Your body is designed to have the metabolic flexibility to use both fat and glucose for fuel — not just one or the other. The reason conventional dietary advice has failed so miserably is because eating a high-carb diet for a long period of time results in the loss of this metabolic flexibility, making you unable to effectively burn fat for fuel.
Last year, the British National Obesity Forum and the Public Health Collaboration issued a joint report based on the analysis of 43 obesity studies, warning the policy to promote a low-fat, high-carb diet is having a “disastrous impact on health.”1,2,3 In conclusion, the report issued a strong recommendation to overhaul dietary guidelines to recommend a low-carb, high-fat diet instead, along with intermittent fasting or skipping meals, as chronic grazing or snacking between meals is a significant contributor to obesity.
In short, most people not only eat the wrong foods and too much of it, they also eat too frequently. Lately, the ketogenic diet has become increasingly popular, and its popularity is largely driven by the sheer number of success stories. A recent article4 by CNBC, for example, notes how Silicon Valley has embraced the ketogenic diet in hopes of reversing type 2 diabetes and living longer.
Efficient Fat-Burning Is Crucial for Optimal Health and Longevity
When your body is able to burn fat for fuel, your liver creates water-soluble fats called ketones that:
- Burn far more efficiently than carbs, thereby creating fewer reactive oxygen species (ROS) and secondary free radicals that can damage your cellular and mitochondrial cell membranes, proteins and DNA
- Decrease inflammation, as they are histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors