Exogenous Ketones: When to Take Them
It’s Thomas DeLauer with Keto-Mojo, and today, I’m giving you the lowdown on testing your ketones when you’re using exogenous ketones on a ketogenic diet. First off, a quick background. Exogenous ketones are a form of ketones that you can take in supplement form, that will give you additional beta-hydroxybutyrate. For those that are already in nutritional ketosis on the keto diet, it’s giving you additional fuel. For those that are not in nutritional ketosis, it’s essentially giving you another source of fuel on top of glucose. Now it’s not quite that simple, it does go a little bit more in depth than that. If you’re truly not in a nutritional state of ketosis on a low-carb diet, you’re not going to achieve all the benefit of utilizing exogenous ketone supplementation. But more importantly, let’s talk about how you can determine when you should be using exogenous ketones, based on where your ketone levels land, by using the Keto-Mojo Meter.
What Time Should You Take Them?
What you want to do is find a time when you’re ordinarily low on ketones. For most people that’s going to be when they get up in the morning. Their ketone production is naturally going to be a little bit lower, because they’re naturally going to be in that state of gluconeogenesis where their body is breaking down protein into a usable form of carbohydrates (blood glucose or blood sugar) as a fuel source. A perfectly natural thing, nothing to be alarmed with. But you can give yourself a little bit of a brain boost and a little bit of an energy boost by using exogenous ketones at that point in time. Now, not everyone will be low on their natural ketones in the morning, so you need to test to make sure. What you can do is sort of manipulate your blood ketone levels by looking at your patterns, by testing throughout the course of the day, and starting to supplement ketones when you would normally fall a little bit lower.
Now, this will come in handy for someone that’s trying to preserve muscle mass a little bit more. If you’re concerned with your body breaking down protein and using it for energy, then utilizing exogenous ketones during those points in time will be really, really powerful. But here’s the thing, you don’t really want to be using exogenous ketones when you already have a high level of ketones in your blood, simply because your kind of wasting them. You want to use the nutritional ketone bodies as much as possible, the ones that your body is endogenously producing because they’re going to allow you to burn more body fat. As soon as you add exogenous sources in, your body’s going to burn through those first, before it starts to burn the fat. So, that’s again, where using a Keto-Mojo Meter can really help you out. It can help preserve your muscle, but it can also help expedite the fat loss or weight loss and enjoy the other health benefits of the fat-burning diet because you’re making sure you’re taking your ketones at the right point in time. Just because Person A needs to take ketones in the morning, doesn’t mean the Person B needs to. Again, like I say in all my videos, everyone is different. There’s bio-individuality at play, and that’s again, where testing comes in handy.
Why You Should Test with the Keto-Mojo Meter
Another common use for utilizing exogenous ketones is during long bouts of activity or athletic performance. But the thing is, it can get confusing, because if you’re out on a longer run or you’re doing some kind of longer workout, you might feel that the reason you’re fatiguing is because your ketones are lower. But it could just be that your body is shifting over to using glucose at that very point in time, because maybe you’re spending a little bit more energy. You will never truly know where you stand, unless you test. Which is why whenever I’m doing long or extended bouts of activity, I will generally test halfway through. Now, the beauty of this, is that you wouldn’t have to test every single time that you work out. You could test for a few workouts and start to understand what is triggering a given symptom or side effects. You can help yourself understand if it’s a symptom of lower ketone levels or if it’s a symptom of your body switching over into being glucose fueled for a short period of time. You don’t have to test through every single workout, but it does give you a solid baseline. So hopefully this video gives you a solid understanding of how you can maximize your ketogenic lifestyle utilizing ketones, but also allowing you to save some money, so you’re not necessarily using ketones all the time, by using your Keto-Mojo meter to see when you really need them. You really don’t want to be guessing, especially when it starts costing you more money. So that’s why we always say, “Leave the guesswork out of the equation, “and leave the measuring to the meter.” I’m Thomas DeLauer with Keto-Mojo, and I’ll see you soon.
