So I am going on 6 weeks of Keto and haven’t really had a good day. I’ve been constipated, moody, and only lost about 5 lbs. I am an almost 38 year old (birthday is in a few days) female who does HIIT at least 4x/week. I am 5’8” and 153 lbs (+/- 5 lbs depending on bloating, etc). I am currently at 24% body fat. I was a healthy eater before Keto, incorporated complex carbs into my diet with maybe a day a week of splurging. I decided to try Keto after hitting a plateau in my progress after about 10 months of consistent HIIT training. Since I have allergies to nuts and avocados, I reintroduced full fat dairy back into my diet for the healthy fats. I also do intermittent fasting a few days a week. With all of these changes, I’ve been consistently exhausted, my body hurts (inflammation from the dairy?), I am moody, my menstrual cycle is more frequent, AND I am only down 5 lbs (which I could have done eating as I was before). So my question is… is it worth it to stay on Keto? I want to have more lean muscle. I eat about 500 calories less than my daily expenditure. Was thinking about carb cycling but don’t know how to start - on a rest day? How many carbs should I have? I have so many questions! What should I do?
Is this worth it?
What was your inspiration to start keto? I think you are not eating enough food. This is not about calories in vs calories burnt. Often times our body has a lot of internal damage to sort through before beign able to let go of the fat stores. Sometimes insulin resistance needs to be adjusted with fasting before we can lose weight. There are a lot of variables in the narrative above. If you are looking for longer term benefits, then yes it is worth it. If you are stressing out, your cortisol levles will peak, triggering insulin and prevent weight loss… How many carbs do you allow now? Are you eating enough fat and salt? How is your water intake?
Using HIIT to try to add muscle is a definite stress on the body.
If you also have other stresses (work related, relationship related, lack of sleep etc.) that can increase cortisol and hurt your keto progress (where - with keto - you are trying to manipulate hormones for a specific outcome but being confounded by stress hormones).
Try taking dairy down a bunch - get your fats from lard, coconut oil, rendered bacon fat, ribeye, ghee etc. and see if some of your complaints subside.
It will be difficult to add muscle while at 500 calories less than your daily expenditure. I do not know where your protein intake is but upping it a bit and doing some carb cycling around strength training (vs. HIIT) might be a good way to pack on some muscle.
Another thing to do in have your blood checked. You obviously have a bunch of health goals and it might be good to let your blood work help guide you. For example, if stress and carb cycling for a year starts to move you into a pre-diabetic range - maybe strict keto and IF is best for the next year. Some of your muscle gains might go away but you’ll avoid a health train wreck.
Cortisol is automatically increased when starting Keto because you body is stressed from the lack of carbs until that is, you’re completely fat adapted. Just make sure you’re getting enough rest and not over training and you shouldn’t have an issue with cortisol making you fat…
Now as for your question about Carbs… you could try “Carb Backloading”… basically you increase your carb intake for dinner (only on the days you have a heavy/hard workout) all other times you keep your carbs very low… note: on the nights you increase your carbs you still don’t wanna eat more then 50 to 100 carbs depending on what works best.
My boyfriend and I started discussing it and both decided to try it out.
I am at 25 or less net carbs a day. I also try to get about 1g protein per lb of lean body mass and usually go for more. In terms of fat, I’m usually between 65-70% of calories from fat. I typically track my macros, which is why I know.
I am eating around 1800 calories a day, so I don’t think I’m not eating enough. My basal Metabolic Rate is around 1500 calories and I tend to burn 500-750 calories when I work out (about 4x/week).
I try to drink water and also caffeine free herbal tea. I put a few drops of stevia into my tea and coffee but am trying to minimize that as well.
I just realized that part of my issue may be that I don’t have a gallbladder. All of this fat seems difficult for me to digest. I feel nauseous, in addition to all of the other negative ways I feel. I emailed my doctor to see what she says. Thanks for your input!!!
Thanks for the advice! I have at least 1 g of protein per lb of lean muscle mass but tend to go over that. I had a body scan two days ago through my gym. Lost 2 lbs muscle mass with the 5 lbs I lost on Keto. Since I’m eating about 1800 calories a day with a nasal metabolic rate of 1500 and average of 500-750 calories burned through HIIT, not sure if I should change this. Also, part of what I do is strength training for 90 minutes twice a week. Since I wear a heart rate monitor during my workouts, I know that my performance has declined since starting Keto. As I replied to the previous post, I don’t have a gallbladder and wonder if that is also leading to some of my issues. Response from my MD is pending.
Is there a reason to have more carbs for dinner versus other times of the day? I work out early in the morning, just FYI. Also, I currently eat about 20-25 g of net carbs.
When you backload the night before a heavy morning training session, you’re doing so because you’re refilling your glycogen reserves. That’s what the nightly back-load is designed to do. You won’t be tapping into those glycogen reserves until you go train, so the window to use them is pretty much wide open until the evening.