Doing fine on lower fat

[PaulL]

Muscle suck in carbs as much as they can, they don’t do that with fat.

Ah. I was thinking of adaptative glucose-sparing giving preference to fatty acids. Obviously, I know nothing.

Care to address why all the people I mentioned in that post lost significant muscle mass since going keto and gainined mass back when switching to TKD/CKD?

No, because I’ve never heard that before, and have no explanation for it. I wonder if Jeff Volek has thought to study the effect. He was a power lifter in his youth, but whether pre- or post-keto, I have no idea.

have you ever seriously lifted for an extended period of time, and put on mass on both carbs and without?

Having never had any upper-body strength, I have never been a weight lifter. My record is nine consecutive push-ups; I believe it took me few minutes longer than it did for my buddy to do fifty. And on carbs and without carbs, my challenge is to remove mass, not retain or build it.

[lfod14]

Ah. I was thinking of adaptative glucose-sparing giving preference to fatty acids. Obviously, I know nothing.

Eat all the fat in the world after being keto for years and very much adapted, and your arms are what they are. Take in even a CKD amount of carbs and the next day after a workout your arms are almost 1" bigger. It’s not muscle it’s glycogen, but that doesn’t happen when you’re 100% fat powered… EVER! If we have the same (or even near) amount of glycogen, what does everybody have that exact same result?

No, because I’ve never heard that before, and have no explanation for it. I wonder if Jeff Volek has thought to study the effect. He was a power lifter in his youth, but whether pre- or post-keto, I have no idea.

Phinney and Volek should never be a source of info when it comes to muscle, they don’t work with bodybuilders, they work with endurance athletes. Typically people who are light on their feet, lean and very little muscle (vs a body builder). 100% totally different worlds. I read the both their books during my SKD years hoping to find a solution the the issues I knew keto created in the gym, never found that solution (in their books at least).

my challenge is to remove mass, not retain or build it.

Building muscle is a great way to burn fat! I can personally attest that loosing “weight” because you’re loosing muscle along with fat is NOT a good thing!

[Shinita]

It’s pretty well-known that glycogen is a quick fuel for muscles, I have always read people who does strenuous activity for a longer time, need more carbs and even hardcore ketoers eat some on their really active days. A simple lazy one with tiny muscles like me surely can live without any dietary carbs (except if they are different from me and they need carbs even for a little hiking or just feeling right, surely that exists) but it’s different for properly active people. I don’t know what happens when one builds big muscles.
Glycogen… I have heard various things. Some people immediately get bigger muscles again when they eat more carbs - while others (doing keto for long enough, that’s needed) don’t experience changes on different diets. I don’t gain any water if I suddenly eat 300g carbs instead of 10 but I have small muscles. It is still clearly a change as I always gained/lost water earlier but I can’t just extrapolate and say that the size of muscle mass doesn’t matter. Just like some activities don’t suffer from lack of carbs while others are different.

I am quite sure that we all should see what works for us and do that. I will keep in mind that if I miraculously got more muscular and active, I may need more carbs, at least sometimes. Maybe not, I am a 44 years old woman with small muscles, maybe I can do anything I am willing to get more muscles (I do want bigger ones and do something for it but I should get more serious. I have so little muscles that I can improve a lot from here even now. I am not 80 just 44 :D), I won’t need that ever. But some guy with good genetics and seriously lifting from young? Who knows what they need to reach and sustain optimal results? Surely not me. But I suspect carbs are quire useful there, at least for more strenuous longer activities.

But again, I just read things, not even deep scientific ones I wouldn’t understand anyway… And as it was mentioned, there are not much info about bodybuilders on very low-carb all the time, we would need a bigger N to draw conclusions too…
N=1 may show something is possible for someone but I wouldn’t think it will happen to most people…