Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

Your body uses 3 energy sources: the primary & most important is glucose, a kind of sugar; it’s so important your body is always making it. Alcohol can also be an energy source and you’ve certainly seen people who survive on it. However, the source of energy people are trying to invoke to lose weight comes from you adipose tissue, your fat. If you’re not getting a lot of glucose in your diet, your body resorts to getting it from your fat, called ketosis, which is where keto diets get their name. Besides losing weight, ketosis has the added benefit of not needing much insulin because insulin is produced by your pancreas to match the amount of glucose in your blood. The side effects of insulin are all bad so the less the better. Careful though because there’s a fine line between losing weight and full ketosis: so much that your breath smells sweet & your urine becomes discolored. If your diet is so strict that all the glucose your body needs has to be internally manufactured, it uses the protein from your muscles to do it. Not only that, all the little stores of glucose in your muscles that give you strength are depleted. Even worse, your brain can’t use any source of energy but glucose, so too low amounts make you lethargic & stupid. That’s why dieting is a science.