Subject: I can't think of a cute intro: Bodyopus week 17 Copyright Lyle McDonald 1996 Date: 1996/08/25
Ok, got something a bit weird to talk about. A long, long while back I made the comment about water intake as it related for fat loss on a ketogenic diet. Since ketones are excreted in the urine, I asked whether or not peeing more (by drinking more water) might not hasten fat loss. At the time, I sort of pooh-poohed the idea thinking that ketone production must be related to energy utilization. But, MR got me thinking about it some more and I came across some research (for an article that I talk about below) that might suggest that it's possible. Here is the idea from the research I came across: 1. Ketone production and utilization is related inversely to ketone concentration in the blood. This is part of why non-diabetics don't have to worry about ketoacidosis. The body keeps a very tight control on ketone levels in the blood. So, except for pathological conditions, runaway ketoacidosis should not occur. 2. Urinary KB concentrations are the difference between production and utilization. Typically, they comprise no more than 10% of production. Thus, I think that high urinary concentrations are indicative of high blood concentrations. This may explain why an extrememely high fat meal deepends the color on the ketostix. 3. The epileptic kiddies are kept in deep ketosis by keeping their water somewhat restricted (to 75% of normal levels) and keeping their intake of fat extrememly high (a 4:1 ratio of fat grams to protein plus carb grams. I suggest a 1.5:1 ratio for most Bodyopus dieters). This is necessary to control the seizures but the goal of these children is not fat loss. Ok, the pieces are all there. Higher blood ketone concentration prevents further production. High urinary concentrations probably indicate high blood concentrations. This is an inference based on the fact that urinary ketone levels represent the difference between production and utilization. Water restriction will increase ketone concentration (which is ultimately just the relationship between the absolute amout of ketones and the volume of the blood. Dehydration reduced blood volume which would lead to higher concentrations). Ok, so if we force water down, we should conceivably lower ketone concentrations in the blood which will allow more ketones to be produced so more fat is lost. This is predicated on the absence of ketones from dietary fats. Additionally, the increased urine production may help to carry more ketones out of the system. Anyone got thoughts on this? It makes sense to me but there is some nagging thought in the back of my mind that my logic is, well, illogical. Ok, one other strategy for fat loss on ketogenic diets. The typical recommendation for fat loss is to spread daily calories into multiple meals. While this strategy is most likely excellent for a normal diet, I'm wondering if it's the best choice for a ketogenic diet. Recall that ketones can be made from either bodyfat or dietary fat. And, as stated above, high blood ketone concentrations will inhibit production of more ketones (i.e. from bodyfat). So, eating lots of high fat meals throughout the day would likely keep blood ketone levels high from the dietary fat which would inhibit the production of ketones from bodyfat. Additionally, ketones can't be stored as fat. So, if dietary fats convert 100% to ketones (I don't know that they do), a high calorie, high fat ketogenic meal should simply raise blood ketone concentrations. So, what if you were to spread your daily food into several larger meals per day (say three which is what I'm doing now). If these three meals ocurred over 15 hours, that would give several hours in-between meals where ketones could be derived from bodyfat since blood ketone levels would not be elevated from dietary fat intake. Additionally, high water intake during this time, in addition to keeping you full between meals, should lower blood concentrations and further promote production of ketones from bodyfat. On that note, anyone else out there have major unanswered Bodyopus questions that I didn't answer in either the diaries or this FAQ? If so, please send them so I can get the damn things answered once and for all. I guess I'll have to get my WWW page put together now so I can archive this sucker somewhere. ------------------------ The body composition log: Taken with Slimguide calipers first thing Monday morning upon awakening. Day Date Wt Pec Abs SI Thigh Sum3 BF% FM FFM -------------------------------------------------------------- Mon 7/8 152 3 20 10 6 29 8.5 12.75 139.25 Mon 7/15 157 3 20 11.5 6 29 8.5 13.35 143.65 Mon 7/22 159 3 21 13 6 30 8.5 13.5 145.5 Mon 7/29 162 3 24 15 6 33 9.4 15.2 146.8 Mon 8/5 164 3.5 24 16.5 6 33.5 9.4 15.4 148.6 Mon 8/12 164 3 25 17 8 36 10.4 17 147.0 Mon 8/19 163 3 25 15.5 6 34 9.4 15.3 147.7 Notes: Key: BF% = body fat percentage FM = fat mass in lbs FFM = fat free mass (total weight - FM) My week at a glance: ------------------- Sunday: Nothing to report. It rained so I didn't do any cardio. Just enjoyed the last of my carbs and then back to protein and fat at 6pm. As described last week, I changed my workout for last and the next two weeks. It is: Mon Wed Fri --------------------------------------------- Squat (4/6-8) DL (2/6-8 or 5X5) Squat (2/6-8) Leg curl (2/6-8) Overhead press (3/6-8) Leg curl (2/6-8) Chins (4/6-8) Barbell curl (3/6-8) Seated row (4/6-8) Inc. DB bench (4/6-8) Tri. Pushdown (3/6-8) Machine bench (4/6-8) Seated row (2/6-8) Forearms (whatever) Chins (2/6-8) Machine bench (2/6-8) Abs (whatever) Inc. DB bench (2/6-8) After two light warmups (50 and 75% of top weight for the day), I jump to the heaviest weight I'll use on that exercise to failure. Additional sets are taken at a 5% decrease from the original weight with the goal of getting identical reps to failure on each set. Additionally, antagonistic bodypart exercises (i.e. chins and inclines, flat bench and cable row) are alternated with about a 1:30 rest in between. This gives 3'+ rest between exercises without doubling the length of the workout. (See last week for a longer discussion of this workout.) Monday: Well, this was the first test day of many. Since I was dieting pretty hardcore last week, I was curious to see how the workout would fare. For reasons to be discussed, I stuck with the legs, back and chest split I've been on most of this cycle. Volume was decreased to 3 work sets on squats, 2 work sets on leg curls, and 2 work sets on everything else. My goal from this point on is to simply maintain or even increase strength (weight or reps) in all my movements. I take this as a de facto indicator of muscle mass maintenance as relying on body compostion records can be difficult due to the major changes in water weight on the diet. Monday workout: Did this workout in the am again in an attempt to speed entry into ketosis and get to burning that fat. Squats were probably the hardest lift of all. I barely managed to get the same reps with 325 but I was also making a point to make each rep deeper as I have been cutting them a bit shy of parallel. Also, since all my cardio work is done with the lower body, legs seem to overtrain more rapidly than upper bodyparts. All other lifts increased with the exception of chins which maintained. For some reason, I just can't seem to get past a certain level on chins no matter what I do. Strangely, and counter to other weeks, I was not in ketosis first thing after this workout. It looked in the right light like I was barely trace but I was negative the rest of the day. This might be related to the decreased volume not lowering blood glucose as much or something about my carb-up (I had a bunch of strawberry jelly on Sunday and fructose preferentially glycogenates the liver). I stayed up late writing an article I've been researching on (guess, just guess what it's about) the cyclical ketogenic diet looking at even more research, metabolic effects, etc which will appear (assuming I made tomorrow's deadline) in the Scientific Bodybuilding Journal. They've got a WWW page around here somewhere and I beleive my buddy Vince (who's not an ACE trainer but is a PT) will send you a sample copy if you ask him nicely. Mention my name though and he'll probably charge you $5 since my article is so damn late. It was just one of those deals that the more I looked, the more things I found to look up. I think, given more time, I could have been even more thorough (read: anal retentive) in my treatment of the cylical ketogenic but this article covers the gist of the physiology behind it. Think I'm gonna give a copy to some of the RD's where I work just to piss them off. Time for bed. Tuesday: Nothing exciting today. Did 45' of easy cardio on the bike this morning before breakfast. HR about 120 or so. Wednesday: Started off the day with 50' of easy walking first thing in the morning. have decided to move the normal Wednesday workout (deads, delts, arms, grip, abs) to Thursday to better space things out. Since I'm not carbing this weekend, soreness from this workout is irrelevant. Evening: Well, I was bored, pissed and depressed (long story and this isn't supposed to be My dissatisfaction with my life experience). so, against better judgement, I went back to the gym to do more cardio. Wasn't really in the mood to sit and spin on the bike so I did 5 sixty second intervals on the stairmaster with a 5' warm up and cool down and then another 10' on the Lifecycle at level 1. Did this while listening to one of the MM2K Audiotape interviews with Dan Duchaine. A bit outdated (1993) but still good stuff. Am now listening to the interview with Sisco and Little about Power Factor Training. Probably critique it here before too long. Thursday: Time to lift again. Since I've decided to stay in ketosis for the next two weeks, I thought it might be prudent to get some carbs in my body. So, about an hour before training, I mixed 50 grams of maltodextrin (glucose polymers) with a scoop of designer and drank. The carbs tasted very good and I will likely have this pre-weight workout until the grand carb-up in 8 (ugh) days. Took my thermogenic stack from hell and went to it. Considering several things: 1. This workout is normally on Wednesday instead of Thursday. 2. I've been dieting for almost 2 weeks. 3. I've been overdoing cardio as usual. I'm surprised this workout went as well as it did. I managed to at least equal if not better all lifts from this workout last week. I'm taking maintenance of strength as an indicator of muscle maintenance since LBM calculations are too dependent on body water levels. Oh, yeah, back in ketosis after training although, to be honest, I doubt I ever even got out. Evening: Considered going to do cardio but thought better of it. My article on the cyclical ketogenic needs a major rewrite (special thanks goes out to DM for tearing me a new asshole on the article and criticising the hell out of it. Actually, I do thank him. He's the most critical human being I've ever met in my life and he tells me when I'm making bad extrapolations or am just full of shit. It's tough on the old ego but has made me a much better writer and thinker) anyway so I stayed in. Day Date Wt Pec Abs SI Thigh Sum3 BF% FM FFM -------------------------------------------------------------- Mon 8/12 164 3 25 17 8 37 10.4 17 147 Fri 8/16 155 3 25 15 6 37 10.4 16 139 Mon 8/19 163 3 25 15.5 6 34 9.4 15.3 147.7 Fri 8/23 154 3 23 15 6 32 9.4 14.5 139.5 Notes: I'm surprised that I'm not dropping more fat than this. Still, considering my overall metabolism (morning temp is still around 97.2) 3 lbs of fat in 2 weeks with no loss in FFM (you have to compare Mon to Mon and Fri to Fri for it to mean anything) is nothing to sneeze at (ah-choo). Was hoping to achieve the magical 2 lbs/week but I guess it's not going to happen without severely overtraining cardio. I mean, more than I already am. Also, I have been told by many that their fat loss efforts are much better if they don't carb every weekend but rather every other. Figure it's a full 48 hours where 1. you're in ketosis 2. you aren't risking spillover to fat cells by eating too damn many carbs. The question is still whether too much muscle will be lost. I guess we'll know soon enough. Friday: Dropped the thermogenic stack from hell and off to do cardio. On that note, I wonder if it's even really necessary to do pre-breakfast cardio on this diet. The whole idea behind doing cardio before eating is to take advantage of of lowered insulin levels and partial glucose and glycogen depletion, both of which are daily ocurrences on this diet. Thing is, if you ate a big ketogenic meal before cardio you:1 1. would probably throw up 2. parhaps only burn off the ketones from the food you ate rather than ketones from bodyfat. #2 is what worries me. So, pre-breakfast cardio it is. Note: This weekend will be possibly the hardest of the diet. During the week, it's easy not to eat since I'm at work, or training or whatever. On weekends, I tend to sit at home like a lump. For lack of anything better to do, I'll eat. So, in addition to the cardio I'll be doing in the mornings, I'm going to have to get out of the freaking house so I don't screw my diet. I can see some definite changes in definition. My 2.5 pack is back and I'm starting to lean out nicely. Hopefully the extra days in ketosis plus a overabundance of low-intensity cardio will do the trick this time. Bodyfat is 5% or bust. Saturday: Dropped the stack from hell and walked for an hour around the neighborhood. Got a bit nauseous about halfway through but don't really know why. Gotta find a way to get out of the house for the rest of the day so I'm not compelled to eat out of boredom. Still trying to decide on whether I should allow on biggish carb meal tonight to at least somewhat restock carb stores. While spillover is not an issue, I am concerned that once started, I may not stop. Gotta think some more about it. Since I'm doing cardio tomorrow morning anyway, I should be able to drop back into ketosis pretty rapidly. Hmmmm. Well, after much debate (who am I kidding here, this decision took as much debate as if one of the fitness models in Ironman walked up and asked me to sleep with them. Ummm, let me think...) I decided to go ahead and allow one carb meal. Here are my reasons (right, try rationalization) for going ahead and allowing a pig out meal. 1. Umm, I need all that insulin for growth. Right, like one big meal will really make shit for difference against 12 days of ketosis. 2. Umm, helps out psychologically. Right, I did 600 ketogenic calories and two a day cardio sessions during my last dieting phase. Comparatively, 1500 calories for 12 days is a snap. The change from low carbs to carbs was tasty though. 3. Umm, metabolism boost. Ok, this one almost makes sense. 1500 calories per day is pretty damn low. One day of higher calories might help attenuate any metabolic slowdown. Of course, I could have done the same thing with protein and fat and stayed in ketosis. But it wouldn't have been as much fun. 4. A lot of people have told me they get great results as far as fat loss with one concentrated carb meal every 5 or 6 days and staying low carb the rest of the time. This is basically the Vince Gironda approach to the ketogenic diet. Yeah, that makes a good excuse, err, reason. As good as any I've found I guess. As somebody once said "What separates man from the animals is their ability to rationalize." IAE, for whatever reasons I decided to let myself have a carb meal tonight. The biggest worry I had was not being able to stop once I started. Although, at this point, my food control is pretty damn good. I know what I have to do to get where I want to be so it's not as big a deal. And, I've only been dieting hardcore for 2 weeks so I'm not really deprived psychologically. The deal tonight was that I had to get a new pair of glasses (so I don't have to squint to read street signs any more). Went to one of those one hour glasses places since I had a coupon. It was at the mall. Mall's have food courts with all manners of junk foods that have lots of nice carbs in them. So, after my eye exam and getting the glasses process started, I gave myself that one hour (set by my stopwatch) to eat whatever and as much as I wanted. Actually didn't go as crazy as I thought I would. Put away a slice of stuffed spinach pizza, a cinnamon roll and some cookies with chocolate frosting on them. Was a really nice mental break from low carb, low calorie hell. I started to feel less pissed off at the world almost immediately. When that timer went off, carbing time was over and that was that. I probably put away 1500 calories or so (hell, maybe more) in that time period. To do damage control I took 1 gram of Citrimax (to shunt carbs away from fat synthesis and towards glycogen storage) 200 mcg of chromium, and 250 mg of magnesium. If I'd had it, I would have dropped some vanadyl but I quit using it since it wasn't really doing anything for me. As a whim, decided to check for ketones later tonight. With all those carbs, I didn't figure on there being any present. Well, fuck me if I wasn't showing moderate levels of ketones. So, I must have managed to spike my blood sugar enough with all the simple carbs to put me right back into hypoglycemia. Which is cool since it means that morning cardio will already be done in ketosis. And now it's time to sleep and dream of cut abs and fitness models, not necessarily in that order of priority. Sunday: Started the day without about 2 hours of easy, easy skating on an empty stomach after the stack from hell. No, it's probably not terribly prudent to do that much cardio since muscle loss may occur but it burns a shitload of calories and fat so that's ok too. Just gonna put away my standard 1500 calories today (may bump it up a bit since I probably burned a good 800-900 calories skating) and then get ready to start next week with more dieting. It will be interesting to see how tomorrow's squat workout goes as far as poundages and such. Ketosis workouts aren't very much fun. Cardio is no biggie but weight training is definitely harder in ketosis. See ya next week. Lyle McDonald, CSCS