Hey everyone. I’m on keto for about 2 months. When i felt fatigued for the first time I thought that it was adaptation. But now I’m feeling totaly exhousted. I’m on calorie deficit. But calculating my macros every day to stay under 26g carbs. I’m doing strenght / weights trainings 3 times per week for about 1:30 hour. Intensity is high. But often after the training day i’m totaly fatigued. It’s like I have no energy to go for a walk or even lift my hands up. I use supplements (amino acids, whey protein, fish oil, vitamins and minerals). Also I eat very clean and responsibly. Eating salt, drinking mineral water, have additional potassium, magnesium. Maybe it’s placebo but I felt better the day after i drunk 1l borjomi mineral water (with high concentrate of minerals). Coffee helps me just for a while (maybe hour). But still I feel like someone just sucked my energy. Any suggestions? Experiences?
Fatigue, sleepiness, no energy
How much of a deficit is that, do you know what your maintenance calories are for 87kg?
According to my smart gadget and activity tracking i’m burning about 2200 - 3200 per day (depends its training day or not)
Oh, and I’m fasting 16:8 (skipping my breakfast, eating at 1 pm and stop eating 9 pm)
Try the targeted ketogenic diet to see if that helps. It’s suitable for bodybuilders and endurance athletes. You can eat 20-50 grams of carbs (keep it healthy) about 30 minutes before your workout sessions. How many different supplements are you taking by the way?
Alternatively, you can increase your daily carb intake to 50 grams per day and consume them 30 minutes before your workout.
Two additional possible issues: (1) your salt intake might not be high enough, and you could be hypovolemic. Try drinking a cup of salty broth about 45 minutes before exercise. (2) it is possible that you are not fully fat-adapted yet, although two months is usually about the time it happens. You might wish to cut back on the strenuousness of your routine for a bit.
I tend to agree with @Dread1840 that if you are deliberately restricting calories, that is probably the source of your difficulties. Eat to satiety, and be sure to eat enough protein to provide raw materials for new muscle structure. You don’t necessarily need to supplement with BCAA’s, but be sure they are in your diet.
Your symptoms are due to carb withdrawal. They will pass. You likely need to increase your daily electrolyte intake to help. If the mineral water helps, drink more. You’re doing a lot of exercise, which at this point is making your symptoms worse. So you could back off a bit, or continue to tough it out. As you become better fat adapted, which could take several months or more, the fatigue will decrease and strength increase. Cut your carbs to sub-20 grams per day. The less the better.
Why are you restricting calories? Are you trying to lose weight? Are you losing it? If you are losing weight and don’t want to, increase your fat calories until you stop. If you want to lose weight and are not, decrease your fat calories until you start. Keto tends to increase your metabolism burn rate, so the calorie numbers will probably be higher than you expect. For instance, myself as an example. I am a 74 year old male with a moderate amount of exercise daily. I eat 2800 calories per day, 2300+ of those are fat, the rest protein. I generally eat sub-15 grams of carbs per day and often sub-10. I have been in maintenance for a couple of years with essentially no change in weight.
Welcome to the forum, your body is rebelling because pre-Keto we were carb and sugar addicts. Once you increase your salt intake, and your body gets used to the low carb and no sugar, you will be fine =).
Unlikely you’re still experiencing carb withdrawal at two months. Since you’re training, it’s more likely metabolic especially if you’re running a clear deficit.
I suggest going over to the Keto subforum on Bodybuilding.com and following the protocols for either CKD or TKD.
I did variations of both for over 15 years, they work.
Many thanks to all of You. In my opinion, I just have to experiment a bit. My ketone level is something betweet moderate and high (according to urinal keto sticks). I have passed keto flu before, so I think I should get more minerals. Yesterday I was totally exhousted, but ate more calories and drunk mineral water “Borjomi” (Na+ 1200-1700; Ca2+ 50-75; Mg2+ 35-55, HCO-3 3000-4250 Cl- 260-380 mg/l). So thats the huge amount of minerals. No strenght training yesterday. And today I’m fine. I dont want to change my keto diet because i’m only two month on it. So maybe that’s the answer - minerals, electrolites. Maybe more calories from protein and fat at training days. Maybe that fatigue has something about recovery time too, especially when training day burns more than 3000 calories (according to my activity trackers).
To KetoDummies Hamz Edward
How many different supplements are you taking by the way?
Universal Amino 2700 - 3 pills at lunch time and 3 in the evening
Fish oil - 1 pill at lunch and 1 in the evening
SARM MK 677 - Mon-Fri 1 pill at lunch time
Daily vitamins and minerals - 1 pill daily at lunch time
Calorie Bomb protein shake - in the evening 1 scoop of protein shake, avocado, 2 tablespoons of wallnut oil, 2 tablespoons of coconut oil, spinach 70 g, 2 tablespoon peanut butter.
I would get rid of that peanut butter in the shake =), or even the shake itself.
Eat real food; steaks, roasts, ground beef, pork, chicken, real meat, you can overdue it with fats and they can make you tired too, it looks like you are getting a lot of fats.
Why? A good source of fat, its salted. Of course 2 tbs contains 6 carbs. But I’m still under 26g per day with it. But maybe I can replace it with another fat source.
Recommended is 20g of carbs or less, no sugar, lots of water, and electrolytes, and enough protein and some healthy fats. If you are working out too, proteins are more important to have then tons of extra fat.
You could even consider doing full carnivore for a bit and see how that works out for you, there is an entire section on the forum for that, and a lot of the forum athletes and body builders are doing that =).
I will try to reduce carbs as much as I can. But 26 is still great as I know. Especially for those who has strengh training is said that 50 is ok.
You can check out the Exercise section of the forum, and read what people say on there about it, and maybe get some good ideas =).
If you are able to do intense workouts, your fatigue is much less bad than mine was:smile:
I wrote it yesterday in another thread on nearly the same topic, but in my case I think it was an overdose of magnesium, which made me very very tired the first seven weeks on keto. When I quitted to supplement, I got much more energy.
Momof5
Thank You. I’m new to this forum, but it seems it has tons of gret information. I will analise that.
ketoandabs
Its sometimes hard to start training but it gets better after couple of sets.