Ketosis and low carbs diet.

 

How often do you need to reintroduce carbs to your diet when you're on a low-carb or ketogenic diet? This is a frequently asked question, and in this article, we'll explain how it works in your body. 

 

Should I have cheat meals or refeed meals? Should I restore muscle glycogen? Should I just float through ketosis because I don't need them?

 

Separate this into two distinct groups.

When we're talking about ketosis, there's a full-blown therapeutic style of ketosis where you're basically just chugging fats all the time. This is known as therapeutic ketosis, and it's not what most people do. Probably you are not doing therapeutic ketosis.

 

The therapeutic ketogenic diet is quite good, but in that case, you will never need to refeed carbohydrates. However, there is another type of ketogenic diet called baseline keto. You are not hungry when your body utilizes ketones as a fuel source.

 

Really utilizing carbs anymore so means that your muscle glycogen actually stays fuller you have more carbs stored in your muscles and your body becomes more efficient at utilizing it. 

Here's the crazy part. The small number of carbohydrates that you are getting from a ketogenic diet like the 5% of your diet that is carbs plus the protein that gets converted into carbs ends up being sufficient to keep your muscle glycogen levels full, which means they're high.

 

Enough naturally in ketosis to be able to work out just fine so people say, "I feel weaker when I'm in ketosis and better when I have carbs." This is partially true, but if you understand that glycogen actually stays higher in ketosis for a longer period, you can strategize when you have a refeed meal.

 

The body becomes so used to using fats as a source of fuel that it tries to preserve the few carbs you do have. This means that regardless of whether you are in full-blown ketosis or not, your body will try to preserve the carbs you do have.

 

So it makes perfect sense that your body will always need some glucose. Your brain always requires 15 to 18 percent glucose. Your liver is going to create some no matter what from little bits of carbs that you eat or from proteins. What changes in ketosis is how far those carbohydrates go, and what I mean by that is your body is going to convert them into fat.

 

It's best to keep the carbohydrates that are stored in your muscles and allow them to last as long as possible.

 Remember that we have two glycogen tanks in our bodies: carbohydrates stored in our muscles and liver glycogen.

 

Ketones are produced when liver glycogen is depleted, not when muscle glycogen is depleted. It's a frequent misconception that to enter ketosis, we must completely deplete our muscle glycogen and liver glycogen. In reality, it's all about depleting the liver glycogen.

 

In fact, in ketosis, you want to keep your muscle glycogen levels relatively high since that's what will allow you to continue to function and exercise because your body will keep the muscles full.

Okay, when it comes to being in ketosis, we do not need to utilize muscle glycogen.

Now, let me cite a study. This particular study examined ultramarathon athletes who were accustomed to running long distances in 100-mile races You may be thinking that this is a really extreme example, and you may be wondering why we're pursuing this road, yet this extreme example makes perfect sense. In this study, ultramarathon runners were divided into two groups. In one group, they gave them a low-carb diet that essentially put them into ketosis. In the other group, they gave them a standard high-carb diet with a lot of carbs and fruit.

 

They had them run for three hours in a row, during which time they took saliva samples, performed cross-sectional muscle fiber analysis, and measured their blood levels. The researchers found that both groups had the same amount of glycogen remaining in their muscles after the three-hour run.

 

Really quickly, if one group of runners on a high-carb diet began with 400 total grams of carbs stored in their bodies and the other group on a low-carb diet began with 75 grams or less, the fact that they both ended with 50 grams of carbs stored proves that the low-carb diet group didn't use much glycogen. What does this tell us? It tells us that not only is the body more adapted to fats, but the body has become less adapted to carbohydrates.

 

The lengthy explanation of what I'm trying to say is that if you have a refeed meal once every couple of weeks in ketosis and restore your glycogen levels a little bit, it may temporarily kick you out of ketosis, but if you're fat-adapted, your body is going to recover without delay.

The body had become fat-adapted but we also know that the muscle glycogen in your body stayed fuller longer meaning you didn't deflate. You didn't have that flattened feeling where you felt weak it worked better because your body was now more efficient at utilizing fats and storing the glycogen again.

So now you probably want to hear how often can someone refeed? 

How often can someone actually begin introducing carbohydrates back into my diet?

 

When I start feeling like my joints are a key, when I start feeling like the pain is kicking in, when I start feeling like I'm getting totally stale that's when I know it's time to have some carbs again.

Is it every week? 

Nope. 

Is it every two weeks? Nope.

Is it every three days? 

Nope.

The honest answer is that we don't really know. We just know when our body starts to feel that way and that's the main thing.

You will know when your glycogen levels are low because you will feel sluggish, weak, and generally unwell.

 Any cheat meal or reify that you have is going to spike your insulin. Your body is very sensitive to insulin at this point in time. If you spike insulin, you'll shut off ketosis really fast, and your body will likely store those carbohydrates as fat. You are much more prone to storing body fat after a cheat meal than at any other time.

 Ones that don't raise your insulin but still replenish your glycogen that way you don't have insulin shutting off the process you have carbs that are softly renewing your glycogen.

I'm talking about things like beans lentils and potentially brown rice but honestly even that is a bit too high GI chickpeas items like that don't make it a cheap meal make it a refeed meal.

 That is properly done and I assure you that your  Glycogen levels will restore. You'll still have that glycogen you're not the deflated skeleton that you think. That is how glycogen works in ketosis. 

Remember it's all about the liver it's not about what's stored in the muscles.