My experience with ketogenic dieting

I have had a lot of people participating in resistance training ask me about cutting. It seems to be inevitable that when someone is overweight and they begin a resistance training regimen that they eventually plateau, whether it is after a loss of 50lbs or 100lbs. No matter how they ramp up the action in the gym or in their running shoes, or how clean they diet, their progress stagnates and it can, I’d imagine, be very frustrating. A caloric deficit, for some, can only take you so far as far as adipose tissue shrinkage goes before becoming very uncomfortable (when you must restrict heavily). I do not want to dive into the scientific aspects of ketogenic dieting, but I will comfortably say : It works for me, it works well for me. So well it almost feels like cheating. I’ve seen it work for others. I’ve seen it work quickly and very well for others. I monitored my skeletal muscle mass throughout the dieting phase, and post-keto I had lost absolutely no muscle mass.

The basics : Carbs = glucose, glucose = energy, without glucose, the body must resort to ketones for energy, which your body converts triglycerides (lipids, from stored and dietary fat) for energy. You want to get glycogen-depleted as fast as possible, with resistance training and cardiovascular exercise. My typical diet before this was about 40% carbohydrates, 50% protein, 10% fats. During keto, there is a caloric deficit, for me anyways, though I only did this to speed up progress, you can govern your own caloric intake to determine the results YOU want. My keto percentages were something around : 5% carbohydrates (mostly fiber, from vegetables), 65% protein, 30% fat. This changed daily, but you get the idea, replace carbohydrates with fat, ramp up the protein to help maintain your muscle mass through the dietary alteration and deficit.

The grocery list : PROTEINS Eggs, chicken, turkey, beef, tuna, low-carb whey protein powder, breakfast sausage, bacon. FATS cheddar cheese, fish oil, avocado, heavy cream, peanut butter, almond butter, hemp/chia/flax seed. CARBS/FIBER berries (one spoonful a morning), broccoli, baby green mix, various peppers, stir-fry vegetable (frozen, peas, peppers, broccoli, etc.).

The eating : Now, without oats, bread, yams, pasta, wheat, etc, I knew the first thing to suffer was going to be my bowels. This is going to take a huge toll on my dietary fiber, so I ate a lot of seeds, and even more vegetables. About one bag of mixed greens a day, one pepper a day, 2-3 servings of mixed stir fry veges a day. I would say that my micronutrient intake was the best it’s ever been on this diet. You want to keep a slow steady intake of dietary fat all day, A fat spike would possibly temporarily change your energy source entirely to dietary fat instead of just partially (the level of fats you ingest will determine your ketone levels in your urine, I don’t want to put my kidneys or other organs under heavy stress so I kept a slow stream of fats daily to keep my urinary ketone levels at about “moderate” on the ketone test strip). Protein as well, slow stream all day. Now an important note about water. You will be in a diuretic state during this diet due to the lack of carbohydrates, you will not retain water very efficiently. Drink more water, be prepared to urinate a lot more.

My results : I started at about 178lbs. It took me 3.5 days of solid dieting to get into ketosis. During those 3 days I lost about 3lbs (water retention), so we will put my starting dry weight at 175lbs for clarity. I lost, consistently, .2lbs every single day once into ketosis, and towards the end, upwards to .3lbs when I added more cardio sessions to my training. I did the diet for about 3.5 weeks. I stopped at 169.5lbs, and here is what I looked like at this weight :

The experience : Awesome. I haven’t done immense research on brain activity on ketones vs. glucose, but I noticed a very comfortable attitude. This made the diet very EASY, I did not want to deviate, I was highly motivated by my results, I felt as if there was an alteration in serotonin (I suffer from manic depression, so I can easily tell when my chemicals regulate). The “carb load” day took the entire idea of cheating out of the diet. The carb load day is basically a shift from the 5/65/30 ratio to a 40/50/10 ratio, respectively, to fill up your glycogen levels so you can maintain intense training. It also gives your liver and kidneys a break from ketosis. My carb-loading day was saturday. I ate mostly oats, bread, yams, and a pasta dish. I had an excess of fruit this day as well, I try to stay away from simple refined carbohydrates, I always try to make my food as nutritionally-dense as possible.