Benefits Of Ketogenic Diet – Mark Sisson
SUMMARY
On this episode, Mark Sisson from Mark’s Daily Apple talks about the steps you can take to achieve ketosis and enjoy its various health benefits.
Mark emphasizes that there’s no best diet or work-out. There are many of choices, depending on what you want from your life.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
When you become ketogenic, hunger doesn’t run your life or dictate your every movement.The ketogenic diet creates ketones, which allow your body to require much less glucose and carbohydrates.
When you become ketogenic, you become better at accessing stored body fat and ketones, so you don’t need to eat as often.
The body wants to be a fat-burning machine, deriving most of its energy from stored body fat.
To become ketogenic, eliminate the sugars and sweetened beverages.
Remove processed grains, bread, pasta, and cereals from your diet to become ketogenic.
Make vegetables the basis of your diet.
Start becoming ketogenic by eliminating the clearly offensive foods and creating a list of the foods you can eat whenever you want.
A ketogenic diet is healthy and is not restrictive.
The human body is resilient, so you can try just about any diet without negatively impacting your health.
TRANSCRIPTION: BENEFITS OF KETOGENIC DIET – MARK SISSON
Luis Congdon
On today’s episode, we’re bringing on Mark Sisson from Mark’s Daily Apple to talk about the benefits of Ketogenic diet, and how you can become a fat burning machine.
Kamala Chambers
On this episode, we are here with Mark Sisson, best-selling author, and media personality. He’s an ex-endurance athlete, has taken the top place in a lot of competitions, and we’re excited to have him on the show to talk about the benefits of ketogenic diet.
Luis Congdon
Hey, Thriving Launchers, I’m excited today. We’re bringing on such a special guest, somebody who’s impacted me with his work, someone that I’ve been reading, following, and learning a lot from.
Without further ado, Mark from Mark’s Daily Apple joins us here on Thriving Launch.
Mark, are you ready to launch?
Mark Sisson
Let’s do it! Yeah.
Luis Congdon
Let’s do it.
One of the first things I want to talk to you about is you’re into health and how people eat. One of the things you talk a lot about is eating primal, connecting with the primal ways, and the benefits of ketogenic diet. Not all this processed food and all this complexity around diet and nutrition.
One of the things is I know you’re opening up some restaurants and that’s exciting. I want to ask you, what do you see is one of the biggest pitfalls around diet or nutrition or the way people are approaching health these days as it comes to what they’re consuming?
Mark Sisson
Well, there are too many bad options. That’s the problem. There are too many bad choices out there.
I’m looking at the world in which everybody chooses the healthiest option, which includes real food.
I’m a big fan of a vegetable or plant-based diet, healthy sources of protein, grass-fed beef, for instance, wild fish, pastured chickens, and eggs, cutting back on sugar, sugary drinks, cutting back on refined grains and in most grains.
Reason Why It Is Difficult To Realize The Benefits Of Ketogenic Diet
Mark Sisson
If you’re able to eliminate the offending foods, you’re still wind up with a pretty impressive array of very healthy foods. For some reasons, we’re just faced with these challenges everywhere we go which it makes difficult to see the benefits of ketogenic diet. There’s a great looking candy bar, a great looking Cinnabon, an attractive bowl of ice cream, an overly large bowl of pasta with a bunch of Alfredo sauce made with nasty oil.
It lies about the choices you make. I’m just trying to direct people in a way in which they make probably better choices that would align more with their goals, I guess.
Luis Congdon
What I like about what you’re saying is it’s just simple. It’s not complex because one of the things I’ve gone through in regards to nutrition is I’ve experimented. I went full on raw vegan, vegetarian, into the bodybuilding world, which was heavy meats, weight gainer, and doing all sorts of stuff.
Then I went into the keto diets, paleo diets, and all sorts of diets. At the end of the day, the thing that works for me is trying to keep it simple and make it applicable in daily life and not being overly complicated.
Now, the benefits of ketogenic diet are something I enjoyed. There were some challenges around it as well, but that’s the new hot thing people are getting into. Tim Ferriss recently a blog article about a listener of his show and got this inspiration to open up a keto restaurant and that’s an unmet area in regards to restaurants and eating out.
I’m curious on your insights on keto and what you think about that diet?
Benefits Of Ketogenic Diet – Reconfigures How Your Body Drive Energy From Different Sources
Mark Sisson
I have an upcoming book called The Keto Reset. It’s about the benefits of ketogenic diet, and one of them is to reconfigure how your body drives energy from different fuel sources.
Typically, most people in general around the world these days, get most of their energy from carbohydrate sources. And so, they’re always burning off glycogen in their muscles. They are burning through glucose or glycogen in their liver. They have to eat every couple of hours to keep their blood sugar up. That’s the way it’s been for decades for a lot of people.
Benefits Of Ketogenic Diet – The Body Becoming A Fat-Burning Machine
Mark Sisson
We look at it from a different point of view, which is your body wants to be a fat-burning machine. Your body wants to be driving most of its energy from stored body fat. That’s the reason we store these extra calories as fats because it’s fuel for the future.
The benefits of ketogenic diet look at how we can become better at burning fat and when we become better burning fat, we also become better at creating and burning off this additional little fuel sources that we call ketone bodies or ketones.
Benefits Of Ketogenic Diet – The Body Not Requiring Much Glucose And Carbohydrate Intake
Mark Sisson
The ketogenic diet is keto from ketones and genic, meaning to create. It’s a diet that produces these ketones that allows your body not to have to require much glucose and carbohydrate intake.
Over time, one of the benefits of ketogenic diet is you become good at burning off your stored body fat, as well as burning off fat from meals. You become good at generating energy from ketones. You build this metabolic machinery in your muscles, heart, and brain that can access and utilize these ketones as a fuel source more efficiently than your body would use glucose. These fuels burn without the fallout, or the reactive oxygen species or this free radical damage which we sometimes encounter because we’re beholden to the glucose space diet.
Benefits Of Ketogenic Diet – Not Needing To Eat As Often
Mark Sisson
When you become ketogenic, you are becoming better at accessing stored body fat and ketones. You don’t need as much carbohydrate. You don’t need to eat as often.
When you become ketogenic, your hunger doesn’t run your life. It doesn’t dictate your every movement. – Mark Sisson
You can go not just skipping a meal here or there. You could skip multiple meals in a row, maintain all the energy you want, not lose muscle mass, and not get sick.
Benefits Of Ketogenic Diet – Trending Towards Ideal Body Composition
Mark Sisson
The key here is you don’t get that hungry. When you’re not hungry, then, why eat? Hunger is there to dictate when we ought to be eating based on signals our bodies are giving us. If we’re not hungry, then that means we’re doing fine. We’re burning off fat and ketones. We’re trending toward our ideal body composition.
Knowing that food is always available if we need it, it’s freeing to be able to go about your daily life not having to think and planning everything around the next meal.
Kamala Chambers
What would you say as a recommendation to start this process so people can enjoy the benefits of ketogenic diet? Carbs are addictive. It’s hard to cut them out for most people.
What would you recommend to start?
How To Start Enjoying The Benefits Of Ketogenic Diet
Mark Sisson
For individuals to experience the benefits of ketogenic diet, we do a stair step process where we start by eliminating the obvious ones, which are the sugars, sweetened beverages, desserts, cakes, cookies, pies, and candies. Then, we eliminate the processed grains as well as the bread, pasta, cereals, and rice. We’re left with vegetables, which are great.
Mark Sisson
I just made a big salad for lunch. I’m fully into ketoses right now. My big salad probably had 15 grams of carbs total in a 3/4 or 4/4 mixing bowl. Then I douche it with a healthy fat-based dressing.
I have a company called Primal Kitchen that makes healthy sauces, dressings, and toppings and so, I have an excellent green goddess dressing. It’s creamy Green Goddess Dressing, and the primary oil in there is avocado oil, which is healthy.
When I put that avocado oil-based dressing on my salad, I’m getting most of my calories from fat, and just a tiny bit from the carbohydrates that are in the vegetables in that salad. Those are also what we would call slow burning carbs. They don’t just go straight into your bloodstream as glucose, the way a lot of other carbohydrates like from bread or pasta or even a potato.
Experience The Benefits Of Ketogenic Diet By Eliminating Offensive Foods
Mark Sisson
The question was how do you start this? You start up by removing the apparently offensive foods and creating a list of all the things you can eat whenever you want. That would include vegetables, clean sources of protein, healthy fats from nuts, seeds, avocado, and eggs.
A ketogenic diet is a very healthy diet and is not restrictive. It’s just that you get rid of some of those foods that would cost your insulin to go up, and which you become dependent if you eat them too often and too frequent.
Over time, you drop your carbs down from the standard American diet. Now, people are eating 350 to 500 grams of carbs a day. Very few individuals in the Paleo or Primal community eat more than 200 grams a day, and most of them keep it around 150 grams a day. Now, we’re talking about dropping it down to 50- 60 grams of carbs a day. That doesn’t mean you’re eliminating salads and green vegetables. It just means you’re getting rid of most of the other offensive stuff.
Kamala Chambers
I think eating more vegetables gives you the benefits of ketogenic diet.
I’ve studied different dietary theories, and one thing applies to every dietary theory out there is adding in whole foods, greens especially dark leafy greens, and vegetables.
I think an easier way to approach it for some people is to look at it as, “What can I add in and crowd out the other things that aren’t needed because I’m already full off of the things that have the nutrient density to them?”
I would love to hear from you a little bit more about ketosis and the process of achieving that, and getting into that state where a person can get the benefits of ketogenic diet.
Mark Sisson
Well, you get into that state because you’ve restricted your carbohydrate intake.
Revolutionary Benefits Of Ketogenic Diet
Mark Sisson
The evolutionary benefits of ketogenic diets are if you go back and try to put yourself in the in the environment of a person 200,000 years ago, food wasn’t available often. It wasn’t available frequently. It was rarely available and in small quantities.
A long time ago, there might be feast or famine mentality. You come across a stash of fruit, and you eat that to satiety, or you kill an animal, and you eat that for a day or two. But then, it might be two or three days when you don’t have anything to eat or very minimal amounts of green shoots and roots, and tubers.
Well, how does a body able to survive those days when there’s not a lot of food around? How is the body able to maintain energy and survive? Not just get by but have full cognition and the ability to respond to dangerous situations, and react with strength and power. It does that by diverting the dependency on glucose and glycogen to creating this capacity to access stored body fat and to create ketones.
Point Of Ketosis And The Benefits Of Ketogenic Diet
Mark Sisson
In the absence of any caloric intakes over the period of a couple of days, your body produces these ketones. It breaks that down. It produces ketones. It sends the ketones to the brain where the brain can use it for fuel instead of glucose. It sends ketones to the cardiac muscles so the heart could beat with full force and power.
The ketones can be burned in the muscle cells along with the fat, and as long as the work you’re doing isn’t intense glycolytic lifting work, your muscles exist very comfortably on primarily fat as fuel.
Mark Sisson
You can achieve this point of ketosis and have the benefits of ketogenic diet within just a few days if you restrict carbohydrates aggressively.
Modern Human Enjoying The Benefits Of Ketogenic Diet
Mark Sisson
Now, to the extent that you want to be a modern human enjoying the benefits of ketogenic diet for weeks at a time, you’ve got to be diligent about it. You got to be somewhat careful.
The first thing you do is stair step it down. Get rid of the offending carbs. Get down to where you’re comfortable eating 100 to 125 grams a day. Even though you’re not in ketosis, you will still be very comfortable going about your day and not having low blood sugar.
Then, when you dip down into below 50 grams of carbs a day and get into ketosis, there might be a couple of days where your brain goes, “Hey. Wait a minute. What are you doing here? I’m used to glucose, and now, you’re not providing any glucose.” What it’s doing is it’s signaling the genes to regulate up those enzymes systems that are good at burning fats and ketones.
Genetic Benefits Of Ketogenic Diet
Mark Sisson
There’s a genetic effect of ketosis that improves the efficiency of the mitochondria and increases the number of mitochondria so that you can burn more fat with less effort and more efficiency.
Some physiological things take place within the body within just a few days of going into ketosis that not only benefits you in the short term and for the next couple of days, but help you for the next couple of months or years if you do this right.
You can ratchet it into a renewed ability to burn fat that you won’t lose unless you go completely off the rails.
Luis Congdon
Mark, you did such an excellent job breaking that down, using some of the terms, and sharing the science of it to break it down in a very simple way.
To repeat in a simplified way what Mark has said is if you want to be fat burning machine and you want to lose the gut or wherever you’re fat tends to store. This is just one of the benefits of ketogenic diet.
This is one of the reasons why bodybuilders or people who are trying to get into shape quickly why this is one of the diets that are incredibly popular. I used it, and essentially it lets you cut down on carbs.
I went to a two or three percent carb intake no more, so I was barely eating any carbs. I measured everything. What ends up happening is your body now starts using fat for fuel, and it’s the primary source so then, you become a fat burning machine.
One of the things people will encounter as they do this is the diet can start to feel dull or the way of eating because we’re addicted to it.
Personally, I love rice. I love carbs. Honestly, probably, I have an addiction to them.
I’m curious from you what like two or three months? How do you feel about that? People that want experience the benefits of ketogenic diet. Do you think that’s possible? Do you think that’s healthy?
Health Benefits Of Ketogenic Diet Are Plenty
Luis Congdon
I know there’s research saying there are plenty health benefits of ketogenic diet. Some people quote some studies inaccurately saying being in ketosis is unhealthy. Based on my research, those are more studies that we’re talking about diabetics.
I’m curious from you. What do you think about this as a lifestyle?
Mark Sisson
It’s a potentially significant lifestyle regarding the health benefits.
Some studies show some crazy good things happen regarding anti-aging when you go into ketosis for extended periods of time. The cells in your body start to repair themselves as opposed to divide and figure out that they can create more and more cells. They cut down on the amount of cell division, and repair, and restore the genetic material. There’s a very strong repair mechanism that comes as a result of ketosis. That is one of the benefits of ketogenic diet.
We don’t have a lot of data on people that have been in ketosis for ten years. We will soon because there have been some individuals who’ve tried it.
Long-Term Benefits Of Ketogenic Diet
Mark Sisson
I have a friend who’s been in ketosis for four years. He loves it, wouldn’t change a thing, has extreme mental clarity, has ideal body composition, works out extremely, and plays sports. He eats one meal a day. He doesn’t eat until dinner time and then eats a dinner.
One of his comments to me was, “And even when I eat dinner, I sometimes have to be mindful that I’m eating enough because my appetite isn’t running my life like it used to.”
Luis Congdon
Reminds me of our interview with Dave Asprey, where he was talking about how so much of our energy and mental energy is focused around eating. That sparked in me this desire to not eat as often and to cut down on eating. Even doing things like intermittent fasting where I might fast for a day, or I might wake up in the first four, five, six hours of being awake, I don’t eat.
Mark Sisson
It’s crazy. I typically don’t eat until one o’clock every day of my life. I have a cup of coffee when I wake up in the morning. It’s not bulletproof by the way. There are no calories in it.
Luis Congdon
I don’t drink coffee either.
Mark Sisson
I go to the gym at ten o’clock. Today, I did a pretty intense upper body workout. I didn’t eat for three hours after the workout, and I’m maintaining muscle mass effect.
Luis Congdon
I got to interrupt you right here, Mark. Kamala and I don’t know how it is in your household. I’m sure it’s different because you’ve been doing this for a long time.
I’m always experimenting, and you said, “I didn’t eat for three hours,” and Kamala nodded her head because it’s something I’m doing. I’ll wake up. I won’t eat. I’ll have a big glass of water. Sometimes, I’ll take something and put it in the vita mix that’s just green stuff, no fruits, nothing. Just a few green things, drink it, head to the gym, or I’ll do it after the gym, but I won’t have a meal for a few hours after the gym. Kamala has repeatedly said, “I don’t think this is healthy.” Now, I’ve got you on the call, Mark.
Mark Sisson
I’ve had a similar discussion about what’s the right approach to workout regarding pre-workout meal or post workout meal.
Choices Are Based On What Benefits Of Ketogenic Diet You Want To Achieve
Mark Sisson
There’s no right or wrong answer about the proper approach. There are choices based on what you’re trying to achieve in your life and your workout strategy.
My strategy is when I work out fasted, I want to improve or increase the amount of testosterone and growth hormone that I generate as a result of that hard work out.
In the old days, when I was an endurance athlete, I would work out hard. I would immediately go home, and I would take down 100 grams of a carbohydrate, beverage or something to replenish the glycogen in my muscle.
That was mostly contemplated on the idea that I was going to go back and do some more hard stuff tomorrow, so I needed to be able to train hard on a daily basis. I don’t do that anymore.
Benefits Of Ketogenic Diet And Fasted Pre And Post Workout
Mark Sisson
Now, when I go to the gym, and I lift weights, in particular, I don’t want to replenish glycogen quickly because the glycogen or the carbohydrates which were taken in a post workout meal have the effect of blunting the testosterone and the growth hormone pulse I’ve just generated. They do that by raising insulin. Insulin blunts your growth hormone and testosterone.
I’m looking at it like, “Okay. What are the least amount of hard training I can do, and still get muscle mass, strength, power, speed, and all the things I want?” It’s because I’m not working out just for the sake of having something to do for an hour every day. I’m working out to be efficient and to improve my performance.
If improving my performance means I’m going to get stronger, then I’m all for lifting twice a week versus five times a week because that’s less work, pain, and suffering.
Benefits Of Ketogenic Diets Come Easily
Mark Sisson
When I do work out, I can work out even harder because I can summon the energy to dig deeper versus having to go back and do it hard every single day. Then, if I can recover faster because I have not blunted the testosterone and human growth hormone response to the workout, it’s much the better. That’s another effect of a fasted, pre workout, and post workout situation. One of the benefits of ketogenic diet is you can have those effects easily.
If I work out hard, I can come home from my workout, and I can test my blood. I might have 1.7 to 2.7 millimolar of ketones and a relatively high blood sugar even though I haven’t had anything like no carbohydrate for 16 hours, and no more than 50 grams for 35 hours.
Benefits Of Ketogenic Diet – Becoming A Good Glucose Maker And Creating Ketones
Mark Sisson
The reason why I have a high blood sugar is that my liver is making glucose because of the hard work I did in the gym. I’m a good glucose maker. I’m replenishing my glycogen stores without even having to have a post workout meal. I’m creating ketones, which are not just providing energy for my brain and for the muscles that I just worked out. Those ketones are also having an epigenetic effect on sparing protein so that I don’t break down from working out the way I would have broken down from the workout if I was still a sugar burner.
I said a lot there. I’m sorry if I confused people. This technology has existed for millions of years, but the fact that it’s made its way in the laboratories in the last decade is pretty compelling.
Kamala Chambers
I’m curious about this, and I just have some questions as a researcher of Luis. I think the only reason we have experts on the show is to settle domestic disputes.
Mark Sisson
That works. That’s a good business model.
Kamala Chambers
In all seriousness, since Luis has been doing this and not eating after the gym, I study him because I’m his partner. I noticed that he’d start getting short like a little snappy if he doesn’t eat.
Luis Congdon
It’s all lies.
Kamala Chambers
To me, that says “Oh, there’s a blood sugar imbalance because he hasn’t eaten.”
What would you say for that? Is Luis isn’t in a state of ketosis though he’s still eating carbs?
Mark Sisson
That’s interesting you make that distinction.
Benefits Of Ketogenic Diet – Functioning Well Even On Low Amounts Of Carbohydrate
Mark Sisson
The benefits of ketogenic diet come easy. It’s a lot easier if you’re in ketosis and you’ve gotten used to a low carb strategy. Even before I started dialing in and dabbling in long term ketosis, I was still excellent at functioning well on small amounts of carbohydrate. It just got better when I went into ketosis, and I experience more benefits of ketogenic diet.
You might be in what we call a no man’s lands where you probably are having too many carbs to be in ketosis but maybe not enough to an efficient sugar burner.
Luis Congdon
Well, it sounds like you’re re-inspiring me to try to start the process of experiencing the benefits of ketogenic diet.
Mark Sisson
Yeah.
A Human Body Is Resilient To Try The Benefits Of Ketogenic Diet
Mark Sisson
As I said, there’s no right answer here. We are always just experimenting and playing around with what works and what doesn’t.
The beautiful thing is a human body is resilient that you can try just about anything.
You’re not going to die, and you’re probably not going even negatively to impact your health.
It brings out those questions of who’s right? Who’s wrong? Whose way is the best?
Mark Sisson
For my life, I want to be happy, be healthy, and be successful. Sure, I want to be fulfilled. I don’t want to be hungry. Whatever I do is almost primarily centered on not being hungry.
How can I not be hungry? How can I go through my day, enjoying every single bite of food I put in my mouth? And then know when it’s enough to stop, and then not be compelled to eat more two hours or four hours or five hours later. With that outline, the ketogenic diet works well for me.
I also want to find more time to play. I want to play Ultimate Frisbee on the weekends with 20’s something. I want to go paddling for two hours and go hang out with whales as I’ve done in the last couple of weeks. I want to be able to hike an hour and a half or two hours with my dog. I want to snowboard in the winter time.
My training is all contemplated to the benefits of ketogenic diet which allow me to perform these playful events without getting injured. That’s how I’ve crafted my life is around maintaining ideal body composition, being good at burning fat, wanting to spend more time playing and less time struggling and suffering in my workouts. That’s what dictates my lifestyle.
Kamala Chambers
This has been fantastic to have you on the show. We’ve been here with Mark of The Daily Apple talking about the benefits of ketogenic diet.
I just encourage you to give it a shot. Try some of these things or all of the things that Mark has mentioned regarding the benefits of ketogenic diet.
One thing that is clear that you’ve said, Mark, is we are incredibly resilient. Our bodies are incredibly resilient.
I remember going through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. We studied over 100 dietary theories. And so, it was week by week that we’re trying all these different diets. I just encourage you all to experiment with this and see what works for you. With no harm at all, the very least is cutting out some of these sugars.
I just want to invite you to find ways to experience more vitality and energy, and the benefits of ketogenic diet that Mark has talked about. Keep thriving everyone.
