UKH

Anyone tried this. I've tried it for 2months now after a friend put me onto Gresham and dave McLeod chat about them.

Felt abit crap n achy for 2w then felt good.

Lost alot of fat round my abdo quick.

I'm now occasionally getting muscle cramps after working out. Taking loads of salt. It may be I get abit dehydrated. Not sure. Gonna start feeding myself some carbs around exercise now which I wasnt doing.

It has really helped control my appetite.  I can go all day without eating and not be hungry. 

I road cycle. Have done upto 70miles just with water but very aware when go above lactate threshold....it hurts. 

I think my muscles aren't recovering after long rides as well as used to.

Not sure if its helped my climbing beyond being 5kg lighter.

I wondered if being a good fat burner would help in alpine days.

Anyone else doing stupid stuff like this😂.

How have u found it?

In reply to im off:

No - sounds awful!

In reply to im off:

I am intrigued by the idea and I don't think it's entirely pseudoscience, though it does have some of the trappings, being touted as a miracle cure etc.

I note that Dave MacLeod seems to have stopped talking about a keto diet per se and says he does eat some carbohydrates, but the emphasis still seems to be to get most of his calories from fat. 

In reply to im off:

I tried it a few years ago, after MacLeod made it really trendy. Shifted a tonne of weight really quickly and climbed my hardest redpoint. It definitely helped with that - losing a stone and a half made it so much easier to hang the crimps! But I found running and cycling a nightmare on the diet, possibly because I've never been a particularly aerobically fit person anyway, and I just constantly felt bonked when I was out.

I ended up chucking it in because of its effect on my overall fitness, the fact that it left me constantly thirsty and getting sick of having greasy skin and really noxious shits. Plus, the obvious drawback of constant attention to what I was eating and the insanity of finding myself doing things like weighing carrots to work out how much I could eat whilst remaining under the ketosis threshold. For me, it just wasn't sustainable beyond a few months and I felt mentally and physically healthier when I chucked it in.

In reply to climbingpixie:

Did you keep much of the weight off? 

In reply to Dan Arkle:

Not really. A lot of it was just water weight and came back almost as soon as I went back to eating normally. The rest went back on more gradually, helped partly by me bingeing on the stuff I'd missed while I was eating keto. Maybe I didn't give it long enough to take (I think I did it for 3-4 months) but I never got to the stage where I wasn't craving bread and potatoes!

In reply to climbingpixie:

Yeah. I like the food I get to eat. Do find myself staring at chocolate bars for hours😂. I checked my urine once and was really ketotic but just went roughly along with it then. 

I've lost alot of visible fat. Dont find the diet hard to stick too. I'm finding cycling more painful up hills. 

Think I'll start eating carbs more around my cycle rides. See if recover better.

Theres alot of interest in the pro cycling world. Saving the glycogen in your legs by fat burning more.

I've always been hungry and was constantly eating. This need stopped straight away.

Oh well. Made lock down bit more interesting.

In reply to im off:

There seems to be a big difference between fat-adapted and fully ketogenic. If ketogenic suits you there are benefits in long medium-effort events but ultimate power will be about 95% of that available to a glucose burner. Fat adaptation means you happily burn fat in combination with top-up carbs like gels and bars and try to save glycogen stores for the ultimate effort. Training by running/riding empty helps to get you to adaptation, triathletes seem to be quite keen on this approach. Much easier than trying to remain in ketosis, best of both worlds in my view. The 5kg might be only water, but who wants to carry an extra 5kg of useless water?

In reply to petemeads:

Think I'm heading that way. Fuelling with carbs when needed. Ta.

In reply to petemeads:

I think fat adaptation is simply a byproduct of endurance training. I’ve done fasted rides but I don’t think they did much beyond my normal training (other than to show me I could ride 50 miles after a 12 hour fast). 

In reply to im off:

no beer or cider - bugger that.

In reply to im off:

I did a loosely based version for about 6 months and lost 12 kg and 13% body fat

Main benefit was appetite regulation, also easier to practice a bit of calorie restriction at the same time

At the time i chose to stop doing pretty much all aerobic exercise as without carbs i just can't sustain any efforts and in fact it made me feel awful

I just cut out all forms of processed carb but ate what ever veg carb i wanted other than potato

Tended to eat potato or bananas on the days i wanted max power for climbing and it worked pretty well

In reply to Yanis Nayu:

I sort of though it would stimulate your muscles to adapt to more slow twitch. But like u say.....long rides will do this anyway.

I suspect I was piling in too many carbs in the past. I think I need less energy drink than what the torq packet advise anyway.

One thing I dont get is how it helps Gresham and McLeod. Maybe just makes them lighter. But the routes they're doing will require significant anaerobic metabolism so I'd have thought not taking some carbs around the climbing wouldn't be beneficial. 

I suppose they're abit like a sprinter not needing to top up energy in the effort but they'll be making repeated efforts over several hours on red points.

In reply to climbingpixie:

This. This is why people think the Keto diet is great. You shed a whole load of glycogen and associated water weight from your body when you start - effectively you empty your fuel tank. Your car would also be lighter if the tank was empty.

It's also important to distinguish the benefits of switching from a conventional diet to keto alongside the fact that most people switching tend to sort their dietary shit simultaneously. That is, eating the correct amount of calories (whereas previously it's unlikely anywhere near as much attention was paid) and generally making an effort to "eat better". When you do both simultaneously, it's hard to distinguish the effects.

In reply to im off:

I’ve been pretty much Keto for 4 years now (I think). I might have a high carb meal once every month or 2, and daily I’m somewhere between Keto and low carb, but I never have more than about 80g and the majority of days, I’m under 30g. 

It’s definitely not for everyone, but I quite like it, and found after the first month or 2 I was back to my normal performance, and over time, I’ve found both strength and endurance has improved. With training this probably would’ve happened anyway, and I don’t have anyone to compare against, but I don’t find it limits me.
 

It’s also worth mentioning I didn’t do it for weight loss (my weight has remained fairly constant), I was just curious after reading a lot about it.

In reply to Rob Laird:

Excited to see this thread, as I've been struggling to find info on keto diet and climbing (pretty much only Macleod and Gresham posts out there..). Started keto about 4 months ago, not so much to lose weight, but to try prevent binge eating, bloating, and hunger when trying to keep within calorie limits. 

So far it's been a success for me. Apart from some nasty learnings at the beginning (keto rash, neck pain due magnesium deficiency, lethargy which I found is cured with salt etc.), I'm rarely hungry, stomach issues are non existent, I'm leaner, not really craving to binge eat (though the real test will be after lockdown when there are more opportunities...).

I've had success with running as well - hadn't run a half marathon before but since have run it twice, both times in the morning before breakfast after a bit of butter coffee and with 300ml of electrolytes along the way. The key thing I found with running is it takes a while to warm up - tend to go slow for like the first 15-30mins and then I'm in the groove and can push it. 

Climbing seems to be fine too, already sent my limit grade post lockdown :P

Do people have any routines to warm up for climbing? I'm thinking if the warm up phenomenon I've found for running could be applicable to climbing too. 

Also do you really not feel hungry when climbing? I had no trouble running a half marathon without breakfast, but felt hungry when working on projects at my limit. Is it an intensity thing? Or maybe my body will get used to climbing again and I'll get similar hunger suppression?

In reply to im off:

That's fortunate! I enjoyed some of it but as someone who generally ate a largely vegetarian diet with lots of grains and pulses it was a difficult transition. My boyfriend is veggie so we ended up eating separate meals a lot of the time, which also didn't help with sticking to it. Overall I was unconvinced that a diet that required me to restrict how much fruit and veg I ate is particularly healthy long term. From my experiences online (e.g. the keto Reddit page) it also seemed like a lot of people used it as a socially acceptable way to have an eating disorder...

It felt similar to how I feel immediately after a blood donation. If I could stay under the anaerobic threshold it was much better but once I stepped over that (like going uphill) it was awful. The problem was it felt like that threshold had been lowered and I'd go into 'limp home mode' much more quickly. As I said, it might be different if I'd been fitter generally but my body composition has always steered much more towards power than endurance.

True. I was surprised at how satiated I felt on the diet - I definitely was less hungry overall. But I actually really love food, I get a lot of pleasure from planning, cooking, sharing and eating something delicious and keto stripped a lot of that away and made my relationship with food much more transactional. Long term that's probably better for weight management but it definitely reduced my overall happiness!

In reply to liucija.lat:

Yeah, I take maybe 10mins on bike to warm up I suppose. I can cycle up the hills just as fast before the diet but am aware of abit of lactate burn. Was hoping this would eventually go. 

I'm not hungry climbing or cycling for hours. I guess eating carbs makes you hungry.

I think I may be quite slack on following the rules exactly. I tend to eat most veg but no fruit. Im going to start adding carbs around my cycling abit and see what happens. 

In reply to climbingpixie:

Whenever I go low carb, I lose 1-2kg almost instantly. And yeah, comes back very quickly once you reintroduce carbs. Distorts how much weight you're actually losing. I think just a normal calorie deficit, with a balanced diet, is the best method. 

I tried it for about three weeks.

It was okay. I lost weight pretty fast but most gained it back once my glycogen was restored.

I stopped doing it because I found it was interfering with my workouts.

Now I'm down 10 lbs doing a traditional diet. Just do just works best for you. All diets are just a convoluted way to eat less calories than you burn.

In reply to Suncream:

I never have talked about my experiences with various ketogenic and other diets other than to friends. I've only mentioned it briefly online when asked or when talking about other things. Worth noting that many types of ketogenic diet include carbohydrates. How much depends on the muscle mass recruited as well as time under load, mode of exercise, exercise intensity, protein intake and stage of adaptation. Some people don't consider about all these factors when planning the carbohydrate load so run into issues with bonking. If done properly, an athletic ketogenic diet should reduce the occurrence of bonking, not increase it.

In reply to Dave MacLeod:

Fair enough, thanks for the reply. I'm sure I'm not the only one who would be very interested in an in depth YouTube video on diet, though I can certainly appreciate why you might be reluctant to do this.

In reply to Suncream:

No problem. I will discuss my experience on my YouTube/blog at some point. It's not actually that I'm reluctant, it's just a combination of two other things. First, I still have some unanswered questions about aspects of the diet I would like to figure out. At some point I will have to accept that we just don't have the evidence we need to answer some of them at present! Secondly, I have my hands full with other projects.

FWIW I have spent many years experimenting with diet and have tried ketogenic diets that have made me feel and perform pretty badly and some that remain the best I've felt and performed in my life. I still spend a lot of time eating in a way that is either ketogenic or not far off it. But over time have learned a lot about manipulating all the variables to improve the results.

Saying keto diets are 'good' or 'bad' is like saying campus boards are good or bad. It's not specific enough. Any training tool can be used or misused. The original poster mentioned feeling poor after only two months of adaptation and when combining climbing and endurance sports. That is not surprising to me. It takes a long time to adapt fully if doing a glycogen depleting activity like endurance sports, especially if you spend a lot of time at or around lactate threshold. To do this, its important to look after your glycogen stores. There are several ways achieve this without losing other benefits of a ketogenic diet. Which methods to use and when is where the discussion gets interesting, long and at times speculative.

Finding reliable advice on implementing the diet for sport is nigh on impossible at present. The only way I could manage was to read the primary literature myself, and do a lot of experiments that were educated guesses. In particular I would say its worth thinking twice before implementing a keto diet designed for an obese diabetic who can only just walk up the stairs and has 100lbs of excess fat mass and using this for someone who cycles 400 miles a week, climbs as well and has 12% body fat. These two extremes have rather different profiles of fat, carb and protein requirements, even in the context of keto. Rather, I think it's important to have a clear goal for the diet, to think where you want glycogen levels to be at any given time and how you will achieve by manipulating CHO flux in the body.

In reply to Dave MacLeod:

Yeah, it sounds complicated. I've started on some low GI foods on my  longer rides which so far feels better.

Eat peanuts on a day out climbin....also a source of low gi carbs to a degree I think.

It would be very interesting to hear your experiences even if it is anecdotal. 

Done any more 7 day fasts? 😂 You crazy.