AlexPowell
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Hi Everyone,
I'd like to share a few experiences here that I have had with zero carb dieting and training intensity. One of the biggest issues I see with ketogenic or zero carb diets (I'll call it "keto" from now) is that they struggle to really train hard.
I have a hypothesis for this. I'm not saying that what I'm about to say is gospel and it might not even be correct, but it's an educated guess based on my own experiences and doing massive amounts of reading on the subject.
So why do people hit the wall on keto and why can they not train at a very high intensity for very long at all? My guess is liver and muscle glycogen running out and this goes well with people's observations of them getting flat and smaller as they hit the wall. What do they do next? Normally they cycle carbs.
There are two main ways to cycle carbs on the ketogenic diet. The first is to eat carbs once a week and the other is eating them around training time. The internet is full of information that says you have to eat carbohydrate at some point on a keto diet in order to keep the weights heavy and the intensity high!
I'll take a step back to explain the body's energy systems. When you exercise is has the choice of burning "more glucose", "more fatty acids" or "more ketones". When you eat carbohydrate on the ketogenic diet your body will switch to wanting to burn "more glucose". It will happily keep consuming more glucose in the form of your glycogen as you exercise.
This is covered in "The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate" by Phinney. I think that if you choose to supply your body with carbohydrate on the ketogenic diet your body will continue to use your glycogen stores as energy during exercise.
If you avoid carbohydrate then you move from "more glucose" to "more ketones" and glycogen is spared. The main thing though people seem to think that switching between modes is quick and easy. Like you can eat 30g of sugar and work out and be back in "more ketone" mode. I don't believe that's true and looking at the blood glucose and ketone monitor results from people on forums online that do cyclic and targeted ketogenic diets it can take 3-7 days for blood ketones to rise above 1.2 again which means that the body is using more glycogen to fuel activity than if you didn't eat the carbohydrate
So a conclusion for people wanting to try a ketogenic diet - avoid the carbohydrate ENTIRELY or eat enough carbohydrate to top up your glycogen ALL THE TIME
I'd like to share a few experiences here that I have had with zero carb dieting and training intensity. One of the biggest issues I see with ketogenic or zero carb diets (I'll call it "keto" from now) is that they struggle to really train hard.
I have a hypothesis for this. I'm not saying that what I'm about to say is gospel and it might not even be correct, but it's an educated guess based on my own experiences and doing massive amounts of reading on the subject.
So why do people hit the wall on keto and why can they not train at a very high intensity for very long at all? My guess is liver and muscle glycogen running out and this goes well with people's observations of them getting flat and smaller as they hit the wall. What do they do next? Normally they cycle carbs.
There are two main ways to cycle carbs on the ketogenic diet. The first is to eat carbs once a week and the other is eating them around training time. The internet is full of information that says you have to eat carbohydrate at some point on a keto diet in order to keep the weights heavy and the intensity high!
I'll take a step back to explain the body's energy systems. When you exercise is has the choice of burning "more glucose", "more fatty acids" or "more ketones". When you eat carbohydrate on the ketogenic diet your body will switch to wanting to burn "more glucose". It will happily keep consuming more glucose in the form of your glycogen as you exercise.
This is covered in "The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate" by Phinney. I think that if you choose to supply your body with carbohydrate on the ketogenic diet your body will continue to use your glycogen stores as energy during exercise.
If you avoid carbohydrate then you move from "more glucose" to "more ketones" and glycogen is spared. The main thing though people seem to think that switching between modes is quick and easy. Like you can eat 30g of sugar and work out and be back in "more ketone" mode. I don't believe that's true and looking at the blood glucose and ketone monitor results from people on forums online that do cyclic and targeted ketogenic diets it can take 3-7 days for blood ketones to rise above 1.2 again which means that the body is using more glycogen to fuel activity than if you didn't eat the carbohydrate
So a conclusion for people wanting to try a ketogenic diet - avoid the carbohydrate ENTIRELY or eat enough carbohydrate to top up your glycogen ALL THE TIME
