The Fact and Fiction of Carb Loading for Exercise 

It was a long-held belief that carbohydrates are required to fuel and recover from exercise. But recent research by scientists and physicians such as Dr. Jeff Volek (a registered dietitian, professor at Ohio State University, and keto expert), provide a better understanding of the physiology of the body. The consensus? Carbohydrates are not the only fuel source the body can use during and after exercise. In fact, his studies suggest carbs are perhaps not even the optimal source, and that a higher fat, low-carb diet has more promising results for pre- and post-workout meals. These findings are the reason you may be hearing about more athletes and people dedicated to an active lifestyle following a keto or low-carb diet rather than a low-fat diet or other diet. 

Still, despite these long held common misconceptions, there is some truth in the need for eating before and after working out. In the nutrition world, this is called peri-workout nutrition. 

What is Peri-Workout Nutrition?

Simply put, peri-workout nutrition is the nutrition around your workout, or what you eat before exercise to fuel your performance and what you eat after exercise to facilitate recovery.  

Standard recommendations for peri-workout nutrition are based on false pretenses that carbohydrates are essential for performance but also recovery. This leads many people to “carb load” before and after exercise. 

On a ketogenic diet, where carbs are essentially off limits, carb loading obviously isn’t an option. But that doesn’t mean your energy or performance has to suffer. 

What Should I Eat Before I Workout?

Here’s the truth: your body does not need carbohydrates to perform. In fact, on a keto diet, your body doesn’t need any pre-workout food or even a keto-friendly sports drink in order to maintain stamina; you can workout on an empty stomach. And this is true for every type of body composition! That’s one of the beautiful things about being keto; when you’re in ketosis, your body is in prime fat-burning mode. This means that during exercise, your body can tap into stored body fat for workout fuel. In fact, studies have shown that ketogenic dieters burn over twice as much fat during exercise compared to those fueling themselves with carbs. So, if your primary goal is fat burning, not eating before exercise may be a great way to maximize your efforts. 

However, not everyone exercises with fat burning in mind or wants to exercise without fueling up first. To those people wondering what to eat before a workout, we have great news: You can eat whatever keto-friendly foods you know nourishes your individual body and allows you to maintain enough energy and achieve your exercise goals.  

If you’re not sure what those are, follow these guidelines:

• Eat protein: it’s great to include before exercise because it gives your muscles the amino acids it needs to perform and repair themselves during exercise, not to mention build muscle. 
• Eat fat: it’s your primary energy source on a ketogenic diet, so adding fat before exercise gives your body more energy to call on.
  
• Eat a full meal, if that works for you: Though not everyone can stomach a big meal before exercising, a full meal before a workout ensures you get enough grams of fat and grams of protein to fuel performance. If your personal preference is a meal, even one including keto-friendly veggies, go for it. 
  
• Or drink a protein shake or smoothie with MCTs: It’ll ensure you have a fast-digesting protein and fat source your body can access shortly after eating, without having to worry about being too full to perform.

What to Eat After a Workout? 

Whether you’re keto or not, post-workout nutrition is an important factor for how well your body handles workout recovery. During this time, post-workout snacks are in order, and protein is your best friend.

Protein is often under-consumed on a ketogenic diet because our classic recommendations are to eat 20 to 25 percent of our calories from protein to maintain ketosis. Although these guidelines were developed for children suffering from epilepsy, they continue to be recommended (along with 5 to 10 percent daily calories from carbs) because they represent a baseline for people wanting to get and stay in ketosis, meaning pretty much anyone who stays within these guidelines should be able to get into and maintain ketosis. But because every body is different, what actually works for you depends on your body and your lifestyle. For example, if you exercise intensely via cardio, weights, or otherwise on a regular basis, you need more protein (more on that below, but also see Dr. Marc Bubbs’ book Peak: The New Science of Athletic Performance That is Revolutionizing Sports).

Many people fear eating excess protein on a ketogenic diet because they think it will be converted to glucose in the body and potentially kick you out of ketosis. While this can occur, this conversion is a demand-driven process, meaning your body only converts protein to glucose when it needs glucose for uses such as cells in the body that can only use glucose for energy (e.g. red blood cells) or to help replenish glycogen (our bodies stored form of carbohydrates) after exercise. 

Regardless, you shouldn’t fear protein consumption, especially since many ketogenic dieters don’t eat enough of it even when they’re not exercising. 

While getting enough protein is something you should focus on anyway, getting enough is even more important if you exercise. Research shows that consuming just 20 percent of your calories from protein while exercising can lead to muscle loss. This tells us that your body requires more protein if you are exercising, likely closer to 30 percent of your calories or more depending on your individual body. Plus, right after you exercise, your body is ready to soak in nutrients for recovery, especially protein. This is why reaching for a quick, refueling keto-friendly protein shake on your way home from the gym may be your best option. 

But it’s just as important to note that choosing the right protein source after a workout is also essential. You need something that is fast-digesting during your post-workout window, which starts right after your workout and extends up to 24 hours. Whey protein, which comes from dairy, is the fastest-digesting protein powder, and when taken after exercise, it can stimulate muscle-protein synthesis, or the building of new muscle. This matters because muscle-protein synthesis is essential for recovery and preventing sore muscles. 

People avoiding lactose from dairy can still get the benefits of whey protein by choosing a protein powder containing whey protein isolate (aka whey isolate, a dietary supplement that separates components from milk), which contains the lowest amounts of lactose. 

Once you’ve nourished your body with rapidly digesting protein, you’re ready for a full meal.  After you get home from the gym, prepare a high-protein and higher fat meal to make sure that you are continuing to focus on protein intake and getting all of the micronutrients from quality fat sources. Both will help facilitate recovery.  

The Final Word

The most important thing to take away from this article is to not fear protein consumption. The traditional low-protein recommendations for keto are based on epilepsy treatment and should be modified to fit your own bio-individuality and lifestyle. Bottom line: if you’re exercising, you need more protein, especially after exercise.

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So, what’s going to help you create ketones faster? Doing some low intensity aerobic work, or going to the gym and leaving it all on the gym floor? You know, quite honestly, the jury is still out. There’s a lot of ambiguity between what’s going to actually allow you to create ketones faster. But if we actually look at what mobilizes fat, and what gets fats into the bloodstream, we start getting a little bit of a clearer picture. I’m Thomas DeLauer with Keto-Mojo. And we’re going to break down how you can start creating ketones faster, by doing the right kinds of exercise.

Taking a Look at Maximum Fatty Acid Oxidation

See, the first thing we have to look at is we get maximum fatty acid oxidation at relatively low intensities. Between 25% and 60% of our maximum heart rate is where we’re going to see sort of the sweet spot of our body utilizing fats as a fuel source. Now this is whether you’re in ketosis or not to be completely honest. As exercise intensity increases, up to about 60%, we stop pulling fat from the bloodstream, we start pulling it from intramyocellular triglyceride content. So basically, little fat droplets that are stored inside the muscle cell, all right. So, these get released. Now, once we go over 60% and start increasing to about 70% of our maximum heart rate, that’s when things change. So when you’re working really hard at the gym and you’re pushing it really hard, and you’re lifting heavy weights, and you’re sprinting, that’s a lot more of an anaerobic activity which actually utilizes carbohydrates for fuel. So that means you’re mobilizing less in the way of fat when you’re working harder.

The Role of Glycogen

It’s kind of wild right? You would think you’d be burning more fat. Now, on the contrary, there could be a good thing that comes from this because when you workout at a high intensity, you drain your glycogen stores. Glycogen is the stored carbohydrate that’s in your muscles. So if you start to drain your glycogen stores, then in theory, you can start to create ketones cause you have less stored carbohydrates in your body. But, it begs the question, do we really have to have our glycogen stores low in order for our liver to produce ketones? Because, once you’re already in ketosis, your glycogen levels are somewhat full most of the time and you’re still producing ketones. So, it’s not for certain that our glycogen levels need to be low in order to just produce ketones. So that’s where things get a little bit confusing. So when it comes down to just trying to capitalize on the liver creating more ketones, you’re better off to do a little bit more aerobic work. You’re going to mobilize the fats a little bit more, you’re going to stay a nice easy low intensity, and those fats are going to have an opportunity to be in the blood and go to the liver and get turned into ketones a little bit faster, and hopefully more efficiently.

The Role of Adipose Tissue

Now the other thing we have to look at is, as we increase intensity, fat gets kind of locked into the adipose tissue, okay. So normally we have blood that is flowing through the adipose tissue and it’s bringing in the fatty acids into the bloodstream. As exercise intensity increases, more blood flow is going to the muscle, which means less blood flow in the fat tissue, which means that the fat, for lack of a better term, is getting trapped in the capillary beds of the adipose tissue, so it’s not actually getting mobilized. So, if we’re focusing all our efforts on high intensity work, it makes it so the fat never really gets a chance to break free. Now additionally, as we increase intensity, and we start having more in the way of carbohydrate metabolism occurring for energy, we also have a block of what’s called carnitine palmitoytransferase 1 or CPT1. CPT1 is what allows fat to go from the bloodstream into the cell, okay. It’s the carnitine shuttle pathway. Without that CPT1, the fat can’t go into the cell. So even if there is fat that’s floating around, it’s getting blocked, okay. Now, additionally, there’s also an increase in what’s called Malonyl Coenzyme A, which further blocks this from happening.

Balance and Bio-Individuality

So, the long story short is the higher the intensity, the more that you’re actually blocking fat from going into the cell. Does that mean that you shouldn’t do any high intensity work? Absolutely not. I think it’s a balance. A little bit of high intensity work, maybe about 20 to 30% of your workout being high intensity to drain your glycogen as much as you can, and another 70 to 80% of it being aerobic, at least until you’re creating a good amount of ketones. And honestly, it all comes down to bio-individuality. What’s going to work for you might not work for me. The only way that you’ll know for sure is if you’re testing. And of course, that’s where you insert the Keto-Mojo meter. You always want to be testing. See where you’re at. Maybe you’re someone that going to get more of an effect by doing more anaerobic workout type stuff in the gym, then someone that’s doing more of an aerobic work, right. It all depends on the person. That’s why it’s up to you to test. So you leave the guess work out of the equation and leave the measuring to the meter. As always, I’m Thomas DeLauer and I’ll see you soon.

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For decades it was assumed that carbohydrates should be the macronutrient of choice for fueling the body for exercise. However, we now know that the body can not only survive under conditions of low-carbohydrate intake but also perform very impressive physical feats. In fact, as this article will demonstrate, it appears that being fueled by fat and ketones is actually superior for endurance exercise.

Why is this? The answer lies within the dual-fuel power of the ketogenic diet. We’ll go into detail on dual fuel below, but let’s first review the difference between carb-adapted and keto-adapted athletes.

Carb-Adapted Athletes vs. Keto-Adapted Athletes

An athlete who is carb-adapted relies on glucose to provide his or her body with energy during exercise. This glucose comes from carbohydrates consumed prior to exercise and the breakdown of glycogen, our bodies stored form of carbohydrates. 

Glucose can be great fuel for exercise, but the body doesn’t have very much available at any given time. For most people, the carbohydrate fuel tank is around 2,000 calories in the form of glycogen, plus however many calories are consumed from carbohydrates prior to exercise.

While this may be plenty of energy to fuel some types of exercise, it can fall short when attempting to fuel endurance exercise, especially long-duration endurance exercise. This is because the carb-adapted body has difficulty tapping into stored fat, a massive fuel supply, when it runs out of stored carbohydrates. As a result, many athletes experience what is known as a “bonk” or sudden fatigue and a failure to continue exercise. 

This is not the case if you’re a fat- or keto-adapted athlete. A keto-adapted athlete uses fat as the primary energy source for nearly all bodily functions, including physical performance. The great thing about being fat-adapted is that the fat fuel supply is nearly endless; even the leanest athletes store more than 20,000 calories in the form of body fat.

This means that if you are following a ketogenic diet, you have the ability to effortlessly tap into a much bigger fuel supply than you do if you’re carb-adapted. In fact, research has found that ketogenic athletes burn 2.3 times more fat during exercise compared to carb-adapted athletes.

The benefits of being a keto-adapted athlete do not stop here. Besides fat, ketogenic dieters are also able to tap into additional fuel sources–ketones–with relative ease. This is known as the dual-fueled power of the ketogenic diet. 

What is Dual Fuel? 

Dual fuel means being able to utilize more than one energy source. If you are familiar with the ketogenic diet and ketosis, you know that being keto-adapted also means producing and using an additional fuel source known as ketones (which are produced by your body when you eat a higher fat, low-carb diet).

Ketones are important during exercise because they provide energy to the brain to help continue carrying out physical performance. This is especially important since the “bonk” we mentioned earlier can be driven by a lack of fuel available to the brain during exercise. 

Besides being able to use both fat and ketones to fuel exercise, a keto-adapted athlete can also tap into any stored glycogen in the body. This is relevant because, as proven by keto expert Dr. Jeff Volek, even people avoiding carbs maintain ample stores of glycogen that can be called upon by keto athletes if needed during exercise. This is where the true power of the dual-fueled benefit of ketosis comes into play.

While a carb-adapted athlete has a difficult time switching between fuel sources, the opposite is true for the keto-adapted athlete; a keto-adapted athlete can actually rely on fat, ketones, and glycogen to fuel performance. 

Believe it or not, there are even more benefits. Research shows that a keto-adapted body will start burning fat at lower exercise intensities. This allows the body to intuitively preserve glycogen for when a quick burst of energy is needed, like towards the end of an endurance race or when you need that extra push to make it up the hill.

This means that a keto-adapted individual is able to maximize its resources by utilizing various energy sources at the most opportune times during exercise.

The Final Word

Being carb-adapted means missing out on another massive energy source stored within the body: fat. This is the equivalent of being a gas tanker truck and not having enough gas in the tank to complete the journey without stopping to refuel, even though you’re carrying a massive fuel source. If you’re a carb-adapted athlete; once carb energy is depleted, you can’t easily tap into your fat energy, so you need to quickly refuel on sugary gels, sports drinks, and high-carb energy bars to complete endurance performance. If you’re keto-adapted, you will no longer experience the low blood-sugar shakes or need to refuel with surgary options during exercise. Instead, your body has all of the energy it needs thanks to the benefits of a ketogenic diet! 

Watch this video to learn more. 

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What is This Study About?

Carbohydrates and fat are the main fuel sources used during exercise; however, the body cannot store as many carbohydrates as it can fat. Therefore, it is suggested that a ketogenic diet may be advantageous for exercise because it can improve the body’s ability to tap into stored body fat, which is a much bigger fuel supply. 

The purpose of this study was to put the above theory to the test by assessing the effects of a four-week ketogenic diet on fat and carbohydrate utilization during an incremental cycling test in CrossFit-trained female (11) and male (11) athletes.

How was the Study was Conducted?

For this study, participants continued following their customary diet for 14 days while recording their daily food intake. The average carbohydrate consumption during the customary diet was 285 grams for the women and 294 grams for the men.

After the 14 days, the participants completed a cycling test to see how which fuel source (carbohydrates or fat) was predominantly used at various exercise intensities. 

After the baseline exercise test, subjects started a ketogenic diet for four weeks. During the ketogenic diet phase, dietary adherence was monitored. On the keto diet, both men and women consumed around 30 grams of total carbs and got nearly 80 percent of their calories from fat.

After four weeks on a keto diet, participants returned to the lab to complete the same cycling tests to compare to their baseline. 

Study Results

Of the 30 participants that started the study, only 22 finished. The other eight were removed from either injury or non-adherence to the dietary protocol.

Results from this study showed that for both genders, there was an increase in fat oxidation during exercise while following the ketogenic diet. However, there were some notable differences between genders.

For males, there was an increase in fat oxidation throughout the whole testing, even up to 80 percent of Vo2 max, (a numerical measurement of your body’s ability to consume oxygen).  However, in females, it wasn’t until over 60 percent of Vo2 max that an increase in fat utilization was noted.

Conclusions and Insights

A great feature of this study is its length of time. Many keto and exercise studies are too short in duration and don’t allow for keto-adaptation to occur. Thus, shorter-term studies skew the results. In this study, subjects followed keto for four weeks, enough for most people to get keto-adapted. 

Another notable element of this study was that total calories and protein intake were not significantly different between the subjects’ customary diet and their ketogenic diet. This is important because it prevents more variables from skewing results. 

Results from this study demonstrate that ketosis can effectively alter the type of fuel we use during exercise, and since our bodies can store more fuel as fat, this could lead to a greater capacity to complete endurance exercises for longer duration and at higher intensities.

Results from this study also indicate that males may be better able to transition to burning fat for fuel at lower exercise intensities compared to women. However, this should be studied in much greater detail before determining conclusions.

These findings are significant because they demonstrate why a ketogenic lifestyle should be seriously considered for athletes and people who exercise in general, especially since keto can improve exercise through several additional mechanisms, including stimulating mitochondrial biogenesis (the process by which cells increase mitochondrial mass) and limiting lactate production.

Besides being able to tap into stored fat, keto also leads to the production of ketone bodies and research has shown that these ketone bodies can also be used as energy providing the body with a “dual-fuel” for exercise.

All of this together suggests that whether your goal is fat loss or improving your exercise endurance performance, keto is a strategy that should be considered!

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Timing is everything, so the ketogenic diet is great and you get a lot of benefits from it, but we can enhance it even more by messing around with our nutrient timing. Nutrient timing is what allows us to activate specific hormones that allow us to burn more fat. It’s what allows us to trigger our bodies to go into specific modes where they not only burn more fat, but potentially build muscle. And who doesn’t want that? Especially when it comes down to trying to lose weight or cut when you’re on a ketogenic diet, right? I’m Thomas DeLauer with Keto-Mojo and we’re going to break down some nutrient timing so that you can get the most out of your ketogenic diet if you’re trying to burn some fat.

Training Time Period

Okay so the first thing we have to look at is your training time period. So what time of day you actually workout. See one of the things that I highly, highly, highly recommend is that you train in a fasted state. Now this doesn’t mean that you have to practice intermittent fasting, but it means that if you wake up and you want to workout in the morning, that you workout in the morning in somewhat of a fasted state. Now if you’re already in ketosis, this is just going to enhance the effect of ketosis, right? You’re going to already be in the state where your body is pulling its own fat sources, pulling its own reserves for energy. So that’s rule number one. Make sure you train in a fasted state. Now the next thing is, when do you time your meals post workout if you’re training in the morning? Now I’ll talk about training in the afternoon in just a second. If you’re training in the morning, you don’t want to eat a meal right after you workout. You see a lot of people will tell you that you should be feeding a bunch of protein and get your fuel in right after a workout because you need to refuel. The reality is, protein synthesis stays elevated for a long time, literally like 24 hours, so you have 24 hours to get your protein in to recover from a workout.

Starve Yourself After a Workout

The reason that you want to continue to essentially starve yourself or not eat after a workout is because you’re going to ride what’s called the wave effect. After a workout, your body is still burning fat. You have post-exercise oxygen consumption, basically, you’re still exhausted from the workout so your body’s still consuming fuel. But you also have other metabolic factors. So I recommend waiting like one to two hours after your workout before you actually eat. And then you can resume your normal ketogenic style of eating, whatever your ration of fats to protein might be. Okay, I recommend having a little bit higher fat with this meal and then next meal, reduce the fat a little bit. Now here’s the reason I recommend that. When you are in a ketogenic state, you’re priming your body with fats, right? You’re feeding your body fat so that it produces ketones.

Well what you do want to do periodically is reduce your fat intake simply because what’s going to happen with that is your body’s going to have no choice but to pull from its existing fat stores. You see, you’ve essentially spoiled your body. I hate to use the air quotes there, but for lack of a better way of saying it, that’s how it works, right? You’ve given your body a bunch of fats, it’s used to it, and then when you do deprive it of those fats, it seeks them out, so it tries to pull them m from your body fat. So that’s why I recommend going higher fat and then bringing it back down to lower fat midday and then bringing it back to higher fat later in the day. Of course, do this in conjunction with riding the wave after your workout and you have a really powerful effect.

Effects of Training Later in the Day

Now what if you train later in the day? What if you train in the afternoon, because I know a lot of people do. Well then I highly recommend going at least four hours from your last meal before you work out. So let’s say you workout at five p.m., I would want you to finish lunch by one p.m. and don’t touch a single thing to eat until then. Okay, don’t touch a single thing until you’re done with your workout. Now if you’re working out in the evening, you can get away with pushing that post workout meal a little bit closer to your workout because I know you don’t want to eat directly before bed. But, the reality is, the longer you can push it, the better effect you’re going to get. You just want to be entering that workout in as close to a fasted state as possible. Overnight is the best, but four hours will do worse comes to worse.

How Much Protein to Take In

Now additionally, when it comes down to how much protein you want to be taking in, you have to remember that the ketogenic diet offers a pretty significant buffer to muscle catabolism. Meaning, the ketones themselves make it so that your body doesn’t breakdown a lot of muscle. So this is a great thing, you can get away with less protein. I usually tell people be less concerned with the protein and more concerned with the fat. The only time that you want to be paying close attention to the protein that you get in is when you don’t have fats along with it. So for example, your midday meal when you’re bringing your fats down a little bit lower, would be a great time to maybe increase your protein intake by about 30%, simply because it is going to increases thermogenesis. It does take approximately 20% more calories to burn protein than it does any other macronutrients. So take advantage of that effect. Now you do of course want to make sure that you’re always measuring. That’s just a simple bio-individuality thing. Know when your ketones are at their highest, know when they’re at their lowest, and you can cater and design your workouts accordingly. So as always, keep it locked in here with Keto-Mojo and leave the guess work out of the equation and leave that measuring to the meter. I’ll see you soon.

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