Keto/Cutting Diet Advice

[whero]

Primo discussion to read through! I'm about to launch into a 3 week keto period. I've done this once before and got the results i wanted at the time. I will do it this time understanding heaps more about it :nod:

[Optimass]

just need to point out that DP deosn't advocate zero carbs ....

Q: what is the protein,carb and fat ratio for offseason

Dave Palumbo: 50% Protein, 25% fat, 25% carbs

Q: and the ratio for contest prep.

Dave Palumbo:60% protein, 30% fat, 10% carbs

For a 200lb man:

MEAL #1

5 whole eggs (make sure to buy OMEGA-3 EGGS from the supermarket. They contain virtually NO saturated fat and tons of good OMEGA-3 fats); add another 4 egg whites to this (they don't need to be the Omega-3 ones; you can use liquid egg whites)

MEAL #2

SHAKE: 50g Whey Protein with 1 ? tablespoon of All Natural Peanut butter (no sugar)

MEAL #3

"Lean Protein Meal": 8oz chicken with 1/2-cup cashew nuts (almonds, or walnuts)

MEAL #4

SHAKE: 50g Whey Protein with 1 ? tablespoons of All Natural Peanut butter (no sugar added)

MEAL #5

"Fatty Protein Meal": 8oz Salmon, Swordfish, or RED MEAT with a green salad (no tomatoes, carrots, or red peppers) with 1 tablespoon of Olive Oil or Macadamia nut oil and vinegar

MEAL #6

SHAKE: 50g Whey with 1 ? tablespoon all natural peanut butter or 4 whole (Omega-3) eggs and 4 extra whites

I believe he also advocates one large cheat meal at the end of the depletion phase (workout cycle in the week). Not too dissimilar to CKD ...

below some insight into CKD ... note the reference to heavy training ... what most people do is switch to high reps and lower weights. This would account for the loss in muscular size. In the abscence of adequate glucose your body can store extra water molecules provided your training remains heavy and you are taking in enough water (fluid).

I'm afraid both Layne, Polumbe and Lyle McDonald are correct. It's just a different spin on what is achievable.

from personal experience ...

I competed in my first 2 shows using a full keto plan to reduce the body fat ... first show 16 weeks prep dropped from 110kg to 85kg (approx 4% bfat). (I am an endomorph at this point). First show I looked flat but suitably ripped and fully seperated. Second show I came in at 95kg after diet from 122kg to 92kg over the same period. What was the difference; as it was essentially the same diet ...

Water - most competitors under estimate the impact of dehydration - in my first show I not only was I depleted of carbs but also dehydrated ... in the second show I water loaded: i retained the volume in the muscle and the strength reduction was minimal as I was having enough calories to support fat loss but enough protein to minimise catabolism through conversion of muscle mass. (see my journal for a confirmation on LY training - ironically now I am not following my normal low carb plan and my stregth levels are significantly lower than LY... this is largely due to irregular training). But based on the views above I should be able to maintian good strength if this is the case as I certainly haven't lost any size.

Cyclical Ketogenic Diets Part 2

Copyright Lyle McDonald 1996

Last issue I presented a short review article of some research behind

the cyclical ketogenic diet (hereafter CKD). This time I'd like to take

that research and discuss proper application for those bodybuilders who

have chosen to try the diet. The CKD can be used both for muscle gain with

minimal fat gain or for maximum fat loss with minimal muscle loss. The

primary difference in applications of the CKD would be in:

1. Training structure

2. Calorie levels

3. Amount and type of cardiovascular training

4. Length and quality of the carb-up phase

In this article, I only want to discuss the application of the CKD for fat

loss prior to and leading up to a contest. The typical problem with

pre-contest dieting is the invariable loss of muscle mass which occurs.

The CKD helps to solve this problem in two ways. First, ketogenic diets

appear to spare muscle tissue loss during dieting. Second, the carb-up

phase seems to promote anabolism to rebuild any lost muscle. I'll divide

the application of the CKD for fat loss into three sections: the no-carb

phase, the carb-up, and training structure.

The no-carb phase:

----------------------------

>From a dietary standpoint, to establish and maintain ketosis, two criteria

must be met:

1. Carbohydrate intake must be kept below 30 grams. However, there is some

indivduality in this number. Some individuals can handle more

carbohydrates while others may have difficulty establishing ketosis at this

level. If you can't get into ketosis and everything else is in place, try

cutting your carb intake to 20 grams or less. Also, many individuals choose

to consume as few carbs as possible (zero) until ketosis is fully

established and then increase carbs slightly (celery and cucumber are both

good and add some nice texture to an otherwise bland diet) at that point.

2. The ratio of fat to protein should be 1.5 grams of fat *minimum* for

every gram of protein and carbs in the diet. This is a 75% fat, 25%

protein ratio with trace carbs. So, if you plan to eat 200 grams of

protein, you need to eat at least 300 grams of fat. In most cases, the

easiest way to meet the fat requirements of the diet is to pick your

protein food first (most protein foods have some fat in them) and then

balance the meal out with the proper amount of whole fat food such as

vegetable oil, cream cheese, or mayonnaise and heavy cream (a great dessert

is heavy cream with protein powder and Equal. Mix it up in a bowl and

you've got pudding!)

Calorie levels: Calories should be set at maintenance or 10-20% below

depending on how quickly you need to drop fat. If you don't know your

maintenance calorie level, start with 12 calories per pound (or 11 calories

per pound of lean body mass) and gauge from there. If you're dropping more

than 2 lbs of fat per week, increase calories. If you feel that fat loss

isn't happening quickly enough, lower them slightly or increase

cardiovascular training. For the sake of example, let's say that your

caloric intake during the no-carb phase is 2000 calories.

75% fat = 2000*.75 = 1500 calories / 9 calories/gram = 166 grams of fat

25% protein = 2000*.25 = 500 calories / 4 calories/gram = 125 grams of protein.

These calories would be divided into three or four meals.

Training structure:

The other key to establishing and maintaining ketosis as rapidly as

possible is that blood glucose (normal is 80-120 mg/dl) must be lowered to

50-60 mg/dl. At this point, insulin levels decrease and glucagon levels

(which are responsible for ketogenesis) rise. Simple carbohydrate

restriction will cause ketosis to occur in three or four days. But proper

training can put you in ketosis within 36-48 hours of stopping carbs. And,

the more time you are in ketosis, the more fat you can lose.

Now, a typical pre-contest dieting practice has been to lower the weights

on all exercise and use higher reps to 'cut' up the muscle. This is a

fallacy and is about the worst thing a natural lifter can do while dieting.

Heavy weights are necessary to maintain muscle mass while dieting. What

should be loweredis training volume (i.e. number of total sets and days of

training) as overtraining becomes more likely on restricted calories.

This point can't be too emphasized: while dieting for fat loss, it is

almost impossible to gain muscle so don't knock yourself out trying. The

best a natural can do is keep all the hard earned muscle he or she has

built through heavy training. To keep that muscle, heavy training must be

maintained, just at a lower volume.

Now, the key to dropping blood glucose quickly is to perform sufficient

metabolic work. At first glance, this seems to contradict the suggestion

to cut training volume. However, the amount of metabolic work done (which

impacts how much glucose is pulled out of the bloodstream into the muscles)

is dependent on the size of the muscle used. So, to rapidly establish

ketosis, make sure to work at least the large muscles of the body (legs,

chest and back) in the first 2 days of carbohydrate restriction. An

example training week be:

Monday: chest and back

Tuesday: legs and abs

Friday: shoulders and arms

Alternately, the entire body can be worked across Monday and Tuesday.

This has the added benefit of allowing for muscle soreness to dissipate

prior to the carb-up. Muscle damage causes short term insulin

insensitivity which can impair carbing.

This would look like:

Mon: legs, back, biceps

Tue: chest, delts, tris, abs

Fri: high rep, circuit depletion workout

The depletion workout comes from Dan Duchaine's book, "Bodyopus". The

rationale is that the further you deplete muscle glycogen, the greater an

anabolic response you will get during the recarb. On the Monday and

Tuesday workout, do 2-3 heavy sets of 6-8 reps to failure for 1-3 exercises

per body part (larger muscles like back need more exercises than smaller

ones like biceps). On Friday, a giant loop type of circuit seems to work

best. For example: squat, bench press, seated row, leg curl, shoulder

press, pulldown, calf raise, triceps pushdown, barbell curl, abs, low back

and alternate movements each cycle (flat vs. incline bench, seated vs.

standing calf raise) to hit as many different fibers as you can.

Do 10-20 semi-fast, but controlled, reps per exercise and go nowhere even

close to failure. A weight around 50% of the weights you used for your

sets of 6-8 on Mon and Tue seems to work about right. Take 1' rest between

sets and about 5' rest between circuits. You want to continue doing

circuits until you feel your strength decreasing (trust me, you'll know

when you get there). This indicates your glycogen stores are becoming

depleted. However, realize that not everyone has found the depletion

workout to be necessary for good results. Again, experimentation and good

record keeping is the key. I suggest you try both methods suggested above

and see what happens.

Prior to the depletion workout, it is important that you get out of

ketosis by consuming 50 grams of carbs (fruit is ideal) about 2 hours

before the workout. The rationale is this: while in ketosis, the body will

prefer ketones to glucose for fuel. To achieve maximal glycogen depletion

in all muscle fibers, you need to exit ketosis. Fruit (which will

preferentially refill liver glycogen) is the ideal way to do this.

This will allow for maximal glycogen depletion during the workout. The

carb-up should begin immediately after the final Friday workout and

continue from 24-36 hours at which point you should switch back to low carb

intake.

Cardiovascular training:

One nice thing about ketogenic diets is that you are burning more bodyfat

for fuel at rest than on a high carb diet. Additionally, due to fuel

inefficiency of ketones (they provide 7 calories/gram vs. 9 calories/gram

for fat), you will burn up more grams of fat for a given caloric deficit.

This means that less cardio training is necessary. For those who want to

ensure maximal fat loss, doing 20-30 minutes of light cardio (60-70% of

maximum heart rate) on Wednesday and Thursday (or after training) can help.

Additionally, 10' of easy cardio prior to the Monday and Tuesday workout as

well as 10' of easy cardio afterwards will help to lower blood sugar levels

and induce ketosis. Do not overdo cardio though as this is a guaranteed

way to lose some hard earned muscle.

The carb-up phase:

----------------------------

This is probably the most critical part of the CKD. The carb up phase

accomplishes two things:

1. rebuilds any muscle that might be lost during the week due to the

anabolic processes related to cell hydration

2. refills muscle glycogen stores for the first workouts of the next week

allowing you to train intensely enough to avoid muscle loss while on low

calories

There are two approaches to the carb-up phase:

1. Subjective approach: with this approach, you simply carb to your hearts

content UNTIL you begin to feel yourself spilling water over to the skin

(i.e. you'll get bloated and smooth). This indicates that muscle glycogen

stores are full and additional carbs will go to the fat cells. The types

of carbs you consume (simple sugars vs. complex carbs) will, to a great

degree, determine how quickly your muscle cells become full.

This approach also allows you to dial in your pre-contest carbing up to

see how your body will respond and what type of carb-up will make you look

the best. To enhance fat loss, it is recommended that you do not carb for

more than 24-36 total hours. This turns the diet into 6 days of low carb

and 1 day of carbing. And, again, more days in ketosis means more fat

lost.

For those who need to lose fat very quickly, carbing every other weekend

can have very positive results although it's not as much fun. In this

case, I'd suggest one concentrated carb meal one hour in length right after

Friday's workout and then go immediately back to low carbs. Unless you

really overdo it, you will probably spike yourself back into ketosis by

Saturday morning. The training structure for this approach might be:

Mon: chest and back

Tue: legs and abs

Wed: cardio

Thu: delts and arms

Fri, Sat, Sun: cardio (have your once concentrated carb meal on one of

these days)

Mon: legs, back and bis

Tue: chest, delts, tris, abs

Wed: cardio

Thu: cardio

Fri: high rep depletion workout, begin carbing

The benefits of such an approach are relatively greater fat loss since you

spend proportionally more time (10 days out of 14 vs. 8 days out of 14 if

you carb every weekend) in ketosis. The cons are that it's rather boring

and there may be a greater potential for muscle loss. Again,

experimentation (and frequent body composition measures are key).

2. Objective approach: this approach is much more specific. After glycogen

depletion, the muscles can handle 16 grams of carb/kg of lean body mass

during the first 24 hours and 9 grams of carbs/kg lean body mass during the

second 24. In terms of amounts and quality of carbs, you should emphasize

lots of high glycemic index carbs at the beginning of the carb load and

shift to lower amounts of lower glycemic index carbs towards the end. For

very specific recommendations as to quantity and quality of carbs during

the carb-up, check out Dan Duchaine's Bodyopus book.

During the carb-up phase, several other things are important:

1. Protein: you should consume 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight

(or per pound of lean body mass) divided evenly across each 24 hours.

2. Fat: you should consume approximately 15% of your total calories as

essential fatty acids (flax oil, olive oil and walnuts are good sources)

especially near the end of the carb up to slow digestion.

3. Water: for every gram of carbs you consume, you need to consume 3-4

grams of water for optimal refilling of the muscles. This works out to 10

cups of water for a carb intake of 600 grams per day. Unless you're doing

the final carb-up for your contest, I suggest drinking as much water as you

can put down.

Supplements such as vanadyl, chromium and magnesium may help the carb-up

as they have been shown to improve insulin sensitivity and can help to

lower blood glucose. Also, using Hydroxycitric acid (trade name Citrimax)

at 750 mg three times per day helps to shuttle carbs into the muscle cells

and prevent spill over to fat cells. Finally, creatine monohydrate taken

during the carb-up phase should, in theory, lead to more cellular

hyperhydration and possibly cause more anabolism. Definitely useful for

the contest in any case.

Pre-contest week:

--------------------------

Ideally, you should be pretty close to contest ready one to two weeks out

from your show. This allows you to do the final dialing in of your

physique without being rushed. The final countdown to the show begins 8

days out (this assumes a Saturday morning contest).

During the next 6-7 days, it's important to keep water intake high.

Beginning water restriction too early will cause the body to upregulate

aldosterone, the hormone which makes the body retain water. Only on Friday

and the day of the show should water intake be limited. Additionally,

sodium loading and or restriction isn't recommended unless you've proven it

works well for you. Don't go out of your way to add sodium, but don't go

crazy trying to avoid it. Adequate sodium is needed for a proper carb-up

anyhow. Calories on the low carb days should be kept at maintenance or

even a bit higher. You should already be as lean as you're going to get by

this point so don't risk any muscle loss by panicking. The countdown to

contest looks more or less like this:

Friday: last heavy day of training, low carbs

Saturday: do cardio if necessary, stay in low carbs through this weekend

Sunday: last day of cardio if necessary, stay low carbs

Monday: low carbs, no training

Tuesday: take in 50 grams of fruit 2 hour pre-workout, do depletion workout

in morning, begin carbing with liquid simple carbs, goal is 16g carbs/kg

lean body mass in the first 24 hours.

Wednesday: continue carbing switching to complex carbs, 9 g carbs/kg lean

body mass during the second 24 hours

Thursday: continue carbing if not completely filled out yet, hard to say

just how many carbs to consume but go by your condition. If you're flat,

eat slightly more (stick with complex though). If you're full enough, cut

back to small amouts of fibrous carbs.

Friday: go back to mostly protein and fat with small amounts of carbs

(perhaps 20%) at each meal, take a herbal diuretic (such as buchu leaves)

as required but make sure that all carbing is finished

Saturday: hit the sauna in morning if you're holding water and go kick tail

at your contest

I feel that carbing prior to the contest should be similar to what you did

each week. With good record keeping, you should have a good feel for how

your body responds to different types of carb-ups. And, as the saying goes

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" Whatever carb-up got you in your best

condition during dieting is the carb-up you should follow.

Bio: Lyle McDonald, CSCS received his BS in physiological sciences from

UCLA. He has spent the past 25 weeks on a CKD and if he has to eat another

meal of pink salmon in mayo for lunch, he may kill somebody. Or turn into

a fish.

[drizzt]

Nice post Opti

[Optimass]

Nice post Opti

haha - not my own work but I have plenty more on file. have done quite a bit of research into low/no carb - experimenting over the years.

[roland410]

very useful.

Turbo Jam

[vracula]

For a 200lb man:

MEAL #1

5 whole eggs (make sure to buy OMEGA-3 EGGS from the supermarket. They contain virtually NO saturated fat and tons of good OMEGA-3 fats); add another 4 egg whites to this (they don't need to be the Omega-3 ones; you can use liquid egg whites)

WTF????no saturated fat in eggs???how is that possible?

[Henry]

hi

In my view you are cutting back right.Personally,I follow this routine,I do high-intensity interval cardio 30 minutes, 4 times per week starting at week 12 or 10.I did a journal in the journalling section for my last 2 contests preparations.