It has been too long since the daytime drama KETOSIS has been on the air at this corner of the internet, so it is without further ado that I am happy to announce its return. KETOSIS parts VI and VII, VIII and IX will be featured here today and the two days following, taking a break for The Sunday Quickie, and resuming on Monday. When you speak I listen, and I honestly try to help anyone interested with any information they might have, whether it be with the subject of the ketogenic diet, or otherwise. In today’s world my interaction with most people happens 99.9 percent of the time on twitter, so feel free to ask anything you want more information on there, or in the comments section. I’ll get it back to you as soon as I can. I know, I know-on with the show!
Throughout our journey through time and space and into the galaxy that is ketosis, everything from what the ketogenic diet is, through to how it is implemented has been covered in the first five parts. As a matter of fact, some news website that will remain unnamed liked it so much that they decided to just copy it from this very site and post it as their own! As flattering as that was I would rather the information that is posted here be for those that visit faithfully as opposed to, you know, stolen. Once again I’m veering off course. I’ll do my best to stay focused for the rest of the time, I promise.
Now that everyone is well versed in all things related to the ketogenic diet, it is time to introduce some of the possible variations that you may want to try, as each are effective for different reasons. For those of you that visit here, exercise or training is an important part of your life. Before we can understand what makes ketosis so effective when combined with exercise, and why we may want to opt for some of the different versions, we need to understand what is happening during both aerobic and anaerobic training. When we have all of the information in front of us we can choose what is best for each of us, given our individual goals.
There are four different types of fuel available to our body during training. They are glycogen, fat, protein and ketones. Under normal non ketogenic conditions, ketones provide very little fuel during training. During the early stages of ketosis, our body may use as much as 20 percent of its energy requirements during training from ketones when in the adaptive phase. As our body adapts to ketosis, that number actually goes down to less than 10 percent. As you can see, there is a need for our bodies to find a large amount of fuel from another source, so I’ll show you what is used when we train both doing cardiovascular training, which is aerobic, as well as weight training, which is anaerobic. The difference between the two is aerobic exercise is in the presence of oxygen, and anaerobic training does not require oxygen.
Today I’ll be focusing on aerobic exercise, which we can loosely define as continuous exercise lasting more than three minutes. In that category, depending on how you train, I would like to include things such as circuit training and sprints. When I do either of these types of training there is no stopping. It’s just on to the next exercise, and often something like skipping or running is used as the rest period. If you train like this also, then you know why it fits into the category of both aerobic and anaerobic exercise, but yet again I digress.
Aerobic training relies on glycogen from both the liver and the muscles, as well as fat as its primary fuel source. The higher the intensity of the exercise, such as heavy circuits or sprinting, the less fat is used and the more glycogen is favored. There comes a point where the intensity reaches a lactic threshold, and at that point the fuel comes almost solely from glycogen. Even though you may be in ketosis, protein conversion to glycogen via gluconeogenesis remains relatively low at roughly 10 percent, which still isn’t ideal as losing muscle is never the plan.
At high aerobic intensity, glycogen use increases as already stated, but what isn’t stated is at that this high intensity performance will decrease due to being in ketosis. Our bodies just don’t have enough glycogen available to fuel this kind of training. I know this first hand and it’s what led me to investigate and experiment with different combinations. I’ll get to my system that I’m using including the specific ingredients I use in the final installment(for a little while), but for now I’d like to move on to what happens regarding energy use when we lift weights.
Weight training can be defined for our purposes as the use of heavy resistance lasting fewer than three minutes. If the set of repetitions is particularly heavy, and as a result the rep range is fairly low and the time under tension is 20 seconds or fewer, then the energy will be supplied by adenosine triphoshphate stored in the muscles. If the duration of the time spent under tension is 30 seconds or greater, then the energy will have to be provided by glycogen. That makes the argument for pre training carbohydrate consumption to maximize performance a valid one. I said to maximize performance, not to maximize fat loss. That is a distinction that you must make when choosing which path to follow within the guidelines of the ketogenic diet.
As is painfully clear to those of us that follow a year round, low carb lifestyle that includes periods of deep ketosis, there are a few things to consider. Primarily, the main point of contention is that when we are training hard, as most of us like to do, our bodies prefer to use glycogen as its preferred source of energy. It is our body’s preferred source simply because it is the most effective source of fuel to maximize performance. Speaking from experience, when I’m in deep ketosis and training completely fasted to enhance fat loss, I’m admittedly pretty week compared to where I am regarding strength and power on a diet that features some carbohydrate. It all depends on what it is you want more. Is fat loss the only thing that matters, or does strength and explosive power take precedence above all? That’s a question that I think each of us needs to consider before declaring ourselves to be in one camp or the other.
Still further to consider are things like hormones. Hormones such as testosterone and human growth hormone which contribute to fat loss as well. These are hormones that are released in larger amounts as both the level of resistance is increased and the intensity of the training is raised. That got me thinking as to where is the tipping point regarding fat loss and muscle gain regarding an induced condition such as ketosis, which is amazing at using fat for fuel and also is very good at sparring muscle. Still, is there possibly an advantage to be had with combining that fat loss and muscle sparring with a higher output of hormones, even if carbs would be needed to fuel that output, which would positively benefit the goal of fat loss and muscle gain? We will look into hormones further tomorrow, and try to get to what changes we can make to improve ketosis. Are there diet tweaks that can be made to enhance the positive effects of a ketogenic lifestyle? Until tomorrow then,
Happy Lifting!
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