Day 4 - Energy Drop

(Gary Maslin) #1

After a great day yesterday and a shoulder workout at the gym I woke up this morning feeling drained. Didn’t want to eat anything at all but ended up having my eggs and bacon with a coffee and double cream.

I’ve Started to pick up a little but I don’t think my energy levels have ever been as low as it was this morning. Time to keep pushing through and hopefully see some signs of improvement over the next few days. It was a dehydrated feeling with Dizziness.

The gym is getting harder each day, I think i need to increase my salts as I don’t think i’m taking enough in.

You guys must be mentally strong as this is the hardest diet I’ve tried so far!

Keep on keeping on! :slight_smile:

(Deb) #2

Have you just started keto? Sounds like keto flu, your body starting to adjust to lower carb intake?

(Gary Maslin) #3

I started on Monday so yeah i’ve only just started. Doesn’t help that i’ve just started back at the gym after 6 weeks off. (excuse of the world cup).

I’ve noticed that my body is not holding as much water as it used to. Look leaner already :slight_smile:

Just think my body must be getting used to not having carbs.

(Sheri Knauer) #4

This sounds normal for someone just starting out keto. Definitely increase your salt and other electrolytes. Heres a link with a recipe for making home made keto aide.KetoAide homemade

As for working out, you may want to wait a few more weeks before hitting the gym again. You are feeling tired because you have used up most if not all of your glycogen stores and your body takes 4-6 weeks to become fully fat adapted. You may be producing ketones now, but your body is not yet able to efficiently use them for fuel yet (that requires mitochondria adaptation, the reason why it takes 6-8 wks with strict keto). So in essence, you don’t have a great way to fuel your body yet. Its looking for glucose but not getting any so it needs to adapt to utilizing fat instead. Instead of hitting the gym, do something easier on your body such as take a walk. Once you are fat adapted, you will have so much more energy and your gym workouts can be so much more productive at that point.

#5

This is totally my experience as well. I was useless for exercise (and for even long walks, in the early stages) even though I had been exercising moderately before starting keto. It was nice to read about the energy issues early in the transition on the forums so I didn’t push myself. Six weeks in, I finally got back into it with the same energy as before. Of course it feels like a setback to have stopped workouts for so long but with all the other benefits I think it was worth taking a break. People report different amounts of time taken to get back into it, it may happen for you sooner than it did for me.

(Sheri Knauer) #6

I experienced the same thing. I have always been a regular lifter/gym goer for the last 27 years and continued going as I changed to eating keto (it will be my 2 year ketoversary coming up in 2 weeks). I actually lost some strength in the first month or so but then after I became fat adapted, I quickly regained then surpassed my pre-keto strength. Now I will be interested to see how much strength I maintain over the summer since my gym sessions are almost non existent what with my young kids out of school, swim team activities (for them, not me other than being chauffeur), and other summer kid activities). With keto being a muscle sparing lifestyle, Im not too worried about it.

#7

Congrats on your ketoversary!!

(Deb) #8

Excellent advice!

(LeeAnn Brooks) #9

As others have said, this is very normal.

I continued to try to work out during this phase and my performance too a serious nose dive. If you’re going to keep working out, make sure you really keep up on electrolytes (actually do this anyway), but go easy. Listen to your body and don’t push it too hard right now. This is temporary and it will get better.

Good luck!

(Gary Maslin) #10

Thanks for the advise :smiley: I’m going to increase my salt intake and electrolytes as I don’t think that it is high enough. I’ll keep working out to see if I can push through the fatigued feeling when I wake up.

I will need to start eating a little bit more fat as i did not reach my 200g expected limit yesterday, this may have had an affect on my mood and state.

The community on here is Brilliant!!

(Michelle) #11

100% normal. It only gets better and easier.

(Roy D Rushing Jr ) #12

Yeah around the 4th day was when it got tough for me. It eased relatively quickly though. I was starting to feel like working out again by my second week.