After doing what was maybe a little too much reading on anabolic exercise, glycogen depletion and cortisol, I decided that it might be a good idea to add a few carbs pre and post workout. Now I'm wondering if it really was such a good idea. Ugh.

A bit of background - I have been doing Atkins for the last two months happily and successfully, at right around Induction level carbs with a few OWL foods. I normally eat from 15 to 25 carbs per day, mostly meat, fish and green leafy vegetables with some nuts and legumes. I drink a ton of water and supplement with a good multivitamin, calcium, magnesium, potassium, L-glutamine, CLA, chromium, L-carnitine and CoQ10. I am female, 33 years old, 5'2", 195 lbs and carry most of that around my abdomen. I am a relative beginner at weight lifting and have just started doing it seriously instead of occasionally and haphazardly.

I do 15 to 30 minutes of cardio 3-4X weekly, and 2-3X per week I have started doing really punishing 60 to 90 minute heavy intensity (train to failure, multiple sets to failure with minimal rest between circuits) full body weight training.

I wasn't thrilled with my performance. I got weak, shaky and nauseous the first few times I tried this degree of working out on 15-25 carbs. So today I thought I'd add some carbs, after figuring out that Induction level carbs and heavy weight lifting aren't really friends.

After 15 minutes of fasted AM cardio, I had a whey protein shake with a few spoonfuls of nonfat yogurt for breakfast. An hour or so later I had a typical Atkins lunch, a big burger with cheese on a low carb flax seed roll.

A few hours after that, when I was starting to feel a little hungry again, I ate half a banana and drank 1 ounce of unsweetened cranberry juice in 8 oz water. I felt miserable, bloated and overfull almost immediately. I waited half an hour and the feeling did not go away, so I started doing gentle warmup exercise to see if that helped. It didn't. I could hardly breathe, which is not a problem I normally have when working out. I am not allergic to bananas or cranberry juice to the best of my knowledge and never had an adverse reaction to them before low carbing.

About an hour after I ate the banana and drank the juice, I commenced the serious punishment - squats, bench presses, curls and flies of all kinds with dumbells and bars, rows, calf raises, hamstring curls, leg extensions, tricep presses, ab crunches etc etc, going around in a circuit after doing one or two sets of each to failure and then moving to a different exercise and/or increasing or decreasing the weights, almost all exercises to failure. The goal was to majorly kick my own ~$$ and shred my muscles right into DOMS.

My breathing got a little easier but not much. After 90 minutes of the severest possible self-butt-kicking I stopped, had the other half of the banana mixed in a protein shake with a scoop of Jarrow whey powder and L-glutamine, plus one 7.5 gram roll of Smarties (pure dextrose candy). Immediately post-workout I still showed trace ketosis; after the candy and the second half of the banana, I was flat out of ketosis. Am still out after having a later dinner of 4 oz skinless chicken breast and an ounce of Brie cheese to add a little fat.

I did not get to the nausea point in the workout this time, but my muscles were shaking (not in a bad way though, just when I was pushing them through failure). I feel energized now after the workout and still capable of more lifting (which I know better than to do), but I still feel disgustingly bloated and icky from all the ^%$#~ evil carbs. I am still having some difficulty breathing four hours post workout, as if I had severely overeaten and stuffed myself - which I certainly have not. I am feeling a little hungry but have absolutely no desire to eat because of this miserably bloated, overstuffed feeling.

There has got to be a better way to do proper nutrition for anabolic exercise. I really can't deal with this carb bloat; it messed up my breathing and made my workout a lot less productive. Doing a true CKD scares me, so I was trying to do a little TKD and see how it worked. It didn't seem to work so well for me.

Possibly the solution is to eat more lower GI carbs on a workout day in the morning (brown rice or oatmeal) but I just don't know if that will work for me - it might just have the same effect and then I'd be uncomfortably bloated and struggling to breathe for the whole day (what fun). If there's any hope in using MCT's like coconut oil to fuel anabolic exercise that would be great, but reading the research references doesn't look too promising. Any ideas from the experts?