Not sure if this response should be moved to a different thread, since it's not really 'on topic' of ketone meters. Someone let us know if it needs to be moved.
trendsetter37 said:
A Jay said:
What was your protein intake and workout frequency, if you don't mind my asking.
Because I'm down 10 pounds from when I started, and I think most of this is muscle since I'm noticeably smaller but not noticeably leaner. I'm thinking that a good range for me would be ~3500 cal or more with carbs at a minimum (below 25g) and protein at ~1.3g/kg with full-body negative-emphasized strength training sessions once every 3-5 days.
So usually when I was first getting into ketosis I would gorge. I guess the excess protein would make up for my carb cravings. My ratio was around 1.91 grams of protein per kilo of bodyweight. That typical day was 2 eggs, 4 to 5 slices of bacon, bratwurst sausage, and 2 porkchops for dinner. At this time I was getting my fat mostly through ghee butter and coconut oil as dipping sauce.
I was eating probably around the same amount of protein when I started, but now I'm down to 4oz of meat 3-4x a day. Which comes out to about 28g/meal at a ratio of about 1.09-1.45g/kg/day. I'm keeping the extra protein days restricted to lifting days, so I have extra protein for repair when I need it but not when I don't.
When I started modulating, my ratio was closer to 1.28g of protein per kilo. You can get their with nothing more than eating one porkchop instead of 2 at the end of the day. Then when I started eating fatbombs I was not compelled to eat so much protein. Sometimes I would come home and just eat a ramekan of the custard (Again I didn't need to cut the breakfast that much).
That would get me close to just 1 g/ kilo. However, I noticed that when I started weight training my hunger went down as well. Possibly because it would get me into ketosis sooner. You are less hungry when burning ketones. But with my regimen I will spread a full body workout across four days. So work chest on mon. back on tues., legs wed. and arms thurs..
Prob. spending only 45min. to an hour in the gym at a time. I use to actually body build maybe 5 years ago now (My weight then was around 180 lbs / 82 kilos) but it was on a conventional diet and the results i'm seeing now are pretty ridiculous seeing as I don't really go to the gym religiously like I use to. Sometimes I skip weeks at a time, but for some reason unlike before I still get stronger when I go back. That never happened before on the other diet (mainstream).
I'm still trying to get a lard version that I like for the custard, I'm out of leaf lard for the moment and back fat isn't the most pleasant thing to use in its stead. Lol. But the fat bombs certainly do help to get the fat up!
Regarding exercise maybe someone can help me out with this, because I've been wondering about how the metabolism pathways change in muscles after keto-adaptation. From my understanding, when not keto-adapted muscles still prefer to use fats for fuel up to a certain point of 'relative effort' above which they switch to using their glycogen stores for fuel. (Which is how all the "cardio" classes can say that they "burn fat" without actually doing much to change one's body comp, because if your muscles are never depleted of glycogen to raise insulin sensitivity then any carbs you eat will go straight to the fat cells.) Now, correct me if I'm wrong but glucose isn't actually pulled directly from the bloodstream to fuel exercise, rather the blood delivers glucose to glycogen stores in the muscle which it then uses when triggered by a high amount of relative muscular effort. So during the adaptation period, any high relative effort exercise won't prevent the spike in blood glucose levels resulting from excessive protein intake. However, that exercise would provide a place for the excess glucose to be stored, up to the point of becoming keto-adapted. From what Phinney and Volek stated in their books it would seem that the relative effort glycogen threshold in muscles is removed after keto-adaptation, and fats are continuously used for fuel up to 100% of relative effort. So, once keto-adapted our muscle glycogen stores aren't actually ever used, similar to the fat cells in an insulin resistant individual. Which would mean that even in the presence of high amounts of exercise, excess protein does nothing but prevent keto-adaptation from occurring. However, exercise could help the adaptation process along by helping with insulin sensitivity and by increasing the amount of fats/ketones metabolized in a given period of time. Or so I think, any comments?
Hmm... So on a conventional diet, you trained religiously (meaning you never missed a workout I'm assuming) using a split routine similar to what you're doing now (again, I'm assuming). Now that you're on a ketogenic diet, you train more infrequently but you're seeing better gains in strength and size. We can't throw out the experience of many athlete's and bodybuilders that it's easier to regain lost strength and muscle then it is to build new muscle fibers, so no surprise there. As for the infrequency leading to consistent gains, it's actually been observed by Dr. Doug McGuff, John Little, and others that those who allow more time for rest and repair make better gains than those who over-train. So, the question is how your body didn't go into repair mode and build new muscle after the intermittent succession of consistent exercise. Assuming you didn't take absurdly long breaks (+3 months between sessions) and only skipped a week or two at most every few months, you should have returned to the gym without losing any strength and possibly becoming slightly stronger. Did you loose any strength after these breaks, or did you just not make any progress?
As i'm sure you've noticed by now i'm not that big anymore lol. Currently I am around 140lbs/62kilos. But I went all the way down to 120lbs/54kg when I first started keto about 6 to 7 months ago. I'm not so much into size anymore but I couldn't help noticing that 1) my strength was improving much more rapidly than I've ever noticed 2) I'm not hungry 24/7 and 3) You can better modulate your weight with the amount of protein once you're keto-adapted and doing strenuous resistance training apparently.
1) Since the ketogenic diet provides a more efficient environment that better allows the body to repair itself, this makes complete sense when coupled with you regaining lost strength 2) It's a lovely feeling, isn't it? Lol 3) I'm going to continue with the extra protein on lifting days only and have excess calories every day. Maybe shooting for 3500 kcal of JUST fat a day, and see what happens. We can compare journals and findings at the meet-ups, lol.
If you are not going for size and looking for just efficient muscle use. I would suggest low reps and higher weight (I know this goes against convention). High reps tend to expand muscle first before adding strength so you kind of have to expand before you go up in weight. Even if you stay with the same weight every week, high rep efficiency translates into bigger muscles over time. Especially if your muscles do not have to compete for glucose with the rest of your body. If you are in or nearing ketosis the glucose you will have will go straight to the organs that are obligate glucose consumers (muscles using glucose for glycogen). Correct me if i'm wrong on that?
So how you work seems to really translates into more rapid changes at this point. When you do much higher weight lifts (with good form of course) at lower reps. You are telling your body that you just need to get this up as quickly as possible, which prompts for efficiency within the muscle tissues. This makes them denser or heavier but not always bigger.
So that's been my experience. I'll probably make a journal for a week before the meetup with dietary numbers and ketone readings just to make sure everything is still the same and I'm not leading you astray. Hope that helps.
This has been a really interesting post, haha. Brings focus to thoughts I've been having regarding the effects of exercise in a keto-adapted individual.
Muscles perform better on ketones, and like I mentioned may not actually access its glycogen stores while keto-adapted. But seeing as how efficient and plentiful ketones are when in ketosis, I don't think there would be a 'fight' for ketones like there is a 'fight' for glucose when not in ketosis. Which is just another benefit of ketosis. :D
From my understanding, there is a specific size to strength ratio that varies from person to person and possibly even from muscle to muscle that is not affected or changed by changing the exercise stimulus. To use a good analogy, exercise is a stimulus similar to the sun. When you want to get a suntan, you don't go laying in the sun 8 hours a day every day. That's a good way to get burned, as your body needs time to repair and recover from the damaged incurred from the application of the stimulus. You also wouldn't lay out when it's raining to get a 'surface tan' and then lay out on cloudless days for a 'deep bronze', because different "rays" (sunlight on a stormy day, partially cloudy, or cloudless day) do not produce a different tan. Rather, sunlight triggers a melanin production response and this response will lie somewhere within the limits of one's genetics depending on the strength of the stimulus being applied. A cloudless day allows for a strong stimulus, and thus a strong melanin production response occurs. A stormy day doesn't allow for a strong stimulus if any at all, so very little if any melanin production occurs. Applying this analogy to exercise and we see that different weight/rep ranges and number of sets do not produce a different response, rather each is either a stronger or weaker signal that triggers a stronger or weaker adaptive response. From the pioneering work of Arthur Jones, we find that single sets of low reps/high weights provides the strongest signal for growth in strength and size, while high reps/low weights provides a weak signal and multiple sets does not increase signal strength provided the signal is sent in the first set by going beyond 100% relative effort. The hows and whys of the exercise stimulus are still not really well understood, but the essence from Jones' work is to push a given muscle beyond 100% relative effort within 60-90 seconds. This will allow for a maximal adaptive response from the body, and result in greater strength and size according to one's genetics and environment.
A good summary of recent research can be found here:
_http://baye.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/ebrtr-Fisher1.pdf
Your post has been most helpful, thanks trendsetter! Hopefully you or someone else reading this can help me better understand some of the nuances here, because I feel a little in over my head sometimes. Lol :D
