Negative effects for skinny young guy

#1

So I have been eating HFLC paleo since january 1st, and around 20th of january I got more serious with keeping the fat high enough and carbs low enough for the diet to be keto, but I mostly experience negative effects so far.

I do weight training, with consistent training every third day, but I have lost strength on keto, I now lift less weight than before, and with extreme difficulty due to lack of strength. Around the first week of january I had very high sex drive, but now it is almost non-existing, this is also a major problem. Although I started as a 185 cm tall guy and 68.5 kg, I have also lost 2.5 kg. Losing some weight was expected, although I had almost no fat to lose, and I would rather gain some weight.

I ate rather healthy before this diet, although I ate many full grains, such as pasta and bread, which is now removed. This year, my diet has almost only consisted of whole foods, unprocessed meat, bacon, eggs, olive oil, coconut, avocado etc. I also ate some dairy around 20th of january until the start of this month, but I am concerned if dairy will decrease testosterone, so I don’t eat it anymore. I also do time restricted eating with an eating window of about 7 hours.

I have measured my blood ketones, and had 0.5 mmol yesterday, so I might not be completely fat adapted yet, but I don’t experience any headaches or serious fatigue during the day (only fatigue in relation to weight training).

Any similar experiences? Tips or tricks?
Will the sex drive come back, and strength? Do I need to wait for fat adaption and then try targeted keto for strength?
I think I will continue the diet for some months still, but if I can’t get rid of these negative effects, I will probably try other ways of eating.

#2

Hey SKD, and welcome!
Going from high carb to keto is a very dramatic change in your fuel source, and you’ll definitely notice a drop in performance until you adjust. We talk about fat-adaptation as a switch, and some folks do wake up one morning and realize that something has changed and they feel awesome, but it’s usually more gradual. You’re actually building more mitochondria to handle the change in fuel, and your whole hormonal system needs to adjust.

At your age and weight, you’re probably a great candidate for what Mark Sisson calls the “keto zone:” once you’re fat-adapted (he recommends 6 weeks of strict keto, though often you dial down the carbs gradually before the start), you should have the fat-fuel pathway established enough that you can play with occasional and/or higher levels of carbs depending on what you need for your training.

If the TRE is a decision rather than a natural outcome of hunger, and if you added that at the same time as going LC, that’s a lot of change at once and will be fairly stressful to the body. Generally the ideal is to shift your eating and let the time-restricted part happen on its own.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #3

Allow six to eight weeks as a minimum for fat-adaptation, in the meantime keep your exercise light. Your performance will come back, and many people say that when it returned they exceeded their previous level. BTW, it’s the low intake of carbohydrate, not fat consumption, that is the key to this way of eating. The point is that carbohydrate stimulates insulin production, and insulin is the fat-storage hormone. Fat is only emphasized because it is a safe source of calories, having very little effect on our insulin level. You should be eating only to satiety (i.e., stop eating when you stop being hungry), not forcing fat. The advantage of eating to satiety is that it encourages the body to ramp up the metabolism; whereas restricting calories can cause the body to shut down non-essential processes.

At first, eating to satiety can mean eating quite a lot of food, but the body often seems to need this in the very beginning. But as insulin drops, the hormonal appetite signals can get through to the brain again, and hunger becomes a reliable guide to food quantity. My appetite was abruptly cut in half one day, somewhere in my third week of eating strict keto. What a surprise! I had to put half the food I’d intended to eat at that meal back in the fridge for later!

(Full Metal KETO AF) #4

Good advice from Paul and Madeline. Hang in there and you’ll feel the keto power soon :cowboy_hat_face:

(In Rochester NY USA, lovin life) #5

since being on keto diet my testosterone went from the 400’s into the 600’s I’ve never been that high and I eat lots of dairy. in 2015 my niece won the iron Man weightlifting in upstate New York is that what it’s called anyways, she was on keto but she got off at cuz she couldn’t bench as much she said she was benching or powerlifting 220 does that possible I know I couldn’t do it but now she couldn’t anymore and can only do 165 lb so she got off the diet, obviously I’m not sure exactly what she said but she did win that competition though I saw the certificate thing. she couldn’t believe I could eat a 12-inch Italian sub everyday for 6 days in a row and still get .5 ketones, so maybe if she was better adapted then she would have done better lifting

#6

Hi and welcome,

That is to be expected you’ve had years of training your mitochondria to be efficient with glucose now they are rusty when it comes to keytones for fuel.

It takes at least a month or two to be decently keto-adapted and many months in a high-performance context.

Avoiding insulin overdose is well worth it, hundreds of millions of people are suffering from Metabolic syndrome.

The more accurately you stay under 20 g carbs the faster you will adapt I suppose.

As for the drive you speak of, I noticed something similar, everything seems more under control in that department but it all works out.

By the way - a measurement of 0.5 does not mean you are or are not keto adapted. I use a blood analyser to help me find hidden carbs, that’s all

Cheers

#7

Thanks for your useful replies. I will continue to follow the diet for some months, to hopefully see some positive effects. I will try not to do weight training too much, maybe cut down to two times a week. And for the dairy, I might add it in at some later point in the future.