Key Keto Concepts — The Fundamentals (part 2 of 6)

The Top 3 Enemies of Ketosis

Adam Farr
Adam Farr
Sep 2, 2018 · 19 min read

Why It Begins In The Immune System

In the last lesson, I introduced you to Inflammation, Oxidation and Toxic Invaders as the top 3 Fat Burning Blockers. Understanding how these particular “enemies” affect your ability to burn fat, build muscle and have more energy, form the foundation for understanding how to make your body respond optimally to any diet and exercise program.

Whether it’s a Ketogenic Diet, Paleo, Vegan or any diet for that matter all fat burning and muscle building depends on whether or not you get these three forms of collateral damage under control. Once you get a handle on these three things, you’ll start to see your body transform within days!

What Are The Top 3 Enemies of Ketosis?

I’ve called this lesson “The Top 3 Enemies of Ketosis — Collateral Damage”. Inflammation and oxidation are a result of normal metabolic processes that have become exaggerated and inappropriate. Like friendly fire in a war zone, collateral damage will always happen inside your body, and it’ll always contribute to weight gain and weakness. The good news is, excessive “collateral damage” can be avoided if you take the right steps.

Since acute inflammation and oxidation are necessary by-products of a standard healing response and healthy metabolism, you’ll never be able to get rid of this sort of damage altogether. All you can do is reduce how often and at what level it occurs.

Also, you can never wholly reduce your exposure to “Invaders,” because doing so would mean living out the rest of your life in a germ-free bubble to avoid being exposed to all the bacterium, viruses, fungi, protozoans, and parasites that exist everywhere in your environment.

Nor would you want to live in a germ-free bubble because some of these invaders can be symbiotic. Meaning that they can work with your biology to serve and improve your health, depending on the circumstances.

Scary things are much more exciting to learn about; I’m going to show you the “bad” side of all these players and how they create the adverse side-effects implied by collateral damage from a resulting immune response. Let’s start with the first and most prevalent form of collateral damage, called Inflammation.

INFLAMMATION

Inflammation is the common denominator behind everything that makes you fat, sick and tired. In keeping with the theme of the previous lesson, inflammation can be viewed as an uncontrolled fire in your forest. Recall that the process of forest fires, serves a definite purpose in nature. It’s to rejuvenate the forest floor by giving new life an opportunity to take over and to settle in.

This kind of rejuvenation happens in your body in much the same way. When the inflammatory process removes dead and damaged cells, and unwanted junk material, it makes way for new and better functioning cells, that’ll promote the normal function of your internal ecosystem.

Inflammation in your body also acts as a “forest fire” which cleans up and removes unwelcome toxic invaders and any dead or damaged cells in the area.

This is the process of how your body heals itself, and the analogy of forest fires works well; because small fires destroy and remove dead plant material; while larger widespread fires are much more likely to destroy the entire forest ecosystem.

The inflammatory response of your immune system, helps you clean up toxic invaders and heal the affected area, so your body can function properly again, and you can get back to work.

Like forest fires, occasional and acute inflammation is excellent and ideal for continued health. It helps your immune system prepare itself for potential threats; as well as removing the build-up of waste products in any part of your body. It’s kind of like hiring a 24/7, “On-call” sanitation worker, equipped with a flamethrower.

However, things can start to go very wrong inside your body if the inflammation is chronic and widespread. It’s like allowing your beautiful forest to erupt into a blazing inferno and watching the flames destroy your ecosystem.

Nowadays, and because of the “fake foods” we eat; your immune system is under constant attack from every angle. Attacks that come from the junk in your environment; from poisoned food, water, air and from toxic interventions.

“Poisonous food” attacks usually come from eating a diet rich in S.A.D — C.R.A.P., which is one of the most appropriate acronyms I’ve ever come across.

S.A.D. — C.R.A.P. stands for:

Standard American Diet of Carbohydrates, Refined Foods, Artificial ingredients, and Preservatives.

A diet of SAD CRAP will contain all 3 FAT BURNING BLOCKERS, which I’ll be describing in greater detail in the next lesson.

Consuming any foods that fall under the category of “SAD CRAP” will set fire to the delicate forest ecosystem that is your body. The more consistently you consume SAD CRAP, means the more often these little “mini fires’ will burn in your forest, and the more likely an uncontrollable inferno might erupt.

This inferno is called chronic inflammation, and it’s the underlying cause of almost every known “Non-communicable” or Chronic disease, and it’s also the cause of what’s making you FAT, SICK, & TIRED.

Chronic inflammation can be avoided; if you avoid “Bad Fats,” “Bad Carbs & Sugars,” and “Bad Plants & Proteins.”

In order to start burning fat, build muscle and transform yourself quickly, you’ll want to stay away from these 3 Fat Burning Blockers starting today.

The next form of collateral damage is called oxidation…

OXIDATION

If inflammation is an immune response to “Toxic Invaders” and cell damage, then oxidation is the creation of even more damage as a by-product of inefficient cellular energy production. The only way to reduce oxidation is to become more Metabolically Flexible.

Oxidation is strongly linked to Inflammation, the two go hand in hand, and you might as well call it Oxi-Flamation (after all, it is oxygen that feeds the flame). The reason that oxidation occurs in our bodies, and must occur is because we breathe oxygen, and without it, we would die. You need oxygen to combust specific molecules in your body; to spark the explosive fire of metabolism.

Think of how the internal combustion engine of your car works.

First, a valve opens, and the piston lowers, letting a mixture of fuel and air in the combustion chamber. As the piston rises, it compresses the fuel and air mixture bringing the flammable molecules closer together. Then a spark from a spark plug, ignites the fuel and air mixture creating a controlled explosion, which pushes the piston back down again. Finally, the toxic exhaust is released into the atmosphere and the cycle begins again.

Intake > Compression > Combustion > Exhaust

>>> Intake > Compression > Combustion > Exhaust etc…

Over and over again.

Now, this is definitely an oversimplification with regards to how the body works. But it makes you appreciate the role oxygen plays in lighting the flame of your metabolism. The “exhaust” in this scenario is oxidation; and if you can’t get rid of that oxidative exhaust quickly enough, the deadly fumes will build up in the cabin of your car, and you’ll eventually end up dying from the excess of deadly poisons.

All of this taken together means that the side effects of being an oxygen breathing creature, is the eventual, and unavoidable death and decay of our bodies, due to the reactive oxygen floating around in the air of our “forest ecosystem.”

The best we can hope to do, is reduce the number of reactive agents floating around in our body; and improve our ability to “clean up” anything that’s left over.

This “oxygen” is ready to ignite a fire at any moment when combined with sugar because glucose metabolism produces many more Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS’s) than fat metabolism does. This excess of sugar in the body often causes an enormous and out of control “chronic” fire that your body just can’t handle in the long term.

These oxidants spread around the body, initiating a chain reaction that damages the membranes of neighboring cells in an attempt to regain lost electrons by stealing them from neighboring molecules.

Imagine how iron looks when it starts to rust. It falls apart due to the same process happening in your body…oxidation.

We all know how iron can get old and “rusty”, but do we appreciate that the same chemical processes are underway in our bodies every day. In the same way, your body will AGE pre-maturely (like accumulating rust on iron), if you don’t find any way to minimize the amount of oxidation that occurs in your cells.

Another way of looking at this lost electron situation is imagining a pair of jeans with a hole in the knee. The jeans function much better without the holes in them, but now and then, they naturally rip and tear because you’ve been wearing them out as time goes by.

To patch up the holes of your favorite pair of jeans, you try to solve the problem by ripping a hole in the material of another pair of jeans; and using the fabric from the second, to repair the first.
This is called an Oxidation Reduction Reaction. It’s when one molecule steals an electron from another molecule, to “look and feel more complete.”

Now your second pair of jeans also has a hole in it, and so, to repair the second pair of jeans, you rip a hole in your third pair of jeans to repair the second. This process continues as one ripped pair of jeans will continue to “steal fabric” (or Electrons) from other “Jeans” (or molecules).

Eventually, you have a chain reaction of events that leaves you with a wardrobe full of patchy & ripped up pants and all of your jeans have now become a little bit weaker and little less resistant to wear and tear. Despite the brilliant patchwork.

Now that the delicate denim fibers of your cellular “DNA”, are frayed and broken, they’ll be less able to handle the stress of daily life. This gradually leads to the unhealthy increase of body fat around your belly, hips, and thighs. Now you watch in horror as your body fat begins to stretch the seams of your once stylish denim pants. All this chronic oxidation is slowly making you fatter!

It’s all happening because your immune system takes up a lot of energy to continually repair the damage created in your jeans (genes), and eventually all your genes (jeans) get damaged beyond repair and become too old and ugly old to work properly. In a nutshell, this is the process of aging in its simplest form.

The only way to slow this aging and fattening process down, is to become more metabolically flexible through particular changes in your diet and lifestyle. Which means giving your body the capacity to use a cleaner burning fuel, one that doesn’t produce as much inflammation & oxidation as a by-product of its metabolism.

The particular fuel in question is short chain fatty acids (SCT’s), better known as the Ketones your body produces when you follow a Ketogenic Diet. The ability to create large amounts of these ketones, come from consuming the right kinds of dietary fat, with an appropriately executed intermittent fasting protocol.

In order to reach this metabolic state of flexibilty, your GMBM Complex must “healed and sealed” and all other relevant training, and lifestyle variables, must be optimized.

Yes, I know it seems like a lot, but trust me, the process of getting healthy isn’t nearly as complicated as you might think when you follow my systematic approach and my Key Keto Concepts.

Keep in mind that the oxidation process makes you FAT, SICK & TIRED because it’s like punching holes into the bottom of a water bucket, and expecting the bucket to hold the water properly. Your cells and the metabolic processes that go on inside of them, are just like having a controlled chemical reaction happening inside of that bucket.

Keeping your cells healthy, means having no holes in your bucket; but if you’re eating the wrong foods, sleeping poorly, or you simply look and feel like crap, then there are definitely “holes” in your bucket.

This means that your body will have to deal with all of the spilled chemicals that are creating an internal mess inside your delicate ecosystem.

This mess is like an oil spill in a fresh water lake; and it needs to be cleaned up before the damage overwhelms your system, and you develop a non-communicable disease, and are given toxic medications to treat it.

Referring back to my analogy of the school and the battle between your immune system and the toxic invaders. If you have body fat to burn, it means your body isn’t doing an outstanding job of mopping of the mess, created by having the holes in your bucket (or cells).

This mess from oxidation then transforms into an inflammatory response as the school janitors rush to the scene, tripping over themselves and sliding over the wet floor, in an attempt to get on the job as quickly as possible.

Once on the scene, they try to clean up the metabolic mess that’s been created. When there’s a mess to clean, the cleanup effort is called inflammation and the immune cells (or janitors) will crowd into the affected area resulting in the typical symptoms of inflammatory swelling, redness, heat, and pain.

All of this commotion can and will block access to that area until they finish cleaning up. Making for over-crowded hallways and blocked corridors the next time the alarm bell rings. All of this is how your cells age at the most basic level.

It’s not just a problem of the excessive oxidation, created through inefficient metabolic processes. It’s a problem of being able to clean up the mess you make when you produce any kind of energy. Whether it’s from using fat, carbohydrates, protein or ketones for fuel.

For the record, optimized fat metabolism and ketosis is the cleanest burning fuel your body can use; and burning body fat as a source of fuel is what a healthy metabolism is designed to do.

Aging cells means an aging body, which means a decreased ability to handle everyday stressors, resulting in fat gain, loss of strength, low energy and a reduced ability to recover from, or manage anything life throws at you.

The single greatest contributor to excessive oxidative damage, depends entirely on what your body burns most often as it’s the primary source of energy. It’s either, protein, carbohydrates, fats or ketones.

The chances are high that you’re burning sugars for fuel most of the time, rather than burning fat, which is much less oxidative. In this way, considerably less oxidative damage and inflammation will be produced when you consume a high fat, low carb eating regime, that follows the principles of the Keto-Biome Diet.

This style of eating is the closest thing we have to the “youth pill”. It’s the secret to having a young, healthy looking body, for as long as possible.

In other words, the more sugar you burn for fuel in your lifetime, then the faster and more often you create “holes in your jeans” or “Holes in your buckets”, and the quicker you will age, and become fat, sick and tired.

The process of burning fats for fuel results in the slower aging of your body because less of these “holes” are created over time. When you become metabolically flexible and burn fat for fuel, you’ll have a higher capacity to burn body fat and build muscle as you get older. This is much better than slowly becoming more overweight and less energetic because of following the typical everyday eating lifestyles.

Since oxidation is the grandfather of fat gain, and because it’s happening the most at the level of the mitochondria, we can safely assume that it’s almost always an inflamed, and dysfunctional mitochondria, at the root of the aging process.

If you continue to force your mitchondria to metabolize glucose (sugar) to feed your cells, then you’ll only age faster and die sooner, while developing a few diseases along the way.

If you teach your body to burn fat through becoming Metabolically Flexible, the metabolic wastes from energy production, will contribute much less to the degree of oxidative stress in your body. Hence, slowing aging, and helping you get lean and feel stronger, and for longer!

Again, and this is worth repeating; i believe that the best way to reduce “Oxi-Flammation” is by becoming metabolically flexible and remaining in a state of fat metabolism for the majority of the day.

That is what optimal ketosis and following the Keto-Biome Diet, is all about!

And Finally, The last category of Fat Burning Blockers is “Toxic Invaders”:

TOXIC INVADERS:

There are so many “microscopic bad guys” out to take advantage of an overworked, and stressed out an immune system; that I named my last category as Toxic Invaders.

Fat gain, chronic conditions, and non-communicable diseases can almost always be traced back, to an immune response of some kind. Your immune system responds to threats in the environment, and when this response becomes chronic, or inappropriate, it’s like an unrelenting traumatic stress that your body just can’t deal with.

Imagine a constant influx of invaders from outside your “army base”, trying to break through the perimeter fence and fuck shit up. These “invaders” can be in the form of almost anything microscopic (broadly categorized as pathogenic infections).

Now, imagine your immune system has set up guards along the perimeter of your base in multiple watchtowers. There are white blood cells in the watchtowers, acting as sentinels who are ready to signal your “Immune Cell Army,” to come and defend against any would-be attackers.

The defenders of your body are the white blood cells of your immune system, who are only trained to fight off particular types of infection, and handle the stress of being under attack just for short periods of time.

Chronic stress of any kind on your immune system, means you’ll get sick, fat and tired, conserving your energy and preserving your metabolic resources, in an effort to fight the invaders that threaten your existence.

Much like in a human army, this white blood cell army can quickly begin to feel overwhelmed and overrun, if they fall under consistent and unrelenting attacks by the pathogens.

Under normal conditions, invaders would be located and identified by the white blood cells and the appropriate defense systems would be initiated. Resulting in the deployment of a coordinated defense strategy, by your immune system.

When you’re healthy, the defense strategy is successful, and the invader is bagged, tagged and destroyed. Which is lingo for caught, identified and killed. However, if the white blood cell army finds itself under constant attack, the immune cells won’t have enough time to accurately recognize what is and what isn’t an actual threat to your body.

They’ll begin to attack other cells and proteins, indiscriminately over time, without following the “rules of engagement.” The immune system then begins to attack anything and everything that appears to come from “outside the wire”. This always causes chaos of some sort, which usually manifests as a disease state or metabolic dis-ease of your body.

This inappropriate response to anything on the “outside coming in” means your body will be in a state of alarm constantly, regardless of whether or not there’s a real threat.

Sound familiar?

If you have an auto-immune disease or condition of some kind, then this is what’s happening inside your body every day. In the minds of your white blood cell soldiers, they might as well shoot at anything and everything since “the war” has no end in sight and everything they are exposed to, now looks like an enemy.

When your body mistakenly identifies a neutral or friendly cell as an enemy, this is a sorry result of something called “Molecular Mimicry.” Where a “friendly” protein molecule looks like the uncanny double of another “unfriendly” protein molecule; that has been put on your immune systems “Most Wanted List”.

The trauma of past attacks becomes so deeply ingrained in the minds of the white blood cell warriors that they can’t keep their fingers off the trigger as they attack the bad guys, and also the neighboring good guys and helpless bystanders.

Reigning chaos and destruction around them which results in more Oxi-Flammation, and a cascade of chemical reactions which will make you more fat, sick & tired.

It’s only a matter of time before your “genes” accumulate enough damage, that your body creates the perfect environment for the development of long-lasting dysfunction or disease.

Here’s a tiny list of some common NCD’s (Non Communicable Diseases): Alzheimer’s, Arthritis, Asthma, Autism, ADD, Cancer, Crohn’s, Colitis, Diabetes, Fibromyalgia, Heart Disease, Obesity, Osteoporosis and Strokes.

I won’t go any further with the list of potential ailments, because over 97% of chronic illnesses that plague modern society, can be traced back to Inflammation, Oxidation and the Toxic Invaders who are playing out this scenario in your body on a daily basis.

As you can now appreciate, eating the wrong foods won’t just make you fat, sick and tired, it’ll kill you!

Avoiding SAD CRAP

Remember:

SAD CRAP is an acronym for: The Standard American Diet, of excessive Carbohydrates, Refined foods, Artificial products and Processed ingredients.

Some of the most significant inflammatory catalysts found in the SAD CRAP Diet, are listed here.

The first catalyst, is the hormone Insulin; which when excreted by the body, helps to metabolize sugars. The more insulin you produce in your lifetime, means the faster you age because of increases in the production of inflammatory markers, as a by product of damaging sugar metabolism.

The second catalyst is, Lipopolysaccharides (or LPS’s, think “Little Pieces of Shit”). These are dead bacteria who’s insides have been split open and remain stuck to long chains of saturated fat. They provoke a potent immune response if they pass through the gut wall.

The third inflammatory catalyst, is Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids (or PUFA’s) from vegetable oils. These are usually chemically processed, and come from GMO plants that are being sprayed with poisonous pesticides.

The exposure to each of these inflammatory catalysts, traces back to uninformed food choices.

For example; when you consume the wrong types carbs, you’re likely to increase insulin production.

When you underestimate the destructive powers of vegetable oil, you’re injecting yourself with highly reactive, easily oxidized and pro-inflammatory fat molecules.

When you’ve eaten foods that expose your body to toxic invaders (like LPS’s), you begin to create a weak a susceptible leaky gut.
All of these inflammatory catalysts are present in the SAD CRAP diet. Leaving your GMBM complex susceptible, to chronic inflammation, oxidation, and exposure to toxic invaders.

If you are eating the “CRAP” from the SAD CRAP diet, it means you’re doing everything you possibly can to reduce your energy, destroy you motivation, and increase the amount of fat on your body, and especially around your mid section.

How to Start Reducing “Oxi-Flammation”

To truly reduce overall inflammation in your body, you must appreciate the fact that fat metabolism is much less inflammatory, and oxidative, as compared to carbohydrate metabolism.
The steps to avoiding Pro-Inflammatory foods are:

Step 1: Avoid Bad Fats

Which means avoiding vegetable oils, and the animal fat from traditionally raised livestock. Commercially raised animals have consumed lectin containing foods like soy and grains, or have been given antibiotics, and hormones to fatten them up before slaughter.

These animals have also been fed cheap sources of fats from vegetable oils to help make the animal more fat, sick and tired, and ready to be eaten by misinformed consumers.

Do you really want to be eating flesh full of lectins, LPS’s, molecular-mimickers, antibiotics, hormones and other substances, for your tired and stressed immune system to deal with?

Do really you want to be consuming pro-inflammatory PUFA’s, indirectly from the animal products you consume, and directly from cheap and dirty industry oils. The ones that food manufactures use to make food like products more affordable, to the misinformed and hungry customer?

If you continue to eat these compounds, do you think doing so will help you burn fat; and without having to go on a miserable starvation diet?

Remember… You are What You Ate, Ate.

Step 2: Avoid Bad Sugar

Which means avoiding anything that falls under the acronym of SAD CRAP Foods.

This means avoiding carbohydrate consumption from inferior sources, that go against the principles of the traditional human diet.

Make sure not to exceed your body’s actual carbohydrates requirements, as they relate to whether or not you adhere to a properly designed training program.

Also, avoid immune reactive sources of grain, dairy and soy, as all of the modern store bought versions of these foods are poisioned by lectins to some degree, and contain pesticides and other chemicals as well. These particular foods not only contain sugars, but tend to be a potent source of molecular mimickers.

Step 3: Avoid Bad Plants & Proteins

Which means avoiding lectin containing foods entirely if you are just starting out, and then reducing your lectin exposure by adequately sourcing and preparing the meals you put in your body.

Vegetables that originated from North America are the worst offenders and include but are not limited to many types of grains, legumes, soy and dairy products. Since the animals we eat also eat this food, even poorly sourced animal meat is questionable.

Don’t feel discouraged

If you made it through those three steps, I don’t want you to feel like you have no options. I know it seems like I just named everything that’s out there; and in a sense, I did. But this is only because most of us get our food from food, indirectly from food industry subsidized farmers, who follow the types of agricultural practices that propagate these issues in the first place.

The secret to regaining control over your health, as you’ll come to see, is understanding where the foods come from and how it’s grown, raised, prepared and preserved. Traditional farming practices and food culture are what make the difference in your health.
There’s a reason that people who lived 150 years ago, didn’t suffer from the same epidemic of obesity and sickness that we have today.

The foods you eat, and the combination of toxins or chemicals they contain, in conjunction with the health of your GMBM complex are what matters most.

It’s what decides whether or not you’ll be able to you burn fat and build muscle in all the right places; and while helping you get you into an optimal state of ketosis.

These simple solutions are found in the member’s area of KetoKickStartClub.com. This is where I’ll be providing you with food lists, and video tutorials on the subject matter, so that all this information becomes practical and sustainable, and allows you to begin to apply it in your own life; and at your own pace.

All these facts are essential to appreciate, but you don’t have to remember everything. You just have to understand why and how the Keto-Biome diet works, so you can feel motivated enough to trust that it will work for you. This education I’m providing you with, is to help you see the same solutions to better health that I see.

This knowledge will help you to find the will-power to stick to these principles for the first 30 days, so that you can immediately begin to feel the difference in your body and mind.

I want you begin to understand how big a difference this information can make in your quality of life.

What if I’m Exposed to Toxic Invaders?

Invaders include: Chemical Toxins, Pathogenic Bacteria/Viruses/Fungi/Protozoans/Parasites/Prions & Their Antigens, like LPS’s & other Molecular Mimickers.

All of which tend to come in contact with and irritate the gut walls.

When it comes to Toxins:

1) Reduce Toxic Load by avoiding industrial chemical products

2) Promote Natural Toxin Elimination by sweating it out and drinking a lot of water

3) Reinforce Phase 1 & Phase 2 Natural Detox Pathways by using liver support supplements and flushes / cleanses

4) Understand the side effects of detoxification, so you don’t revert back to old habits 5) Minimize Toxic Exposure by controlling for your air, food and water quality.

When it comes to Bad Bacteria, Viruses, Fungal Infections,Parasites and Prions:

1) Source the food you purchase from organic or biodynamic farmer.

2) Be careful with eating out

3) Eliminate Dysbiosis of the Microbiome

4) Avoid Mycotoxins in “cash crops” and other sources

5) Avoid Molds/Mildews etc.

If you would like to receive my personal recommendations on where you can buy your own food, please message me at info@morphfit.com

Adam Farr

Written by

Adam Farr

Adam Farr is a published health and fitness writer, competitive powerlifter and nutrition expert with 15 years of experience transforming the lives of others.

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