The Role of Calories in Ketosis and Ketogenic Diets


Going back the calories in calories out conundrum, it really depends on what the calories are from. We talked about how calorie influences can do a lot of different things. In ketosis, let’s say for example you consume fat calories from MCT’S?

Well, if you are already in somewhat of a state of ketosis then fat calories that come from MCT’s are going to illicit a catalyst for more energy which is going to yield more energy expenditure, and more fat burning.

Also discussing white adipose tissue versus brown adipose tissue, and cholecystokinin (CCK).

A State of Ketosis and Fat Calories from MCT’s

Video Transcript

A calorie a calorie it’s something that I’ve talked about before it’s something that a lot of people ask me and there’s one particular question that comes to mind that I want to address in this video but before I get to that question I want to introduce a good friend of mine Joe Anderson who’s a a PhD in chemical engineering and has also published over 40 peer-reviewed articles in the world of pulmonary science and he is an expert in ketosis and also an expert in how we measure ketones I think you’re a good person to really talk to you about the world of calories sure yeah I like to so the question that I want to bring to mind is that of is a calorie a calorie and what someone brought up to me was if someone were to increase their calories but be on a ketogenic diet would they still lose as much weight as someone that was just on a calorie restrictive diet so in other words if you’re eating the right kind of foods can you get away with eating more calories does calories in versus calories out really matter and I want to turn it to you just briefly just kind of a big picture on this on what your take is on that and then I’ve got some ideas that I want to bounce off you to yeah that’s great and I think kind of the sort of it is calories and calories out do matter but the nuance piece is it depends on what calories you’re putting in right if you put in calories like sugar and you have less sugar calories than your in your burning then that deficit so the difference between how much you bring it in and how much you need is gonna be subsidized by your stored body fat right the problem with that is how long can you do that for and it may be for a month maybe for a couple months but your vincit gonna burn out and that’s why those calorie restriction diets are very difficult so what you really want to do is have good calories coming in and I know a lot of people will go on a diet and the first thing people will say is eat healthy foods and a lot of times the reason that works these are cutting out all those process and junk foods so once again the type of calorie is important if you can get rid of foods that cause your body to have dysfunction and it may be hormonal dysfunction it may be processing dysfunction and replace those with good calories that’s a step in the right direction then the second piece along with that once again the nuance piece is if you’re on a high fat low sugar diet one of the nice pieces of that is it allows you to regulate how much you want to bring in right it’s satiate your appetite so you may not overeat with a high fat very low sugar diet and that’s gonna once again kind of balance out your calories and calories out I actually it’s funny you say I just did a video yesterday so it’s fresh in my mind about you know CCK cholecystokinin and how ketosis affects that and i don’t want to go into a lot of detail on that but basically CCK is a hormone that is released especially when you’re in ketosis that does cause you to be satiated and so a calorie is not always a calorie but one thing that I want to really address in this and we were talking about this before the video and what actually spawned this video to begin with was the fact of truly finding where your baseline caloric needs are is extremely extremely difficult so to be able to say that you need to be in a calorie deficit although that’s true because simple thermodynamics do apply you do need to yes technically be consuming less calories to in order to lose weight we don’t really know what less calories is and it can change from day to day because we have so many different external influencing factors we have you know things like insulin that will definitely influence other hormones we have cortisol we have testosterone we have estrogen we have our moods we have heat we have cool we can’t ever determine exactly where we are calorically where we need to be right it’s an average measurement and it’s measured like you said it’s probably varying every day and it depends on the condition so when you do one of those measurements it’s it’s a measurement that’s taken over about 30 minutes in a resting position in a bed but like you said that how does that change you know hour by hour minute by minute is is somewhat unknown so there is an individualized piece of that that’s certainly gonna change the other piece that I want to go back to is this calories and calories out and the Civic types of calories you also have to remember to add to that list is you have different types of fat right you have the white adipose tissue the brown adipose tissue so your brown adipose tissue can be kind of the the use of fat in the brown adipose tissue can be separate from energy generation meaning it’s not creating an energy for your body to use it’s just creating heat so if you have a lot of that tissue it’s just simply creating heat burning up calories how does that affect your basal metabolic rate there’s a tremendous point and I’m gonna back up to make sure that that’s explained well because that’s extremely extremely good and that’s yeah what do you mentions about brown fat and white fat you have two different kinds of fat in your body in case you didn’t know brown fat is there just to essentially keep you warm and that means that the calories that are feeding that brown fat are feeding the fat to keep you warm it’s just being burned it’s not necessarily being burned for energy then you have the white fat now there’s you know people that say one is bad and one is good in reality they’re both neutral they both have their place but if you have more brown fat and you’re in a position to definitely just burn for heat that’s correct yeah yeah so and that’s that’s that’s a piece going back to it calories in calories out it really depends on what the calories are and one more thing too I mean like we talked about also is what that calorie influences can do a lot of different things so like with ketosis let’s say for example you consume a fat calorie that comes from MCTS well if you are already in somewhat of a state of ketosis then that fat calorie that comes from ncts is going to illicit it’s going to be a catalyst for more energy which is going to yield more fat burning it’s going to yield more energy expenditure so there’s so many varying factors that we can look at and you know then you take a look at that same calorie coming from a couple grams of sugar or something like that a whole different ballgame now you’re triggering an insulin response opening the cell door way to store fat but it doesn’t change the fact that sure if you want to lose weight you should be in lower calories right right that’s exactly yep well I mean having you here I mean you’re an expert you someone that’s on the team with with level in case you guys don’t know that level is level is a way that you can measure your breath acetone levels to determine if you’re in a fat-burning state you can learn a little bit more about level by clicking on the link and checking them out but I wanted to take advantage of having dr. Joe Anderson here to be able to talk a little bit more about ketosis talk a little more about fat burning and whether or not you are in a fat-burning state so thanks y’all yeah thanks