CKD by l macdonald
First, ketogenic diets
appear to spare muscle tissue loss during dieting. Second, the carb-up
phase seems to promote anabolism to rebuild any lost muscle. I'll divide
the application of the CKD for fat loss into three sections: the no-carb
phase, the carb-up, and training structure.
The no-carb phase:
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>From a dietary standpoint, to establish and maintain ketosis, two criteria
must be met:
1. Carbohydrate intake must be kept below 30 grams. However, there is some
indivduality in this number. Some individuals can handle more
carbohydrates while others may have difficulty establishing ketosis at this
level. If you can't get into ketosis and everything else is in place, try
cutting your carb intake to 20 grams or less. Also, many individuals choose
to consume as few carbs as possible (zero) until ketosis is fully
established and then increase carbs slightly (celery and cucumber are both
good and add some nice texture to an otherwise bland diet) at that point.
2. The ratio of fat to protein should be 1.5 grams of fat *minimum* for
every gram of protein and carbs in the diet. This is a 75% fat, 25%
protein ratio with trace carbs. So, if you plan to eat 200 grams of
protein, you need to eat at least 300 grams of fat. In most cases, the
easiest way to meet the fat requirements of the diet is to pick your
protein food first (most protein foods have some fat in them) and then
balance the meal out with the proper amount of whole fat food such as
vegetable oil, cream cheese, or mayonnaise and heavy cream (a great dessert
is heavy cream with protein powder and Equal. Mix it up in a bowl and
you've got pudding!)
Calorie levels: Calories should be set at maintenance or 10-20% below
depending on how quickly you need to drop fat. If you don't know your
maintenance calorie level, start with 12 calories per pound (or 11 calories
per pound of lean body mass) and gauge from there. If you're dropping more
than 2 lbs of fat per week, increase calories. If you feel that fat loss
isn't happening quickly enough, lower them slightly or increase
cardiovascular training. For the sake of example, let's say that your
caloric intake during the no-carb phase is 2000 calories.
75% fat = 2000*.75 = 1500 calories / 9 calories/gram = 166 grams of fat
25% protein = 2000*.25 = 500 calories / 4 calories/gram = 125 grams of protein.
These calories would be divided into three or four meals.
Training structure:
The other key to establishing and maintaining ketosis as rapidly as
possible is that blood glucose (normal is 80-120 mg/dl) must be lowered to
50-60 mg/dl. At this point, insulin levels decrease and glucagon levels
(which are responsible for ketogenesis) rise. Simple carbohydrate
restriction will cause ketosis to occur in three or four days. But proper
training can put you in ketosis within 36-48 hours of stopping carbs. And,
the more time you are in ketosis, the more fat you can lose.
Now, a typical pre-contest dieting practice has been to lower the weights
on all exercise and use higher reps to 'cut' up the muscle. This is a
fallacy and is about the worst thing a natural lifter can do while dieting.
Heavy weights are necessary to maintain muscle mass while dieting. What
should be loweredis training volume (i.e. number of total sets and days of
training) as overtraining becomes more likely on restricted calories.
This point can't be too emphasized: while dieting for fat loss, it is
almost impossible to gain muscle so don't knock yourself out trying. The
best a natural can do is keep all the hard earned muscle he or she has
built through heavy training. To keep that muscle, heavy training must be
maintained, just at a lower volume.
Now, the key to dropping blood glucose quickly is to perform sufficient
metabolic work. At first glance, this seems to contradict the suggestion
to cut training volume. However, the amount of metabolic work done (which
impacts how much glucose is pulled out of the bloodstream into the muscles)
is dependent on the size of the muscle used. So, to rapidly establish
ketosis, make sure to work at least the large muscles of the body (legs,
chest and back) in the first 2 days of carbohydrate restriction. An
example training week be:
Monday: chest and back
Tuesday: legs and abs
Friday: shoulders and arms
Alternately, the entire body can be worked across Monday and Tuesday.
This has the added benefit of allowing for muscle soreness to dissipate
prior to the carb-up. Muscle damage causes short term insulin
insensitivity which can impair carbing.
This would look like:
Mon: legs, back, biceps
Tue: chest, delts, tris, abs
Fri: high rep, circuit depletion workout
The depletion workout comes from Dan Duchaine's book, "Bodyopus". The
rationale is that the further you deplete muscle glycogen, the greater an
anabolic response you will get during the recarb. On the Monday and
Tuesday workout, do 2-3 heavy sets of 6-8 reps to failure for 1-3 exercises
per body part (larger muscles like back need more exercises than smaller
ones like biceps). On Friday, a giant loop type of circuit seems to work
best. For example: squat, bench press, seated row, leg curl, shoulder
press, pulldown, calf raise, triceps pushdown, barbell curl, abs, low back
and alternate movements each cycle (flat vs. incline bench, seated vs.
standing calf raise) to hit as many different fibers as you can.
Do 10-20 semi-fast, but controlled, reps per exercise and go nowhere even
close to failure. A weight around 50% of the weights you used for your
sets of 6-8 on Mon and Tue seems to work about right. Take 1' rest between
sets and about 5' rest between circuits. You want to continue doing
circuits until you feel your strength decreasing (trust me, you'll know
when you get there). This indicates your glycogen stores are becoming
depleted. However, realize that not everyone has found the depletion
workout to be necessary for good results. Again, experimentation and good
record keeping is the key. I suggest you try both methods suggested above
and see what happens.
Prior to the depletion workout, it is important that you get out of
ketosis by consuming 50 grams of carbs (fruit is ideal) about 2 hours
before the workout. The rationale is this: while in ketosis, the body will
prefer ketones to glucose for fuel. To achieve maximal glycogen depletion
in all muscle fibers, you need to exit ketosis. Fruit (which will
preferentially refill liver glycogen) is the ideal way to do this.
This will allow for maximal glycogen depletion during the workout. The
carb-up should begin immediately after the final Friday workout and
continue from 24-36 hours at which point you should switch back to low carb
intake.
Cardiovascular training:
One nice thing about ketogenic diets is that you are burning more bodyfat
for fuel at rest than on a high carb diet. Additionally, due to fuel
inefficiency of ketones (they provide 7 calories/gram vs. 9 calories/gram
for fat), you will burn up more grams of fat for a given caloric deficit.
This means that less cardio training is necessary. For those who want to
ensure maximal fat loss, doing 20-30 minutes of light cardio (60-70% of
maximum heart rate) on Wednesday and Thursday (or after training) can help.
Additionally, 10' of easy cardio prior to the Monday and Tuesday workout as
well as 10' of easy cardio afterwards will help to lower blood sugar levels
and induce ketosis. Do not overdo cardio though as this is a guaranteed
way to lose some hard earned muscle.
The carb-up phase:
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This is probably the most critical part of the CKD. The carb up phase
accomplishes two things:
1. rebuilds any muscle that might be lost during the week due to the
anabolic processes related to cell hydration
2. refills muscle glycogen stores for the first workouts of the next week
allowing you to train intensely enough to avoid muscle loss while on low
calories
There are two approaches to the carb-up phase:
1. Subjective approach: with this approach, you simply carb to your hearts
content UNTIL you begin to feel yourself spilling water over to the skin
(i.e. you'll get bloated and smooth). This indicates that muscle glycogen
stores are full and additional carbs will go to the fat cells. The types
of carbs you consume (simple sugars vs. complex carbs) will, to a great
degree, determine how quickly your muscle cells become full.
This approach also allows you to dial in your pre-contest carbing up to
see how your body will respond and what type of carb-up will make you look
the best. To enhance fat loss, it is recommended that you do not carb for
more than 24-36 total hours. This turns the diet into 6 days of low carb
and 1 day of carbing. And, again, more days in ketosis means more fat
lost.
For those who need to lose fat very quickly, carbing every other weekend
can have very positive results although it's not as much fun. In this
case, I'd suggest one concentrated carb meal one hour in length right after
Friday's workout and then go immediately back to low carbs. Unless you
really overdo it, you will probably spike yourself back into ketosis by
Saturday morning. The training structure for this approach might be:
Mon: chest and back
Tue: legs and abs
Wed: cardio
Thu: delts and arms
Fri, Sat, Sun: cardio (have your once concentrated carb meal on one of
these days)
Mon: legs, back and bis
Tue: chest, delts, tris, abs
Wed: cardio
Thu: cardio
Fri: high rep depletion workout, begin carbing
The benefits of such an approach are relatively greater fat loss since you
spend proportionally more time (10 days out of 14 vs. 8 days out of 14 if
you carb every weekend) in ketosis. The cons are that it's rather boring
and there may be a greater potential for muscle loss. Again,
experimentation (and frequent body composition measures are key).
2. Objective approach: this approach is much more specific. After glycogen
depletion, the muscles can handle 16 grams of carb/kg of lean body mass
during the first 24 hours and 9 grams of carbs/kg lean body mass during the
second 24. In terms of amounts and quality of carbs, you should emphasize
lots of high glycemic index carbs at the beginning of the carb load and
shift to lower amounts of lower glycemic index carbs towards the end. For
very specific recommendations as to quantity and quality of carbs during
the carb-up, check out Dan Duchaine's Bodyopus book.
During the carb-up phase, several other things are important:
1. Protein: you should consume 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight
(or per pound of lean body mass) divided evenly across each 24 hours.
2. Fat: you should consume approximately 15% of your total calories as
essential fatty acids (flax oil, olive oil and walnuts are good sources)
especially near the end of the carb up to slow digestion.
3. Water: for every gram of carbs you consume, you need to consume 3-4
grams of water for optimal refilling of the muscles. This works out to 10
cups of water for a carb intake of 600 grams per day. Unless you're doing
the final carb-up for your contest, I suggest drinking as much water as you
can put down.
Supplements such as vanadyl, chromium and magnesium may help the carb-up
as they have been shown to improve insulin sensitivity and can help to
lower blood glucose. Also, using Hydroxycitric acid (trade name Citrimax)
at 750 mg three times per day helps to shuttle carbs into the muscle cells
and prevent spill over to fat cells. Finally, creatine monohydrate taken
during the carb-up phase should, in theory, lead to more cellular
hyperhydration and possibly cause more anabolism. Definitely useful for
the contest in any case.
More:
http://http://www.thinkmuscle.com/a...ogenic-diet.htm