Happy new year
Delighted to find this forum as just started back on keto after a holiday (which included feasting the American way)
Now I’m back home I have 5 kg to loose and muscle to build. However I’m running too with my goal for a half marathon end of year.
Question: keto runners or exercise lovers
What products are you currently taking to support recovery in keto and to build muscle?
Is it possible to train with intermittent fasting?
Keen to shred the fat and feel lighter on my feet
KIWI
I can’t recommend any “products” as I try to eat whole foods. What I have been doing is drink diluted coconut water before and during long runs and races, works for me. I have been intermittent fasting (16:8) + monthly 24 hour fasts for 4 years now, running 5 X weekly for races up to full marathon. It is important to consume enough protein in order to replenish muscle tissue.Good luck with your half!
It really depends on what you mean by “intermittent fasting”. If what you mean is having a longer time each day that you don’t eat, you should be able to do that. For instance, I’ve gotten to the point where I do body weight training or jogging early in the morning (say between 5-7 am somewhere) and I eat my first meal at about 10am, my second meal when my family does, sometime around 6:30-7pm usually.
If what you mean is one meal a day (OMAD), for that, I have to have a day off to do that. (I MIGHT be able to eat one meal at 10 am and then not eat another meal, but then I wouldn’t have dinner with the family.
If what you mean is something like 36 hours of fasting (eating dinner one night, not eating the next day, then eating again the following day), that one has been tough for me lately. When I was working out 4 days a week, I took a day off then fasted 36 hours and worked out at about 32 hours. Now that I’m working out 5 days a week, I haven’t been able to do a 36 hour fast, because I don’t have those 2 days off in a row. The best I’ve done is OMAD on one of my days off.
You might be interested in Zach Bitter’s Human Performance Outliers podcast. I don’t know how valuable you’ll find it, but Mr. Bitter has some experience with long-distance running on a ketogenic diet.
Some researchers you might also want to check out are Jacob Wilson and Ryan Lowery. They run a gym and coaching service called the Applied Science and Performance Institute. They also have a book out called The Ketogenic Bible: The Authoritative Guide to Ketosis. I haven’t read the book myself, but it does sound interesting.
Zach Bitter is great. Keto but also takes in carbs. He’s also an animal, the runs he does are nothing short of amazing.
All the same ones, but make sure you’re keeping protein high and while you (can) train and add muscle with IM, it’s not ideal either. Fasting is catabolic, it’s one of the reasons it works. But that’s also the enemy of muscle gain, and it means less fuel to fun on. Timing means a lot as well. If you train at night, not eating breakfast isn’t as much of a downside. But given it’s only a 5kg loss you’re going for, since you’re not idle, really not needed either. In the end getting the fat off is more about your diet as a whole, and not whether you skip a breakfast, have a specific feeding window or any other method.
When I was doing a ton of fasting, while it took fat off pretty good, I lost a lot of muscle. My energy was fine, so I didn’t really pay enough attention until it was too late. Really comes down to your training routines, if it’s a ton of cardio based stuff, honestly I’d skip the fasting since even when people are eating all their meals running is great for burning muscle off of people, which then lowers metabolic rate, making it easier to regain.
If you just need energy during a fast, and the fasting is only for fat loss and not autophagy, exogenous ketones can get you there. BCAA’s although useless normally will stop the signal to burn muscle because of the Leucine.
I’d say since your marathon training though, that’s the extreme. I can’t see a reality where you’d need to actively try to lose 5kg while training for a marathon if your diet is in check, that’ll take care of itself.
Protein and fats are the building blocks for generating new tissue. I would just make sure I was getting plenty of both, typically though fatty red meat and eggs.
Had a colleague who trained for and ran a marathon…and lost no weight. After reading the book “Burn”, I can see why.
Oooo, I just looked up that book. It looks pretty interesting. I think I will have to read it.
It has a lot of interesting parts that I believe are true. Like how more exercise does not mean more overall daily calories will be burnt. Just let me know what you think of the author’s cognitive dissonance (where you hold two opposite thoughts in your head, yet both are somehow true).
Is that the one by Herman Pontzer?
I’ve seen so many things that contradict the “bomb calorimeter” model of weight loss in that paragraph - where the writer says “For shedding pounds, a calorie is a calorie” that I wouldn’t know where to start quoting. It had better be cast steel strength evidence.
KIWI, I haven’t run regularly for nearly 20 years, having shifted to cycling after some knee pain and a visit to an orthopedic surgeon where he essentially said, “if you want to need surgery, keep running.” I hope my input as keto or ketovore for almost 9 years is helpful.
I’ll join the folks who say, I use no particular products for recovery and to build muscle. I’ve seen people here say they do some additional carbs for long runs or rides, but I haven’t tried that. I might have done that if we had any carbs around the house.
As for training doing intermittent fasting, I’ve been living nothing but IF for 7 or 8 years. I have two meals a day, first at around noon and the second in the evening, around 5 to 5:30 PM. Once a week, I do a fast from Wednesday after dinner until Friday’s noon meal. I’ll either ride Thursday or Friday morning (the advantage of being retired) but since I’m always fasted at the time, it doesn’t really matter if it’s the day I’m fasted 12 hours or 36 hours. These are long rides, close to two hours pedaling, so I deplete any glycogen I’ve built up in my muscles over the course of the ride. Extra carbs makes some sense, but if all it does for me is make me a little faster, it’s not that important to me.
Hope that’s helpful.
Yeah. Let’s say you burn 2000 calories a day, he refers to this as your DEE, daily energy expenditure. This is without exercise. You begin training for a half marathon. You begin running 20 minutes a day and say burn 200 extra calories. Classically, your total energy expenditure should be 2200 cals. You then run 40 minutes a day, burning 2400 calories. Then, one hour per day, burning 2600 calories. That’s the classical thinking.
But what really happens? There’s a slight increase for 20 minutes a day. After that, there’s very little to NO increase. Why? You body lowers your DEE to compensate. This is from a study of women who did not exercise then trained for a half-marathon and also by a study of mice.
You can burn a few more calories through exercise, but not anywhere near what you think you’ll be burning.
I am carnivore and I run (last year I did 2800km). My recovery routine consists of sitting down and drinking a coffee 
. I am never hungry after a run. But the next meal is fatty meat (as all my meals are).
Re fasting, much depends on your definition of IF. I run in the mornings, and I never eat breakfast: I do 2 meals per day, so you could say I run fasted every day.
I run on fat: that’s my fuel source. I eat no carbs: if my body needs carbs it makes them itself according to need. One of the great benefits of eating no carbs is I carry my spare fuel with me wherever I go: bodyfat.
I’ll add a “me, too” to that, as I go off to ride my age on my birthday.
Yea this is helpful- may I ask, what are the benefits you experience of the prolonged fast?
Clearly enough to keep you doing it week after week. You mentioned glycogen in muscles - isn’t that usually burnt up in ketosis after a while anyhow? Thank you so much for your advice here, interested to try this
