Anybody else doing the ketogenic diet?

I'm trying the keto diet and have found it pretty interesting. I was wondering if any climbers have done it and what their experiences were. Were you able to stay strong and/or loose weight?

Not on a keto diet.. But have I been on a pretty low carb diet for a while 45/20/35 protein/carb/fat diet.. Has worked well for me 165 pounds and 9% I started at 18% and 165. I have been doing a ton of HIIT. I am easily climbing a full number grade higher from where I started, and with all the cardio in HIIT the approaches have gotten way easier! Good luck with Keto!! I don't think I could go any lower the 20% on the macros..

I was full keto for a while. I loved it. I dropped weight very quickly with no additional exercise and was able to maintain muscle through normal activity(bike 1hr/5x/wk, climb 2hr/3x/wk), but didn't make any gains. My energy level was great after my body made the switch.

Some elite UK climbers have been trying it in the last year or two, so it was discussed more on UKclimbing forum - (which also gave a link to a neurobiologist's blog who offered a very careful, thorough debunking of the ketogenic approach).

just wondering ...
? How is modern "ketogenic" different from the Atkins diet that was so popular in USA like twenty + thirty years ago ?

Ken

This diet works friend, you need to consume certain amounts of fats, proteins and up to 20 grams of carbohydrates per day. It varies from person to person, but basically your body goes into ketosis and starts to consume the accumulated fat from the body to generate energy in average of 7 to 10 days depending on the diet adopted.

To not extend much, visit this site to know how to start this diet in the right way.

ketogenicdiet.life/start

ketogenicdiet.life

I have. Easy to lose weight but not good for climbing. I lost all my explosive power. I don't think I recovered as well either.

I lasted about six months on it and had great results. I didn't care about weight lost but that happened. The best part was staying strong and not being hungry while eating less often. The down side is the food was repetitive and boring but YMMV.

I was also put off by some of the down sides of the diet like hurting your liver with too long an exposure to a high fat diet. Of course with all things nutrition there are competing views on what is healthy and what is not.

Try the "drink less beer and eat less fast food" diet.

You do know keto diet is basically putting yourself into a diabetic state... not really good for your body long term. Your kinda simulating what happens when a type 1 diabetic doesn't have insulin.

People are constantly trying to figure out how to eat meat. Try plant-based; you won't regret it.

jmmlol wrote:Try the "drink less beer and eat less fast food" diet.

seriously if people just eat real/healthy food and get even a moderate amount of exercise, all of these fad "diets" and fake workouts would die off so fast.

i have a full time desk job, the chores that come with owning a house and a one year old at home and i am as fit as ive ever been. never had double digit body fat %. its really not that hard. its about choices.

But that means taking personal responsibility for fitness / fatness. If you're always on some fad diet, it's always the diet's fault, whether good things or bad things are happening. Always have somewhere to place blame. Always.

Valid points. Ketogenic is actually very effectively used in treatment of some diseases/disorders though. For aesthetics and weight loss, it works but is easily outmatched by a consistent balanced diet of whole foods and moderate exercise... and drinking less beer.

What I think people miss is why the diet works.

When you cut out sugar and carbs, you stop artificially elevating and tanking your blood sugar levels. When you have excess carbs and/or sugar in your system, you store fat for later when you might not be able to hunt down you next meal. When you have a normal amount, you burn your fat stores freely (since your blood sugar levels are normal you must get getting some food so your body finds that it's okay to burn fat). When your sugar levels get too low, your body stops burning fats since you're starving and need to save energy for when you finally can hunt down your next meal.

So that's why a keto diet where you eat lots of non-processed / sugary foods helps people shed weight so easily. You stabilize your blood sugar so your body is okay with burning fat stores all day AND you are refueling with healthy proteins / veggies often enough to not have your body freeze up and think you are starving.

IMHO humans are simple creatures. I have used a Keto variation over the last two years (climbing 1/ week as well for last year and a half) and have dropped 80 pounds so far. Next week, I am adding in cardio (jump rope) and a body weight core routine so that I can push past the casual V3/5.10 i've been able to get. Plus I want to kick the weight loss back into gear, since i have noticed the rate at which i've been losing slow down the last few months.

Granted this as all been while occasionally gorging and drinking.

I did the keto diet - cholesterol went through the roof.....maybe I did it wrong. I lost some weight but the diet did not seem sustainable. Been doing similar to walmongr for the past year. started at 215 lbs who knows body fat to 174 lbs 13.5%.

I did the ketogenic diet and I lost a lot of weight. I felt healthier and my body felt lighter.

Max Rieg wrote:IMHO humans are simple creatures. I have used a Keto variation over the last two years (climbing 1/ week as well for last year and a half) and have dropped 80 pounds so far. Next week, I am adding in cardio (jump rope) and a body weight core routine so that I can push past the casual V3/5.10 i've been able to get. Plus I want to kick the weight loss back into gear, since i have noticed the rate at which i've been losing slow down the last few months. Granted this as all been while occasionally gorging and drinking.

So you had 80 extra pounds to lose, and are climbing 5.10, and are talking about why this diet "works".

Keto "works" if you are way overweight and need to shed a ton of fat. It is not a diet for an actual athlete.

If you're a climber, and want to actually be healthy, you'd be much better off following Michael Pollan's suggestion - "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." If you routinely do cardio (which you should, since your heart is damned important and your body won't care you hangboarded your way to v10 but struggled on a half mile approach) - you probably are going to want to be eating carbs.

Google "dr. atkins heart health" or similar and draw your own conclusions on how awesome keto is.

I have only read about the Ketosis diet for long distance runners or to help with certain health issues so never thought of it as a way to lose weight.

This paragraph copy/pasted out of the article is the entire reason I tried it and feel like it worked for me.

our body can store a maximum of around 2,500 carbohydrate calories. But if you’re carrying around, say, 25 pounds of stored fat, that’s the equivalent of roughly 100,000 potential calories. So a fat-adapted runner can, in theory, chug along indefinitely.

The rest can be read here: outsideonline.com/2113406/h…

Another one about it here.

mensfitness.com/nutrition/w…

Again, until this thread I haven't heard people using this diet for weight loss.

Sean H wrote: So you had 80 extra pounds to lose, and are climbing 5.10, and are talking about why this diet "works". Keto "works" if you are way overweight and need to shed a ton of fat. It is not a diet for an actual athlete. If you're a climber, and want to actually be healthy, you'd be much better off following Michael Pollan's suggestion - "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." If you routinely do cardio (which you should, since your heart is damned important and your body won't care you hangboarded your way to v10 but struggled on a half mile approach) - you probably are going to want to be eating carbs. Google "dr. atkins heart health" or similar and draw your own conclusions on how awesome keto is.

Exactly! I was at the point where a lot of people are: having issues with "becoming a real athlete" because of where I had let myself get to. I used to play varsity volleyball in highschool which involved 5am workouts 6 months a year and eating a very strict diet. However, in college I saw more beer and pizza than anything. It was glorious. I love good food and i meet my foodie wife freshman year. I only slightly regret it, since it was that yummy. But it left me close to 300#.

Over two years i picked up climbing and used Keto / diet change to shed 80 pounds without destroying my knees and back (which started to get hurt when i tried picking volleyball back up). Obviously in another 10 or 15 pounds Keto will probably be unnecessary as i bring back regular cardio and core and need carbs, protein, and calories to start to get real progress. But again, i think you're right in that cranking up the cardio and core will also burn more fat than staying on Keto would.

My point is that Keto is an easy rule of thumb for when you need to shed a serious amount of weight (20# or more since it's a month long process minimum imho and anything less can be achieved with easier methods) or are looking to maintain during a prolonged break from training / exercise.

You have no idea how right you are, cardio is King. Shedding weight, bouldering for last 6 months i thought i would crush my first time out but the moderate approach kicked my ass. I couldn't believe it.

I was one of the people who saw the "anyone can climb", saw what people who committed to climbing looked like, and then learned what it allowed them to do. I was sold. But the more I learn it's about building blocks. Adding basic skills onto foundational skills so you can start advanced techniques. Applies to technical climbing skills, knowledge, fitness, and diet.

Keto was just one stretch of my long road back from my physical predicament I ate myself into. Life changing, but not a diet to build a lifestyle around. I prefer a low sugar, low carb, and no preservative diet. Much more lax and you end up eating almost entirely plants and protein since there really isn't much else but unlike keto it allows for a much more well-rounded diet easily tailored to strength training, and carb recovery days.

Learning to view diet as a tool instead of a pleasure was a hard transition. But it also makes days when I splurge all the better. Plus not being huge has been a blast so far!

For the most part Im on the keto plan. Mostly as a response to some health concerns. Anyhow, I've been fairly strict for the last several years with it. Exceptions being long alpine days. I find getting the right carb to energy on those days especially difficult. Especially factoring in fat/protein aspect. Havent really noticed a lack of strength loss per say, but I will say I do notice its impact on my energy while climbing throughout the day. I used to be much more of a grazer at the crag; eating bars shortly before trying to send something. Now Im more of a eat a larger meal midday person. I realize I could convert this to the crag grazing pattern, but I digress.

Typical carbs in: < 60c/day. Climbing days upwards of 100c/day. This is totals measuring almost everything with a measuring cup. Eating all home prepared, etc. Could be less of course, but I have to keep my sanity.

It's also REALLY difficult to take in the right balance of carbs to protein (4:1) a growing boy needs to get swole. If I was focused more on training I probably wouldnt be so inclined.

Im not sure the effort involved is worth it compared to other weight loss strategies(starving yourself).

Nivel Egres wrote:Dave MacLeod went on keto and sent the Practice of the Wild (v15).

Yes I remember he had one or two blog posts about his new diet a while back (like a year ago?). Mentioned that he had studied hundreds (or thousands) of scientific articles and papers about it. Since I have great respect for Dave MacLeod's care in analysis, I was eagerly awaiting for him to write more about it.

. (and also eager to see how he would respond to the very careful thorough debunking of the ketogenic theory by that neurobiologist linked from the UKclimbing forum ketogenic thread).

But then I did not find anything more about diet from MacLeod.
Is there something recent that I did not where to look for?

Which makes me wonder if ... like most diet ideas tried by most people ... it worked for about six months, but then most of the lost weight came back. And so he wanted to try to "fix the problem" before he wrote about it more.

. . (But I think really the "problem" is that the human brain is fundamentally irrational about food, so conscious rational controls can win for a while, but then the deeper irrational food-intelligence figures out how to get around the latest round of controls).

So do we know what MacLeod is doing or thinking about diet now?

Ken