When we lower our carb intake, we limit our muscle cells’ capacity to access sugar, which is one of the body’s quickest fuel sources. When this happens, the muscles’ ability to work at high intensities, suffers. This occurs because, ordinarily after about 10 seconds of high exertion, the muscles have to rely on glucose for energy, instead of the phosphagen system (which relies on creatine phosphate and ATP). As a result, any activity demanding such muscular activity for more than these 10 seconds can only be sustained by glucose. In the glycolytic pathway, fat and ketones cannot substitute for glucose at all in this way. After around 2 minutes of exertion and getting no glucose, your body will begin to shift to metabolic pathways capable of burning ketones and fat.
Restricting carbohydrates deprives our muscle cells of the sugar they require to power tasks, that need high-intensity effort for 10 seconds to 2 minutes. Following a ketogenic diet may impair your performance during high endurance exercises or resistance training like lifting weights for more than 5 reps with a very heavy weight, or sprinting or swimming for more than ten seconds (for example, a 100-meter sprint or a 50-meter freestyle swim). Playing sports that have very little rest intervals, circuit training and high-intensity interval training also results in high exhaustion, if you have started doing the keto diet recently.
This should give you an idea of how low carb diets impacts your lifestyle and helps you figure out which exercise will suit the lifestyle and diet you have. This switch in timing of each metabolic pathway varies from person to person. Some can easily sustain their performance for 30 seconds of high-intensity workout/ daily work without needing to burn carbs at all, whilst others get tired very easily and will burn out after 10 seconds of such all-out effort.
Meal Planning is Important.
When exercising on keto, eating the correct balance of fat and protein is very crucial. Carbohydrates offer a muscle-preserving stimulus, and in its absence, fat and protein have to be stepped up and eaten in appropriate amounts to maintain stamina. If you’re just getting started with keto, you’ve already made up your mind to take a big step towards better body composition and metabolism transitioning. It will soon show results and reduce inflammation and you will gain increased levels of stamina.
The good news is that you will benefit from regular exercise as you adjust to keto. Sluggishness is the root cause of almost every chronic illness, including diabetes and obesity. To attain a sustainable healthy life, you must however, first perfect your nutrition. Ketosis can improve the effectiveness of your workouts. Adrenaline created during exercise not only helps you burn fat, but it flows into your brain and makes you happier. So a regular workout habit is beneficial as you can get rid of fats easily, increase your core strength and enhance your body composition, while also reducing stress levels and improving your mood.
Athletes who have adapted their bodies to keto, have reportedly burnt 2-3 times more fat during a run than high-carb athletes. After 10 weeks on a low-carb, high-fat diet, they were able to drop even more body fat and reported greater speed of recovery. Obese people were made to walk on the treadmill nearly twice as long after switching to a keto diet, and ketone salt-fed cyclists burn more fat than placebo-fed controls. Lifting weights on a ketogenic diet slowly increased muscle mass more than a high-carb diet.
The majority of these research gave individuals enough time to adjust to ketosis. Keto diet combined with workout, aids in the burning of more calories, muscular building, and metabolic enhancement. It also lowers your chance of developing diseases such as diabetes, depression, and obesity. Workouts are also beneficial if you suffer from depression on a regular basis. To exercise on a keto diet, you must consider your body’s fasting condition as well as the additional energy consumption. You should make the required changes to your daily routine. Remember to select an enjoyable hobby, i.e., look for a physical activity that you will likely enjoy. Do you prefer to spend your time indoors or outside? Alone or with others? If your chosen activity does not fit your interests or lifestyle, you are more likely to give up sooner than later.
Before beginning any new physical activity program, go to your doctor for guidance, and also get a medical check-up. This is especially crucial if you are over 40, overweight, have not exercised in a long time, or have a persistent medical condition.
Now you have to choose your preferences. Do you enjoy being organized or a more relaxed approach? Are you social or do you enjoy going solo? Are you motivated enough to exercise alone? This is an excellent alternative in case your hectic schedule prohibits you from finding the time to be active every day. In other cases, you could be more inclined to commit to a physical activity that lets you have a training companion, who will keep you motivated. Team sports are a good option for this, you might want to look into that. You can also mix and match up two or three alternatives. For example, you could workout alone two or three days a week and train with a friend or engage in a team sport on the other days.
Many health experts prioritize protein consumption when developing a diet plan for individuals who exercise. Why does protein usually appear to take precedence? Because protein can fulfill many roles that sugars and lipids cannot. Protein promotes satiation, stimulates muscle protein synthesis, and has a stronger thermic impact (burns more calories) than all other macronutrients. When we do not consume enough protein, we risk losing muscle mass and end up consuming more calories, which results in a quick increase in body fat percentage. To reap all these benefits, it is important to eat the appropriate quantity of protein, which is especially important on the ketogenic diet.
What do we get when we mix the fat, protein, and carbohydrate diet requirements? It all depends on your objectives.
To boost workout performance:
1. Maintain a calorie intake of 250-500 calories each day. The majority of the extra calories should come from fat, not protein or carbohydrates.
2. Protein consumption should be approx. 1 gram per pound of lean body mass (2.2 grams per kilogram). If carb limitation is slowing you down, or tiring you out, you can give the targeted ketogenic diet or the cyclical ketogenic diet a try.
To optimize your keto diet for fat loss while exercising:
1. Adjust your calorie intake to a level that results in consistent loss of weight. To optimize muscle retention, a weekly weight loss of 0.5 to 1% is usually recommended.
2. Reduce your fat intake to generate a caloric deficit of 250-500 calories.
3. Maintain protein consumption upto at least 1 gram per pound of lean body mass (2.2 grams per kilogram).
In case of people with obesity, they will benefit from a greater calorie deficit and faster weight reduction (>1% of body weight lost each week).
For ketogenic dieters who practice high-endurance exercise:
1. Follow the recommendations listed above.
2. Begin with the usual ketogenic diet (less than 35 grams of carbohydrates per day) and observe how your workout performance improves after 1 to 2 weeks.
If you don’t see any difference or a gain in endurance, stick to the diet. If you’re having trouble matching up to your previous performance, try raising your carb allowance or supplementing with MCTs or exogenous ketones before your workouts.
There are several demanding sports that put pressure on the body’s metabolic pathways. Each needs a different diet but of course there are general rules that mostly everyone can follow. What you need to keep in mind is that your body will need some sugar to burn to exert the muscles. Even for something like walking, the body requires carbs to push its limits and walk as quickly as possible. There are other low-intensity activities (40-50% of your maximum heart rate) which are ideal for keto beginners. Regardless of whether you’re fully keto-adapted or not, enough protein in your blood will help you retain lean muscle and gain strength. Balance and flexibility need to be included into your workout routine to enhance range of motion and stimulate your core. A trial on race walkers revealed that when the race walkers on the low-carb diet sought to push their bodies to the next level of intensity, they didn’t have the sugar available to do so, resulting in a drop in performance. That is why for newcomers, an easy, high-rep, low-weight lifting regimen works well.
When the sport puts more demands on the body’s glycolytic machinery, the ketogenic diet becomes a less attractive option. Athletes who participate in sports such as soccer, tennis, and volleyball have undoubtedly noticed a decline in performance, regardless of whether their bodies are keto-adapted. High-endurance sports and workouts exert a great strain on the glycolytic pathway, which requires more glycogen than the body can store. However, keto requires a larger fat intake instead of carbs so, you can benefit by taking readily digested carbohydrates before, thereby adhering to a cyclical ketogenic diet. This is not to say that the conventional ketogenic diet isn’t suitable for any kind of athletic activity. Powerlifters and golfers for example, take supplements and follow the ketogenic diet without compromising on their performance. Their efficiency is mostly dependent on the phosphagen system and their sports demand fewer than 10 seconds of high-intensity exertion at a time. Their bodies employ creatine phosphate and ATP to power their efforts. Boxers, wrestlers, and weightlifters have shed extra water weight by reducing carbohydrates, allowing them to gain weight without losing muscle mass. The ketogenic diet’s capacity to promote quick weight reduction in the first week and long-term fat loss is perhaps its most significant advantage for athletes. It has proven to be advantageous for any athlete who must compete at a set weight, such as boxers, wrestlers, and weightlifters, or who would benefit from a reduced body fat percentage.
After much studies, it has been concluded that while doing keto, you can get your cardio in by doing these:
- interval training classes
- Swimming
- cycling
- running
- recreational sports
- circuit training
- aerobic training classes
Remember that cutting back on carbohydrates reduces your strength and power in some of these exercises. If your aim is to gain a solid cardiovascular exercise, there is no need to push yourself too much beyond the point where increasing your strength and power matters.
Is this to say that we cannot develop strength and power when on the ketogenic diet? No. It only needs some careful exercise and meal planning and relying on bigger weights.