Recently I ran across a great article on Mark Sissons blog "Mark's Daily Apple" pertaining to becoming "Fat Adapted." What does it mean to become "fat adapted?" In simple terms, your body is able to efficiently utilize and burn fat as a primary fuel source.

For most people that follow the USDA dietary recommendations to eat more than half of their daily calories in the form of carbohydrates, they burn sugar as their primary fuel source. Once those carbohydrates are consumed they are broken down into simple sugar. As I have mentioned in previous columns, your body can only store a small amount of sugar at a time in the form of glycogen that is stored in muscle and liver. What's not stored as glycogen is burned off very quickly and since you can only burn a set amount of sugar at any given time, you typically have excess. What happens to the remaining excess sugar?

It is converted into fat stores.

That brings us to the next question: What happens to the protein and the fat we consume?

Some of the protein is used to repair and maintain your body at the cellular level. The rest is stored as fat. What about the fat that is consumed? It is also stored with your existing fat.

So you can see we humans are very good at storing fat.

The reason for this is once our bodies have used that small amount of sugar in the form of glycogen, it must also keep blood glucose levels below a set threshold or the sugar becomes toxic and starts damaging our cells. As we have evolved in a somewhat feast or famine life cycle, our bodies have learned to store the excess sugar for later use in the form of fat.

Why isn't the protein and fat used just as efficiently as sugar for fueling?

Your body uses available sugar first. Since many of us live sedentary lives, we typically do not place enough demand on our bodies to require the other fuel sources fat to be used. After a while, your body gets very accustomed to only using the easily burned fuel, sugar.

The younger you are the more flexible you metabolism is, and you can switch between sugar and fat fueling more easily. As you get older, your cells tend to use what's easiest, burning sugar. When you start to become fat adapted, your body no longer looks for its normal supply of glucose, as its primary fuel source and you feel less hungry and smaller meals tend to hold you for longer periods.

Now the big question, how do we become fat-adapted?

The basics to jump starting your body into a fat burning machine are simple and I have covered aspects of this in a few of my past columns.

• Do not eat sugary foods. Absolutely no soda pop, candy, anything with high fructose corn syrup, aspartame etc.

• Reduce your total carbohydrates to between 50 and 100 grams a day, depending on your activity levels.

• Do not do high impact cardio etc. while you convert yourself to be fat adapted.

• When eating your 50 to 100 grams of complex carbohydrates a day, ensure it is in the form of whole fresh organic foods as much as possible.

• Be sure to eat protein that is not too lean. You need some fat in your daily caloric intake.

• Intermittent fasting is another aspect to help become fat adapted.

How long it will take to become fat adapted will depend on a number of factors. One factor is how well you do to reduce the sugary foods and reduction of overall carbohydrates. Are you getting low impact exercise? Age and level of your overall health can play a factor. Genetics and gender also plays into it. Some people's bodies react quickly to metabolic changes, others more slowly.

From everything I have read on how long it takes, both from what Mark Sisson has written and a few other sources, is if you follow a solid and consistent regimen, somewhere between 4 to 8 weeks.

For more information on this, go to Mark's Daily Apple online or follow this link: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/what-does-it-mean-to-be-fat-adapted/#axzz24IVTWQ4n

Judd Jones is the regional production director with Hagadone Newspapers. He can be reached at jjones@cdapress.com.