trendsetter37 said:
I agree this may need to be moved to a separate thread at this point sorry guys...
A Jay said:
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?
Ahh all of this does makes sense. And honestly I think I have some serious gaps in my understanding of this process. I didn't see it from that angle and my thinking on the matter looks like it could be wrong entirely. I will definitely have to look into Phinney and Volek. Thank you!
A Jay said:
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?
Your assumptions are correct here regarding my historical workout regimen. And yes in the past I would workout four days on an take 3 off. Consistently. I would maybe edge up a little bit but really see better improvement only if I would take a week off. Then when I went back it was like night and day. It seemed really counter-intuitive at the time because I thought I was giving my body a break for those 3 off days. And in reality since I was doing splits I thought each section had a week off. Guess not.
I try to do more weight than my last session on a particular body part. Where the last session was pretty close to failure or not able to lift the weight on the last set. This is where I concentrate on my breathing and concentration. When I come back to that body part either a week or two later it has been like my muscles don't even remember struggling with that weight the last time. It wasn't really like this before. But you are right about the muscle memory that could be a major factor in all of this. However, maybe i'll plateau soon?
Depends, are you near the level of strength you remember last being at? If you're training properly (one set to MMF reached within 60-90 seconds), getting adequate rest (8-9 hours a night), eating sufficient nutrients and drinking enough water then you'll never actually 'plateau'. Your progress will slow down, but you'll never actually plateau. It's a good idea to time your sets to failure as well, because as time goes on you may not go up in weight with every session but you should be going up in 'time under load'. Which will show you that you're still making progress, and you're still doing things right. Similar to how ketone and glucose testing gives you numbers to know if you need to change something, so too does tracking you workouts, exercises, loads, and time under load.
Currently, or at least this is what it seems like to me anyways. I am less concerned about "getting huge" and just kind of use it as an outlet and to stay in some kind of shape. But the less I try in regards to the "oh I need to get to the the gym!" feeling. The more i've noticed the differences between then and now. With the only real changes being dietary and of course finding the forum and reading like crazy!.
So the less you try to make your body conform to an idea planted in your mind by media manipulation, the more you feel you gain from doing things that are good for your body? Makes sense, lol.
If you're wanting better conditioning with less concern for strength/size gains, then to tweak the exercise stimulus accordingly you would keep the time between exercises to a minimum and do the workouts more often. Once every 4-5 days should be sufficient rest for this goal, and you wouldn't want to do it less than once every 10-12 days because after that you'd run the risk of losing the increase in metabolic conditioning you gain from the workouts.
Personally, I'm more focused on strength/size gains, so I take a little extra time between exercises (1m:30s as opposed to 0:30s) to recover a bit. But this thread has really helped me in this dept., because now I know why I've been stuck at the same weight for so long: dehydration! I need a gallon of water AT LEAST to make sure I'm hydrated throughout the day.
A Jay said:
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.
This is a good analogy. It seems like I may have been doing what Arthur Jones is suggesting without really understanding the why but noticing or observing the result. Further still I think I have a lot to learn in this area and I think this route was somewhat useful for me (osit). I didn't really have other blatant issues from a physical standpoint to gauge how ketosis was helping me....well save the increased clarity of mind and of course noticing the bodies response when you slip up and eat something forbidden.
So for me the weight training and noticing the differences between now and then really did put things in perspective. But it seems like I need to really dig into the studies to catch up to speed on the knowledge part....my book cue just keeps growing by the day lol.
P.S. Thanks for that link! :D
I got you, without having some physical malady to heal or extra body fat to loose you don't really "see" much happening in the way of body transformation. So, exercise is a great way to 'feel' the difference, and do your body good at the same time.
I'm glad you found the link helpful! For knowledge, reading 'Body By Science' and maybe a few articles from Drew Baye's blog is all you need to get up to speed. BBS was actually one of the books on exercise recommended in PBPM, and though it's not perfect it's light-years ahead of mainstream ideas and 'conventional wisdom'. If you want, I can lend you my copy.
Don't know if there's a good vitamin shop where you live, but one near me sells Dr. Mercola's lipsomal Vitamin C which while expensive is really good in a pinch. 
