Higher than 20g carbs if you’re doing heavy exercise?

(Alec) #1

Is there any evidence or support for eating a higher than 20g carb limit if you’re burning LOTS of carbs during exercise?

Pros/cons anyone?
Cheers
Alec

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #2

Hey, if it works for you, go for it.

(TJ Borden) #3

I opt for the lowest possible carbs and minimal exercise.

(Ken) #4

If you’re doing heavy, intense workouts it’s common to eat extra carbs. In CKD and TKD those carbs around workouts are often not counted in daily Carb counts. The protocol is that they are simple, such as dextrose or glucose, and they are consumed immediately before and after training. The usual amounts are 20g before and 40g afterwards. I’ve done it often myself, and have not been kicked out of lipolysis. After at least two hours you can then resume your fat based eating.

(Pete A) #5

I’m of the school you have a certain personal carb tolerance anyway, so I wouldn’t look at it at hard 20, And to @240lbfatloss point, you are using some up.

(Erin Macfarland ) #6

My experience after having done Keto for almost 4 years and having maintained a high level of physical activity for most of that time…you can generally “tolerate” higher carb intake if you are pretty lean and engage in a fair amount of exercise/physical activity, at least an hour a day. Particularly if you do resistance training regularly. Many days I would run for an hour and do weights, and I could handle 50 to 100 grams of carbs, and I’m not talking the “good” carbs from vegetables or even berries. I could eat crap like some cookies or sweets, and still register ketones the next day. Fasting after eating a higher amount of carbs is helpful as is fasted exercise. I will still occasionally eat stuff I know will make me feel sh*tty, I do struggle with eating sweets especially when I’m stressed, and I end up not feeling nearly as well as if I’d stick to lower carb foods, but I recover pretty quickly since I am so active and am fairly lean. So when you talk about “tolerating” a higher amount of carbs, you could be referring to a couple of scenarios- how you physically handle the increased glucose load and how you feel afterwards. If you have no metabolic issues and you meet all those criteria, being very active and lean, you could definitely handle higher carb intake, sometimes upwards of 100 grams, and still stay ketogenic. But the extra carbs won’t necessarily improve your energy or your exercise performance, and may likely make you feel worse. Doing this on occasion wouldn’t be a big deal but regularly consuming your upper tolerance for carbs will, in my opinion, not benefit you. I’d recommend upping protein instead if you want to increase a macro, and have more fatty meats. This has helped me increase my satiety levels and maintain a lot of LBM. No one is perfect and if you end up eating higher amounts of carbs one day don’t worry too much if you exercise regularly. Sometimes I’ll drink a high ABV beer the night before a race and it gives me a boost. The other day I ate soooo much, including a bunch of s’mores (don’t judge!!) and I registered blood ketones the next morning. So you gotta do what works for you. I’m working on finding other ways to handle stress other than eating chocolate, but if I do that I just go right back to Keto and get in a good workout the next day.

(Chris) #7

Personally, if weight loss is a goal, id skip carbs centered around your workout. I experimented with adding back carbs at post workout and the only benefit I got was insane hunger/cravings shortly after. For me, it wasn’t worth dealing with the hunger for whatever limited benefit it was providing. It was almost euphoric consuming fruit post workout. But for what my goals are, it just wasn’t right for me.

Charles Poliquin says you have to earn your carbs. And by earning them, being under 10%bf is one of the criteria.

(Pete A) #8

This is where my head is now. Thank you!

(Ken) #9

Poliquin is Full of Poop, and is an excellent example of a self styled guru pushing his own dogma while being ignorant of biochemistry. He needs to increase his understanding of, or at least be aware of, the role and function of Orexigenic and Anorexigenic hormones.

(Troy) #10

This works for me
I’m not an heavy endurance athlete ( cycling-moderate weight training )
On the leaner side though

I have tried increasing carbs to around 40-50
May have went higher, who knows
For me, I craved sweets during that experiment
Within hours and right b4 bed
No added energy or better recovery
Some fatigue
Sleep — worse
Bonking on my cycling here and there too

I can easily get away w the above…no weight gain
Just w the overall “ feeling “ I do not find it beneficial for now

Now I am just changing up my protein macros
Still in the working stage now
Mixed results
At the gym, strength is improving
And energy
Cycling - consistent

W fat…those macros still go higher or fatter😁
I crave fat now…like I did carbs b4

(Erin Macfarland ) #11

@Tmdlkwd yes I experience this same thing, craving more sweets or nuts (I have a wicked sweet tooth and nuts are something I struggle to moderate too…) like you say I can “get away” with eating that way but I feel awful. I’ve done ZC and did ok but really missed veggies. Still after all this time doing Keto I am working on finding something that works for me consistently. But letting go of worrying about over consuming protein has helped me a lot with satiety. For those at or near their “goal weight” or who are lean and athletic, it’s tricky to figure out the most effective and sustainable template for eating this way. And hunger can really increase as your BF % lowers, so things like fat bombs and Keto “treats” are very easy to over consume.

(Troy) #12

+1
So True

#13

I wasn’t sure where to post this but I thought it was funny.
I used to run ultras several years back.
Tonight I was digging through piles of stuff looking for a book when I found this relic of my carb fueled runs.
Hard to believe there was a time when I thought this garbage was ok. On a run of 7 + hours I wonder how much crap like this plus the aid station junk and sugary “electrolyte” drinks I would pound down.

2018-07-24-214735
2018-07-24-214735.jpg1920×1080 196 KB

yeah, that first ingredient is maltodextrin… 21g carbs for one of these!
All the carbs of a slice of bread in a syrupy slurp. :nauseated_face:

(Nathan Toben) #14

I am training for a 100-mile ultramarathon in November and i am curious about this topic as well.

I am on week 4 of keto and it seems just due to my exercise load that i am adapting pretty quickly. I intend to give my base-building/fat-adaption phase another 50 days and then i will begin priming my gut for the carbs i will use during the race.

I will ingest roughly 40g of carbs an hour for a duration of approximately 20 hours during the run, or 400 calories an hour. That’s a ton of carbohydrate. I will then go zero carb after the race to recover, disabuse myself of cravings and race-induced depression and drop back into ketosis.

In order to execute this nutrition plan, it takes training the gut. I haven’t tabulated how i will reintroduce these liquid calories (tailwind nutrition) into my more rigorous training blocks as an athlete who wants to re-enter ketosis relatively fast after quality efforts and over-distance runs. It will be interesting to learn where my carbohydrate tolerance lands after induction. Best of luck to you finding yours @Alecmcq.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #15

Why do you need carbohydrate during the race? Even the leanest athlete has something like 50,000 calories stored in his adipose tissue that can be drawn on.

Granted, when Zach Bitter first won the Western States, he consumed gels throughout the race, but by all accounts, when he won it again, he did it completely on ketones. When Sami and Meredith Inkanen set the record for the Hawai’i crossing, they did it completely on ketones, as well.

(Edith) #16

I’m curious as well. On your other thread you mention training using oils/fats. Why change to carbs to fuel your race?

(Nathan Toben) #17

@PaulL i think you mean Timothy Olson. Zach placed an impressive 9th this year but has yet to win it. Both Timothy Olson and Zach Bitter, over the course of the race, trickle in about 20-40g carbohydrate an hour. Or two gels an hour, during races. The reason for this is that they are not trying to burn the most fat from start to finish, they are trying to have their feet cross the finish line in the least amount of time.

Carbohydrate, even for Zach Bitter, whose fat-burning capacity still remains high at very high efforts ( a phenom!) is absolutely essential for peak training and racing, not only from a performance perspective but from a health perspective as well. Eat to the task. For variable efforts such as cresting and descending technical mountain single track during a running race that lasts +16hrs, the body needs carbohydrate not only when you hit your crossover point during anaerobic spurts but also to continue to be able to mobilize fat late in the race.

Sami Inkenen and his girlfriend would both agree that crossing the ocean on very little sugar was not a race but an awareness-boosting exploration. They could have done it faster if they had fueled with strategic carbs (not without its drawbacks of course), but that was not a strong value of theirs. What an awesome feat.

I am drawn to keto because I look at the demands of my life, my mental illnesses and can clearly see it as a salve for (amazingly) all of these seemingly disparate ailments and challenges. It also is key to reaching race weight in a sustainable manor, a race weight that can then be implemented during peak training and racing where periodized carbohydrates are used. But performing 100 miles in a race setting without carbohydrates can really stress the body’s hormones and adrenals, especially if push comes to shove and you go in the red quite frequently despite having depleted glycogen stores.

I recommend checking out Ben Greenfield and Peter Attia’s work regarding keto endurance where they talk much more eloquently than me about this stuff.

But I know where your questions comes from because utilizing strategic carbohydrate does not come without its drawbacks. I have BED and depression and doing so triggers me. Therefore, in order to explore the thing i love most, I have to walk into the lions den. Simple as that. But the amount of exercise ultra athletes do, using up to 200g/day of carbohydrate during peak training and then backing down into ketosis before super compensation the week of a race —- does not affect their fat-burning capacity as much as one might think. This is because glycogen is utilized for the demands of training and re-exhausted.

Getting good at this, like Zach Bitter has, has resulted in extreme metabolic flexibility in his case. He can graze from the aid stations (i’ve Seen him do it) taking carbs with protein wth fat, and not worry how it will affect his fat burning because he returns to this WOE after training and races and his body seamlessly dips back into its cultivated substrate.

(Nathan Toben) #18

P.S. If these races were: who can burn the most endogenous fat over the course of 100 miles, Zach Bitter would be hands down the greatest ultra runner in the world. He is even keel, generous with his knowledge, a truly dedicated and hard worker but also a genetic talent. I think his body can burn something crazy like 2g of stored fat per minute despite scientists believing the human limit was like 1.2g before Jeff Volek’s F.A.S.T.E.R. Study.

He is definitely a template for little old me. Fanboy alert…

(Edith) #19

Makes sense. Thanks for the lengthy explanation.

(Terence Dean) #20

There’s another n=1 test for you Alec, see at what point your increase in carbs kicks you out of Ketosis. I did 84g of carbs the other day and didn’t flinch, Ketones reading next day were still 1.3 mmol/L.