10 Key Signs You Are Fat Adapted (No Equipment Needed)

hello health champions how do you know if you're truly fat adapted well if

you're still having cravings and ravenous hunger and sugar cravings then

you're probably not fat adapted yet so today we're going to talk about what fat

adaptation is I'm going to give you ten signs to tell if you're getting into

true fat adaptation coming right up hey I'm dr. Ekberg

I'm a holistic doctor and a former Olympic decathlete and if you want to

truly master health by understanding how the body really works make sure you

subscribe and hit that notification bell so you don't miss anything so what is

fat adaptation fat adaptation simply means that your body has the ability to

burn fat when mostly fat is available another way

of looking at that is called metabolic flexibility

so if mostly carbs or mostly fat or mostly protein or a mix of all of those

are available then the body does just fine it has the metabolic machinery to

switch from one to the other on very short notice

that's metabolic flexibility and the only reason that this is even an issue

is that we have trained our body away from being fat adaptive we've trained

the body away from metabolic flexibility by having a couple of generations of

people who have had virtually nothing but carbohydrate and carbohydrate is a

fuel that raises blood sugar which is dangerous to the brain that's why an

excess leads to diabetes and neurological problems and so forth so

the body has to dispose of the carbohydrates first and if we eat

frequent carbohydrates then the body never really gets to anything but the

carbohydrates they become the priority and the body becomes dependent so that

is the reason that if your carb dependent you've shifted all your

metabolic Machinery over to carbohydrates so now

when the carbohydrates disappear when you go on a low-carb diet your body says

I've got no food I don't recognize where my regular food

is I'm starving even though all that fat is available both in the diet if you eat

a high fat diet and on the body your body doesn't have access to it because

it has to retrain and become fat adapted and what that means is has to up

regulate all the cellular machinery all the receptors and the enzymes and the

mitochondria involved in fat metabolism and that takes a while it can take a

couple of weeks if it has been totally basically shut down ketosis is something

that's measured together with fat adaptation because ketones is a

byproduct of fat burning so if you're in fat burning you're making ketones you're

in ketosis but they're not really the same thing because you can have some

ketosis without being fat adapted so every night when you're sleeping and

every morning when you wake up you have some ketones even if you have a carb

dependent metabolism during the night you go eight to ten hours without food

and your body shifts a little bit but then if your carb adapted you go

straight up and you have toast and orange juice and cereal and oatmeal and

you fill up the glycogen stores and the body forgets all about burning fat so

you never get into being fat adapted so even though you can have a little bit of

ketosis from time to time it doesn't make you fat adapted so we need to

understand that difference and I heard some people talk about this I wanted to

make a comment about diuresis they said that diuresis is a sign of being fat

burning and it's not it's even less so than the ketosis because diuresis is

when you lose fluids that have been bound up in the body and the reason is

that glycogen which you can store carbohydrates as glycogen you

store about 1,500 grams about three pounds three to four pounds and that

binds about three to four times its weight and water it's like a sponge it

holds water to it so when you burn through the glycogen stores that water

has nothing to hold on to and you flush it straight out so the first five six

seven pounds that you lose on a low-carb diet is water and that's normal and

that's okay but it doesn't mean you're burning fat

or that your fat adapted it just means you're reducing your glycogen stores

which is a good thing on the way to becoming fat adapted another thing I

heard was that your fat adapted when you burn through all the glucose that's

lingering that it can take a couple of weeks to become fat adapted because

glucose is lingering and that's just not how it works

because your body makes glucose all the time even when you're completely fasting

your body makes glucose because you still even in a ketosis even in a

fasting state you still are going to maintain a blue glucose of in the 70 75

80 range so glucose does not linger you burned through the stores pretty quickly

and then your body makes it as needed has really nothing to do with whether

your fat adapted or not so how long does it take to become fat adapted to where

your body is metabolically flexible again well it depends primarily on two

things it depends on how insulin resistant you are the more insulin

resistance you are the higher your fasting insulin the tougher it's going

to be for you to be fat adapted because that high insulin level locks the fat

away so even though you're eating the fat you're kind of burning it but your

body can't see the burn the body fat so you're not truly fat adapted because

you're still gonna get hungry because you're depending on dietary fuel because

of that high insulin level the other factor is how long have you been

insulin-resistant and how long have you been carb dependent if it's been going

for a decade or two then you can probably count on two to six weeks for

your body to completely shift its machinery and that's if you're very

consistent do you have to be patient here's the good news though if you are

consistent with it if you truly become fat adapted so if you've been on a

low-carb diet myself for example I've been low-carb

for probably ten years I've been in and out Aikido probably been in low-grade

keto for 80% of the time for those last ten years so if I go on a vacation and I

do a little carb loading I make a few exceptions and I eat more carbs then I

notice immediately I get hungrier I gotta have frequent meals my body is

screaming for food but if I come home and I just cut out the carbs then I'm

back in true fat adaptation in 24 to 48 hours because I do have the metabolic

flexibility so that's the good news once you get this done right then you don't

have to do it over and over and over it gets easier and easier so here are the

10 signs that you are getting fat adapted number one thing you're gonna

notice is less hunger you eat your meals and you're not super hungry between

meals you don't need snacks etc just overall less hunger number two less carb

cravings you don't feel like when you're eating a meal that oh I have to have

that rice I have to have that potato a lot of people they can't just have meat

and vegetables they don't feel satisfied unless they have also stuffed in some

carbs number three is you don't feel a need for snacks a lot of people have

been told and trained to have three meals plus three snacks plus an evening

meal maybe but as you get fat adapted your everything levels out and you

notice that there's no problem at all skipping

the snacks number four no ravenous hunger so the character of your hunger

changes too that's some people they just get totally out of control they can't

function they get sleepy they get headaches they get irritable they get

angry they go out of their mind their body is screaming for food that all goes

away you're not gonna have that kind of hunger anymore and then you'll wake up

one morning and notice you want to skip a meal it's like I'm not hungry and

that's something that you should take the cue that don't eat if you're not

hungry your body is trying to tell you something it has plenty of food it has

plenty of energy resources just leave it alone and skip the meal sign number six

is you'll notice you get fat cravings that when you eat a meal you want it to

be really fatty if it's not dripping with butter if it's not a lot of fat in

there your body senses that it's missing something so then you're wondering well

now I just replace the carb craving for a fat craving no not really it's just

that when you're eating your body knows it wants that dense concentrated

high-quality fuel and with a carb craving you're perpetuating the problem

with the carb craving you're creating a blood sugar roller coaster with the fat

craving you're just providing your body a stable fuel that it needs and if you

eat it when your body asks for it you'll notice it becomes easier and

easier and easier to go longer without food something else you might notice at

this point is that if you get up in the morning and you forget to eat breakfast

like your long weekend then you get busy with something you go out in the yard

and all of a sudden it's 5:00 in the afternoon and you haven't eaten anything

and you didn't really think about it because your body is fat adapted it has

a stable source of fuel you don't need all that snacks that's a great sign that

your fat adapted another interesting sign is ketone strips because when you

first start burning fat and you're making some ketones a lot of

them are gonna spill out in the urine so the ketone strips that you pee on they

measure the ketones that get out of the body but as you get more and more fat

adapted your body produces more ketones and you would expect that ketone strips

to show a higher rate of ketones but instead they start showing a lower

number maybe even just a trace and that's because even though you're making

more ketones your body has up regulated its machinery to burn not just fat but

also to utilize the ketones and now your body is using them instead of spilling

them out in the urine so at first the ketone strips are going to show

increasing amounts and then they're gonna show decreasing amounts and that's

a great sign sign number eight no mood swings because a lot of mood swings have

to do with blood sugar and they have to do with energy supply so if your carb

dependence you're gonna have blood sugar swings as you get fat adapted you have

virtually no blood sugar swings today I measured my glucose and it was 80 before

I ate and then I had a very large meal 1,500 calories or so and afterwards my

blood sugar was a hundred and one so they're very very slight changes in

blood sugar and that reflects in your mood number nine it's also going to

reflect in your energy level because your mood and your energy often go

together so when your energy supply is stable then you always have energy

throughout the day so some people experience much better energy but

primarily what you'll notice is stable energy you're not dependent on food

you're not dependent on snacks to function sign number ten mental clarity

ketones is a fantastic fuel for the brain it likes it much better than

glucose actually and it's a more stable fuel plus when you become fat adapt

you've also decreased the inflammation in the body you've decreased

inflammation from grains and sugar but also because insulin in itself drives

inflammation and inflammatory processes so when you bring insulin down and

become fat adapted now the brain has more stable and it has better fuel and

less inflammation so for a lot of people this shows up as mental clarity the

brain fog lifts and they can think they can live in a way that they never have

felt for years now it's important to understand that while most people will

experience most of these signs not everyone is going to experience all of

them and that goes especially for the last two the energy and the mental

clarity because there's so many other factors that influence that and

primarily we're talking about people with sensitivities and autoimmunity and

other sources of inflammation and maybe hypothyroid so if you're not getting all

ten then chances are that you have a little bit more of a complex situation

you're not in the 80 or 90% but don't despair just keep being consistent with

these things and then maybe look for some help from someone who can help you

iron out those last few details and then a little bonus for you and this is kind

of interesting it's not necessarily due to fad adaptation per se it might be

more due to habits and neuroplasticity but here's a fact your taste buds will

change and this is a good thing because people think that oh I can never eat

that way because I'm used to eating this way well you can change your taste and

one way that you'll notice the first thing that you'll notice is that things

that you used to like that we're sweet now taste

nauseatingly sweet so for one example milk chocolate if you used to love milk

chocolate and you taste it now it would taste almost disgusting it would

so sweet so nauseating of course nowadays you don't eat milk chocolate so

you wouldn't know how that tastes but I'm just saying hypothetically and if

you were to fast for a couple of days and then you come back and you eat a

piece of 85% chocolate it will be like the sweetest thing you ever tasted this

is a good thing because you can learn to eat things you can learn to like things

everything that you think you like is because you learn to like it so just

learn to like the things that you know are better for you simple as that

if you enjoyed this video make sure to check out that one thank you so much for

watching I'll see you in the next video