Should you be chasing down high ketone levels in order to optimize weight loss? Is there
a blood ketone level sweet spot which will maximize your fat burning? If so, what is
it? Let's find out. Hey Carbdodgers, my name is Dr Dan Mags. Thanks for visiting my channel
where I help people achieve long term sustainable weight loss through low carb real food nutrition.
I struggled with my weight pretty much my entire life back until 2016 when I went from
being officially obese to being a normal way and just six months and I've maintained it
ever since. I love to be your guide and show you how to do the same. I release new videos
here every Tuesday, so I'd love it if you'd subscribe to my channel, hit that bell to
get notified whenever I release a new video. So, when people discover the power of Ketosis
for weight loss and it is awesome, it can be pretty normal to think if some ketones
are good, then more ketones must be better. And so, there's this idea that you can find
it optimal ketone level that will help you lose weight at an optimal rate, but is this
true and if so, what is that level? So many so called Keto experts would have
you believe that you should be aiming for high blood ketone levels simply because that
means that you're burning more fat and that will speed up somehow weight loss or optimize
your weight loss and you may well have been advised to cut back on the protein and increase
the amount of fat you're supplementing with in order to get high ketone levels. As we'll
see in this video, that advice will get you higher ketone levels, but is it really something
you should be aiming for? I'm going to argue that it doesn't actually make any sense and
in fact it may actually be detrimental. Now, I've always been keen to experiment on myself
and this graph shows my lean muscle mass. When I tried to stay in a high level of ketosis
for a six-week period, I lost about five pounds of lean muscle in six weeks. Not Ideal. Definitely
something you don't want to do. Now, there's definitely different groups of people who
may benefit from running pretty high levels of ketones, so just therapeutic diets for
epilepsy, certain cancers, certain neurological disorders. You'll also find that certain athletes
prepare, prefer to run higher levels of ketones relating to their needs for their sport and
there's also some cognitive benefits to higher levels of Ketones, but there is also one group
of people who definitely shouldn't be chasing high ketone levels and that's type one diabetics.
Now I don't want to go into why this is here on this video because it will take too long,
but if you want to find out more about that, then check the blog post that accompanies
this video. You'll find the link in the description below
this post that we're focusing on today that most people get interested in Ketosis, fat
loss. Many of the websites and YouTube channels promoting ketogenic diets will tell you the
following. Naught 0.1 to naught .5 means you're not in Ketosis.
naught 0.5 to 1.5 is that a light ketosis, 1.5 to three is kind of the optimum sweet
spot for pick doses and anything above 3 doesn't really add anything.
Now we're talking about blood ketone figures here now because by far the most accurate
way to measure ketone levels is using blood ketone readings.
Urine keto sticks don't really give us that much information about how high the level
of Ketosis is and they tend to be less accurate after several weeks of being in ketosis. So
it's blood ketone levels that we'll be talking about in this video.
Now it's all very well giving me a set of rules to live by and you can take those numbers
I gave you earlier for what you will, but personally I'm never really going to fully
embrace a set of rules until I understand the why behind them. So, I did some thinking.
I saw those numbers and I thought we need to dive deeper and really try and understand,
you know what? What do they mean? So I'm going to take you through step by step and you might
be surprised by the outcome. In order to get started, we need to understand what do ketone
levels really tell us? What do they mean? Well, to answer these questions, we need to
go back a step and understand the following things. What factors affect our blood ketone
levels, the levels of ketones and anything for that matter is really dependent on two
different things. The rate at which ketones are being produced
versus the rate at which ketones are being used up. What affects the rate at which ketones
had been produced? While ketones are being produced by the body all the time just at
really low levels. If you test the blood ketone levels of someone who is a carb burner, you're
going to get a reading of naught 0.1 ketones are produced by the liver and in order
to produce them in any great amounts, we need to not be burning dietary or stored carbohydrates
for fuel. In fact, we need to have a low insulin levels and raised glucagon levels. Now we've
talked about insulin a lot on this channel. Insulin is the main fat storage hormone, but
Glucagon is like the opposite. It encourages fat breakdown so we can achieve these states
by a very low carbohydrate diet or intimate and fasting or probably both.
And under these conditions, the liver will produce ketones from our bodies stored fat,
but ketones can also be made from dietary fat. Many of you all know that medium chain
triglycerides switches from coconut oil can't be stored by the body and are therefore turn
into ketones by the liver. It's one of the reasons that coconut oil has become so popular,
but increased dietary fat in general will lead to higher levels of ketone being produced
by the liver. And you'll find many people across the internet
telling you to increase your fat intake in order to increase your ketone levels. And
yes, it works, but is it the right thing to do? Whilst Ketosis is great because it tells
us that we're burning fat. It doesn't tell us where that fat is coming from. Is it your
body fat or from fat that you've eaten? The level of Ketosis can't tell you the difference
between the two. Let's now look at things that cause a lower production of ketones.
So obviously too many carbohydrates, it goes without saying, but can this mean too many
carbs will mean your body will largely shut off ketosis.
Secondly, the dawn effect, you will naturally produce less ketones in the early morning
due to the dawn effect. Now, the dawn effect occurs due to a surge of hormones such as
cortisol, which will produce more blood glucose from protein in the early hours of the morning.
It does so in order to prepare your body for the day, there's not a lot you can do about
this, but it is a good reason not to check your ketone levels first thing in the morning.
And thirdly, protein intake is often said that consuming a lot of protein may also cause
lower levels of blood ketones as our bodies create glucose from the protein that we consume.
In fact, we now know that protein consumption actually has very minimal effects on levels
of blood glucose due to the different way that protein is being used. While the body
is in a state of ketosis, but the level of ketones in the blood isn't just dependent
on the rate that they're being produced by the liver.
We also have to think about how fast they are being used up by the body. So, what affects
the rate that ketones are being used up? Well, ketones are an energy source for tissues
of the body. So, if the body is using them in increased amounts, then you'd expect lower
levels. So, what would cause this? Well, firstly and most obviously exercise.
We see lower levels of ketones in the blood after exercise. Test it for yourself, just
check ketones before and after an intense workout.
Secondly, Keto adaptation. If your body has been burning carbohydrates for fuel or it’s
life your cells won't burn ketones as efficiently as they will after a few weeks or months in
Ketosis. There are changes at the cellular level, which
will mean increased burning of ketones when you become adapted. So now we can answer the
question what the high levels of ketones actually tell us. We now know the things that increase
and decrease our blood ketone levels. And so, we can work out that you couldn't raise
your blood ketone levels by consuming more fat.
Now your body isn't just going to let your ketone levels rise and rise. That would be
dangerous. So what is it going to do? Well, it's going to start to down regulate the amount
of fat that is being released from your own fat stores. Now if you're trying to lose body
fat, then downregulating the use of your own body fat for the sake of increasing ketone
levels isn't exactly ideal number to do. Less exercise, doing less exercise for the sake
of keeping your ketone levels high as perhaps more obviously counter intuitive.
But I have seen people on the Internet telling people to reduce their exercise specifically
to keep their blood ketone levels raised. Seems crazy, right? So, I say do that exercise,
burn those ketones, build those muscles, make your muscles more insulin sensitive and your
body will have to upregulate the quantity of ketones is producing and will in fact increased
body fat breakdown in order to compensate. And number three, cutting protein intake.
This is perhaps the most concerning piece of advice that I heard. You need, how much
protein you need. You can't just reduce protein below this level without causing some harm.
Now, protein is important for several reasons. Number 1, most notably muscle repair and tissue
growth. Secondly, proteins also really a very filling nutrient and thirdly, most sources
of proteins are also important sources of micronutrients. That's the vitamins and minerals
that make up the rest of everything. When we take macronutrients out of the picture,
the amount of protein that you need will be based on several things including your activity
levels and the type of activity that you do. So, for example, if you lift lots of heavy
weights, you'll do more muscle damage. Therefore you will need more for repair and growth.
The last thing we want to do is consume too little protein in order to chase high ketone
levels. If we do, we run the risk of not having sufficient protein intake to maintain lean
muscle mass. It's fat you want to lose, not muscle, so
are more ketones really better. Now I agree that under naught 0.5 you're probably not
really burning many ketones at all. You might still be losing weight, but perhaps not as
much as you could be, but really above naught 0.5 you're definitely in a light ketosis and
really anything greater than one is fantastic. It should be easy to achieve these levels
by eating a well formulated low carb diet such as what I'm going to describe to you
shortly. I wouldn't go increasing your fat intake and decreasing exercise or reducing
protein intake in order to purely get to higher levels of ketones for the sake of it. And
if it's still less than one and you're still losing weight, well you're still losing weight.
Great stuff. Unfortunately, I think the word keto has come
to mean consuming fat for the sake of consuming fat in many circles, often at the expense
of getting adequate protein, vitamins and minerals from good quality, unprocessed sources
of food. Carb should be a level which doesn't turn off your fat burning and turn you into
a carb burner locking your those fat stores so they can't be used and that level is different
for all of us. Protein should be at a level which your body
needs. Even if this costs you a few points on your ketone readings. If you're like me
and you do quite a lot of resistance training, you want to really prioritize getting your
protein in above anything else. Fat, should be used to satisfy your hunger and not just
added to boost ketone levels for the sake of it.
If the amount of fat you need to keep full results in levels of ketones or 2 or 3, then
that is fine, but don't chase the higher figures just for the sake of it. Much better to focus
on real food sources which will give you loads of great vitamins and minerals along with
it. That's why I tend not to recommend things like bulletproof coffee. The exception to
this is in the first few weeks or months of switching to a ketogenic diet when adding,
in fact can help your body get used to using fat as the primary source of fuel.
Things like bulletproof coffee or fat bombs can be really useful at this stage, but they're
usually pretty lacking in other vitamins and minerals, so I don't find this to be a useful
long term strategy. Before we finish, I want to share with you something that illustrates
the problem that I'm talking about. I found this comment on another YouTube channel while
I was researching this video, which I think really illustrates the problem, and so this
guy in the comments says: I was just having this problem. I've been
on keto for three and a half weeks and I'm down 17 pounds, but my ketone levels dropped
over the last five days. I've gone from pretty steady one to 1.8 all the way down to naught
0.5 I'm going to try upping the fats and see what happens.
Now, this person is clearly getting great results on their to genetic diet, but they're
focusing on their ketone levels. Instead of keeping doing what they're doing,
which is helping them to lose weight because they're chasing ketones, they've identified
reduced ketones as the problem. Despite that the fact that they're losing way and they're
trying to fix the problem with the key, which isn't a problem. Just for clarification, I'm
not saying that these high ketone levels are bad per se, and you shouldn't be worried if
these are the readings you're getting. I'm just saying that if you're getting readings
of worn or even less, if you're achieving your goals, then don't stress out about aiming
for levels of two or three just for the sake of it, especially if it means cutting down
on your protein and consuming extra fat. So, in summary, be in ketosis, but don't chase
those higher figures. Try to remember what you're trying to achieve. If you're trying
to lose weight, then the main thing you should be tracking is your weight.
If you're trying to lose size, then the most important thing to be tracking is your physical
measurements. And if you're trying to improve your type two diabetes, then you'll want to
be checking your blood glucose levels and your HBA one c levels, chase the results you're
after, not the ketone levels. They can easily mislead you. By all means,
use them for a bit of troubleshooting. If you're finding you hit a plateau or you're
not achieving your goals, but they're most useful for checking whether you're not in
ketosis at all, in my opinion, but if you're achieving your goals, don't stress about it.
I didn't check my ketone levels once during my weight loss journey and I still managed
to consistently lose weight for six months. I don't check them on a regular basis now
either. Thanks for watching. I hope you found this video useful. Please give it a thumbs
up if you have enjoyed it. I here every Tuesday with new video, so make sure you hit the subscribe
button down below this video. I'll see you next week.