I'm lean now.....so now what?

#1

I’ve been on Keto for about 3 months. Not completely strict but I’ve done a pretty good job. Started at 205 and I am down to 180. I was never particularly heavy…I’ve always been athletic and an avid gym goer. So now that I am down to 180…I feel like I need some “fluff”.

I’ve been watching Jason Whittrock on YouTube the last 3 weeks and his intake of 4k cals per day. Then I watched him lose 2 lbs and 0.2% of body fat! Pretty amazing anyway you want to look at it. My involvement in Keto started as a need to lean out and is transforming in to a need to live longer and be healthy! I have no interest in stopping Keto but I would rather not be as lean as I am…if that makes any sense. Has anyone ever done a successful “bulk” using strict Keto?

(Keto in Katy) #2

Similar thought here. I have been keto 3.5 years, was never overweight much, went from 175 to 160 which is my high school weight. I am 16% body fat with some muscle (not a whole lot) as I work out regularly.

I sometimes feel this is too lean but I figure it is where my body wants to be. I feel great and just plan to keep working out and maybe add some more muscle weight.

Do you feel good and have energy? I don’t know anything really about bulking up so you might check the Keto Gains subreddit as I think they focus on that. reddit.com/r/ketogains

(Adam Kirby) #3

Are you sure you need more fat, and do you really just need more muscle? IDK how successful you would be bulking on keto, since as Jason Wittrock has proven it doesn’t matter if you eat a ton of calories on LCHF, you will not gain fat. So that means adding crappy carbs back into your diet.

#4

Ya know, I actually spent quite a bit of time over there to be honest. I really liked some of the view points but there were SO many view points that eventually, most of the ideas turned from Keto…into High Fat/ High Protein. Ive got tons of energy…my requirement for a mid morning crash is essentially gone. Maybe I need to do my own Whittrock experiment and keep my Protein intake below 100Gs and see what happens…

#5

Isn’t it funny now that I’ve got a method that melts the fat…Here I am looking for method to put some of it right back on? You are exactly right about the crappy carbs…I know for a fact that they will bulk me right back up. I was a gallon of milk per day for months at one point. I almost jumped back on that train last week but was able to talk my self out of it.

#6

Gaining weight in any sense is anabolic and insulin is an anabolic hormone, so gaining weight means raising insulin.

For Insulin Resistant (IR) folks that includes virtually any metabolic derangement, raising insulin is usually bad and the purpose of keto is to reduce insulin.

However, for people with normal insulin levels and normal insulin sensitivity that wish to gain weight, it’s a matter of how you choose to raise your insulin.

Carbohydrates raise insulin the most, protein has about 50% the effect on insulin as carbs and fat has minimal effect, so just raising fat is unlikely to result in weight gain, but individual results will certainly vary.

Depending on personal preferences, I would recommend raising protein to the maximum someone is comfortable eating and I recommend the thread below for making an informed decision.

After raising protein, if you’re still not gaining and show no obvious signs of IR, then judiciously adding carbs would be the next step, but the selection of which carbohydrates is critical.

Selecting carbs that trigger cravings would certainly lead to disaster or including sources that are inflammatory would have those problems.

#7

BillJay! THANK YOU! Great read!

(Dustin Cade) #8

i listen to Ketogenic Athlete podcast, they have a site and they sell a bunch of plans, I don’t pay any attention to that stuff…