A breakdown of caloric fasting versus nutrient fasting, and how adding fats like MCT oil or heavy cream to coffee affects ketosis and whether you're actually fasting.
Okay, co. When fasting, will coffee with pure saturated fats, MCT oil, and heavy cream keep a body in ketosis or break the fast? Well, those are not mutually exclusive outcomes. It is possible to stay in ketosis and it's possible to break a fast. But this is a good question because it harkens back to the explanation I gave a moment ago with regards to fasting. There's two ways to define fasting. A caloric fast, which technically this would break because you're eating calories. So technically, you broke the caloric fast. But the other part of fasting is called the nutrient fast, which is when you are eating, but you're keeping your body in the same metabolic state as a fast, namely a low insulin state, which enables the body to continue to burn fat at a high rate and thereby make ketones, which is typically only associated with fasting unless you're restricting carbs. So in this case, you're not breaking the nutrient fast. And so I'm very much an advocate of adding a little fat. I drink yerba mate in the morning. I heat it up, and I put a big dab of butter in it. I'll have a warm cup, the lights are dimly lit, the kids aren't awake yet, and I'll put a dab of butter in there. I am an enormous advocate of dairy fat. There are fats that are totally unique to dairy that I think are beneficial. And so if I'm adding a little fat, I'm adding a dairy fat. Either it's ghee or it's cream or it's butter. For me, every time.
