Just a note - while some people do gain muscle on CKD, it is primarily a 'cutting' diet', meaning that its purpose is to shed fat while preserving muscle. The people who put significants of muscle on during a CKD are often new lifters, or people who are significantly altering a long time but lighter program.

That post-workout period, however, that half hour? Lifters refer to that as the 'anabolic window', meaning that it is the optimal time both to deliver protein to the muscles and to blunt the stress (cortisol) response that occurs naturally after an intense workout. The recipe for hitting the anabolic window is a small amount of protein WITH simple carbs. By 'small amount', I mean 20-40 grams of each. The carbs actually facilitate protein absorption. Doing protein without carbs is better than doing nothing, but there is actually a valid point here about using small amounts of simple carbs as transport for the protein. In fact, there is cousin of CKD called TKD - targeted ketogenic diet - which advocates exactly this. You have a small amount (15 -20 g) of simple carbs (glucose or dextrose, ideally) with half an hour before your workout. These simple sugars are preferentially absorbed by the muscles and help fuel a more intense workout than you might otherwise have been able to do. After the workout, you do the carb-protein combo for another 20-30 g of carbs.

I have done high intensity cardio and body-builder type lifting on varying levels of carbs. For me, lifting on dextrose kicks serious butt. I can feel a (negative) strength difference when I lift on pure LC. At 20 g of carbs/day, I bonk on HIIT cardio. On 50, it's a struggle, but do-able. At 100-150, smooth sailing.

Incidentally, I also notice higher ketosis levels and faster fatloss on the *higher* carb levels. I have a feeling that for my activity level, 20 is low enough to trigger resistance/starvation signals and stall me. In fact, I stalled dead for 6 m onths at an ECC of 20-30 g.

Please remember that even Atkins says that atheletes may need up to 90 g per day.

My concern here is twofold: first, blanket demonization of carbs is unhelpful in the long run. Food is not evil (tho if I had to pick one that was, it would be HFCS, tho maybe that's not even food). People who choose to eat carbs are not (necessarily) bad, stupid, ignorant or even uninformed people. I simply do not believe that food choices should carry moral value. Second, just because Stu Mittleman can run marathons on LC doesn't mean every athelete can, especially those whose chosen exercise is more in the lift/sprint category.

Even Trager's comment about not ingesting simple carbs prior to a WO is followed by the words 'can raise blood sugar'. Not 'does', but 'can'. This means that it only happens for *some* people.

I realize that most of my comments apply to heavy lifters and not to the general LC populace who do moderate exercise. However, since so many have questions about carbs and performance, I think we need to be tolerant of the idea that in many cases, more carbs (40-90ish) may indeed produce better performance for the individual in question.

Cheers,

Friday