Reader Question: Carbohydrates and TKD Diets
Question: I really like the idea of a Keto diet as I feel a lot better without eating carbohydrates in my diet and enjoy the hunger suppressing effects from not eating carbohydrates, however am a little unsure about continuing with my workouts.
Do I need to eat carbohydrates in order to be able to maintain my workout program?
Answer: This is a great question and one I felt it was important to address as I’m sure many other people have similar questions as well.
The general gist of the Ketogenic Diet (otherwise known as the Keto diet) is that you remove carbohydrates from the diet so your body is forced to burn fat as fuel. You are also eating a great deal more dietary fat in this diet too though, so keep that in mind. It’s not just cut carbs and fat and lose weight like crazy (that is not a good idea over the longer term).
Instead, you take in more calories from fat but keep the body utilizing fat as fuel. The primary advantage to this type of diet is hunger control. In the absence of carbohydrates, for most people, hunger goes out the window.
The disadvantage of this type of plan though is that in order to sustain higher intensity exercise, you must take in carbohydrates at some point. So, as you can imagine, the Ketogenic diet over a long period of time would virtually mean you aren’t exercising intensely. Not what most people have in mind.
The Way Around This
The way to get around this then is to add carbohydrates back into the diet at some point or another to allow for this higher intensity exercise to take place.
This can be done one of two ways.
Method 1: The first method is adding a very large ‘carb up’ period once a week over the weekend where you drop fat intake and significantly boost carbohydrate intake (8-10 grams/lb of lean body weight). This is spaced out over the course of a two day period while you take a break from exercising.
This method works well for those who really want to indulge a bit over the weekends and would prefer to not have to eat any carbohydrates during the week. One thing you may notice with this method is that you will regain back 2-3 pounds of water weight after the carb up, but as long as you can handle that psychologically you should be fine.
Method 2: The second method is placing a smaller amount of carbohydrates before and maybe even after the workout is completed. How many carbohydrates you’ll need for this will again be individual, but a good starting point is about 5 grams of carbohydrates for every 2 sets you do during your workout. If that math gets too confusing, aim for 25-50 grams of carbs both before and after the workout period.
This manner seems to work well for a number of people who don’t handle the very large carb loads all that well and don’t want to be doing that regularly.
Instead they eat their pre and post workout carbs and follow the standard keto diet set-up the remainder of the day.
So, to answer your question, yes, you must add carbohydrates to the diet at some point if you want to keep exercising. By doing so you’ll be sure you can keep working out at the intensity that’s needed without feeling extreme fatigue setting in.
Have a question you’d like answered? Please give me a shout here:
———> Ask A Question
Related posts:
Leave a Comment