The following Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Mark Sisson,

and is narrated by Tina Lehman.

How using fat for fuel can boost athletic performance. A few weeks back, I explored the potential benefits using fat for fuel can boost athletic performance?

A few weeks back, I explored the potential benefits using fat as your primary fuel can have on your cognitive function.

While the strongest research centers on people dealing with age-related cognitive decline and other neurodegenerative diseases, and whether burning fat and ketones can boost cognitive

function in healthy adults remains unconfirmed, the totality of the evidence suggests it can provide a benefit.

Today I'll be discussing a related topic with more solid scientific footing, the effects of fat adaptation on athletic performance. Detractors of high-fat, low-carb diets

often claim they're bad for physical performance. They may offer some help to people with

certain forms of brain cancer. They can definitely help obese people lose weight quickly and easily,

and the ketogenic diet is the gold standard treatment for epilepsy, but fat adaptation

severely hampers your ability to perform on the field, on the track, and at the gym.

Is this really true, though?

While the effect of fat adaptation on anaerobic performance is unclear, it can actually improve

many other measures of physical performance.

There may even be cause for anaerobic-centric athletes to get fat adapted, if only for part of the time.

Here are seven benefits.

Your energy efficiency improves.

Fat adaptation makes you better at burning fat and less resilient on muscle glycogen to fuel your efforts.

Any amount of work you can accomplish by using mostly or all fat rather than mostly or all glycogen

is evidence of efficiency. As the effort increases, with appropriate diet and training over time,

and you can still do most of it burning fat, you spare glycogen for even greater efforts

or for use later in the event.

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