The human body has a hybrid metabolism. In our developed economies, unless your are sick or fasting, you use a glucose based metabolism. But in the history of mankind a stable food supply was rare, and most years people would suffer food shortages for a few weeks, sometimes a few months. This activates a lipid burning metabolism we call ketosis.
Ketosis is activated by starvation, or by fasting, or by eating a low carbohydrate diet. Activating ketosis by choosing to eat very little carbohydrate, is called nutritional ketosis.
High Performance Athletes
Today the people most enthusiastically embracing the new knowledge about lipid metabolism are high performance athletes. They have read about the "Faster Study" by Jeff Volek and his associates. It was a small study, twenty people including world champions and elite military, paired for background and past performance. One of them was on a carbohydrate loading diet, the other on a ketogenic diet.
The testing was extensive and exhausting. At the end of the testing, several of the participants chose to alter their dietary regime.
Seasonal Hunger or Famine was Normal in Human History
Historically, food supply is seasonal, and for some time, long or short, in most years food is not available.
At the Mayo Clinic, Dr Rollin Woodyatt identified in a scientific way what was happening in starvation. He was studying diabetes, he identified the natural process we now call ketosis in 1921, and it was used extensively to treat people with epilepsy until 1928. And still today in the most serious cases.
Ketosis is safe and has most often been used for medical purposes on children. It's defined as the metabolic state where we burn lipids (fats) in the absence of excess glucose.
Nutritional ketosis is easy to achieve by carbohydrate restriction. Starvation is not required to open your lipid burning metabolism.
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