(Skelooth-Eileen)Can You Actually Build Muscle Using Keto

[50.CAL]

I'm thinking a regular very strict Keto diet you can view it in my previous post. Then have a carb-up friday morning through sunday night on very clean foods like sweet potatoes, brown rice, and fruits. Do you experts think this would be efficient in building muscle and dropping fat. I'll just be doing my main compound exercises during the carb-up. Then during my Keto phase i'll be doing my isolation exercises. Do you guys thing I should just scrap this and stick to regular Keto.

[skelooth]

hmMmmm I'm not sure I like it actually. If anything I'd do the compound lifts during your keto phase.

I think long carb ups like that are more likely to end up in spill over. If you want to stray from the regular ckd path you could try bi weekly carb ups, or maybe try a TKD with no carb ups.

Carb ups during CKD are periods meant for rest/recovery. You want your muscles to suck up some glycogen and hold on to it for a while.

[Man2kx]

I would advise no more than 1.5-2 days MAX of a carb-up. Anything more is a waste of time, a waste of ketosis, and a waste of excercise. 3 days of carbing up and resting is quite excessive. Try Friday noon until Saturday night, or Saturday noon, until Sunday night. 1.5 days.

The thing about CKD is that it's very difficult to build muscle, and I honestly wouldn't even plan for it when trying to cut. On a caloric surplus, it may be possible to gain some muscle mass, however, on this type of a diet, your lifts aren't going to be as strong as you normally can go. This diet would be efficient at dropping fat and retaining muscle when dieting properly (not losing more than 3lbs a week, still an extremely high threshold).

You need to remember that carb-ups are rest periods, and you shouldn't be excercising during this time. Your body is restoring the glycogen to use for the next week and to help avoid long term keto-based muscle loss by implementing these carbs.

All in all, I can recommend a CKD or a TKD for a successful way at retaining muscle (not increasing) and reducing fat. Remember, it's difficult to even retain all your muscle when dieting under maintenance calories (cutting). I would not recommend regular keto (SKD) if you would even like to preserve your muscle, prolonged SKD makes terms for muscle loss.


However, completely off topic of Keto, there are a couple diets that do a great job at increasing muscle mass and reducing fat by simply timing the carbohydrates you eat to be eaten at proper times. Fat and carbohydrates are seperated at every meal, and carbohydrates are to be consumed at specific times. These diets are very similar to eachother, but one slightly different in complexity than the other. Carbohydrate Cycling is something I will highly vouch for, as I've personally seen the results myself. It may be a little complex in planning, so if it's something you're not willing to do, Timed Carb Diet may be perfect for you.

On the other hand, losing fat fast and effectively, I will point you right back to CKD.

[50.CAL]

hmMmmm I'm not sure I like it actually. If anything I'd do the compound lifts during your keto phase.

I think long carb ups like that are more likely to end up in spill over. If you want to stray from the regular ckd path you could try bi weekly carb ups, or maybe try a TKD with no carb ups.

Carb ups during CKD are periods meant for rest/recovery. You want your muscles to suck up some glycogen and hold on to it for a while.

So basically what your saying is I could have a carb-up say wednesday and sunday. I don't want to be a pain in the a$$ but i'm just asking all of these questions because of my recent love of weight training. I did this diet before and I felt lazy and I don't want to compromise what I've worked for. Especially my bench it went from a measly 120 to a respectable (for my weight)180 minus barweight in 2 1/2 months on a powerlifting routine.

[skelooth]

Yes, you may do two 'less drastic' carb ups.

IE wednesday and sunday you can have carb ups at around maintenance calories

or wednesday you could just have a bowl of pasta or something, and proceed with a normal carb up sunday. I've heard of people doing things like this quite often.

Your other ketogenic diet option is TKD where there is no carb up, but you eat carbs before and after every weight training workout.