids. Those fatty acids are then transported into cells where they can be oxidized into fuel or turned into storage. So when you are fat adapted, you are not just using fat for fuel, you are using your own fat for fuel. Even if you’re skinny.

That blows my mind. And I can see why our bodies would prefer to run on glucose. It’s easier.

You are literally more self-sufficient when you’re fat adapted. You don’t just “burn fuel,” you use your own fat stores–which you’ve already put in the work to process and store–to fuel yourself.

Maybe this is the explanation of the mindset shift that happens when you become a carnivore. I am much more confident in my health and in my body as a carnivore than I ever was as a vegetable-eater. That shift in attitude I’ve always attributed to the fact that my health is improving on this diet, but that doesn’t explain why I committed to this blog after only a few weeks of carnivory* before any of the healing began.

I’m not dependent on my supply of glucose/glycogen from the outside, but instead everything I need is already within me.

 

 

*I feel it in my bones that the two go hand-in-hand but that’s not what science would say.