Here’s situation. I’ve been on a low carb, high protein diet now for 3 weeks with absolutely no change in weight or body compostion. Diet consists of 50 grams of whey protein first thing in the morning followed by 6 egg whites with a couple of yolks and some cheese thrown in. Morning snack is usually either lean beef, chicken, (approx, 3-4 oz), noon meal is lean meat again with a green vegetable and a small fruit cup, afternoon meal is the same as the mid-morning meal. Afterwork, go home have another 50 grams of whey, post workout shake is where the carbs come in at about 100 grams and about 50 grams of protein. There’s usually another meal before bedtime. So, how long before a change is evident? BTW I’m also taking about 80 mg of ephedrine/day. Any suggestions or previous experiences would be appreciated.
Happened to me too despite taking care of every carb I ate (40 pw and 30 during the day). If you switch to anabolic diet, keep the carbs below 30 g and drop 40 g pw, I bet you’ll start losing fat like crazy. Another thing: stick to 10 kCal/lb bodyweight (not lbm). People with slow metabolism won’t lose fat if they take more than that, at least that’s my experience.
Do some research on the tmag site about good fats. How many grams of fat are you taking in? About 30, maybe? If you don’t take in some type of fats your body will hold on to every bit it has, and your T-levels drop. Low T-levels will definately mean no bodyfat lose.
I have done some research for a while on this subject. I have found that the whey protein causes an insulin spike that messes with the ketosis. The body assimilates the protein too quickly and needs more fats to utilize. I cut out hwey and increased the fats . after I did that i started to lose more efficiently. I could be wrong but this is what I have found.I am not a nutritionist, just someone interested in this diet to the point that I have read ll the books on it and studied for a few years how it owrks. Try this and see if it works better for you.
Musicman: Whey protein doesn’t cause a rise in blood serum insulin levels. I’m not sure where you heard this, but it’s not true.
Musicman: Never mind. I just realized that you’re probably talking about the indirect effect of gluconeogenesis. Ignore my last post.
On a low carb diet I’ve found that trying to cut fats isn’t a good idea, you have to get your calories from somewhere or you’ll lose muscle anyway. I keep my carbs to 20 grams a day and eat all the protein and fat I can. It’s harder than you think to keep eating enough calories on a true low carb diet day after day. Drink lots of water and light cardio helps. For me no more than 30 minutes a day, just hard enough to get my heart rate up to 135 to 150 BPM.
Thanks for the responses. I forgot to mention that I did a 20 day cycle of Androsol at 70x2 and I’m following that with Methoxy 7 and Tribex right now. I plan on starting cardio in May, probably 30 minutes in the morning 3 times a week. I’m not restricting fats by any means and I’m trying to get alot of unsaturated fats thru nuts and olive oil. I also plan on adding the T2 next month when I start the cardio. I want to spare as much muscle as I can and plan on taking 3 months for the diet but no changes after 3 weeks is a bit frustrating. Another point is that my strengh has not suffered at all and I just did a PR in the deadlift. Maybe I’m just destined to keep this chub around the middle.
How many times must it be said. Damn, everyone is different. Some people could die on a keto diet others melt fat like ice cream on a TX summer day. You need to find out what type of metabolism you have. That means you need to find out if you are a fast oxidiser of protiens, fats, or carbs. This will really help in your body shaping aspirations. Also if you are at or above maintenance levels of Calories You may not lose any weight keto or not. Your body may be that efficient at breaking down proteins and fat. In short do some research on yourself. I would suggest taking John B’s approach and checking your insulin sensativity and adjust from there. I didn’t lose any weight on a keto diet until I lowered my cal way down and upped my carbs to 100 gr. That seems extreme but it was the only thing that worked for me. LISTEN TO YOUR BODY. What works for me may make you sick. Another way to check that is buy a book called The metabolic typing diet by William L. Wolcott. Good luck.
Cromagnon: Personally, I think you’re ingesting far too many carbs to truly call your diet “low carb” (that term generally denotes an average of less than 30g of carbs per day). I assume you’re trying a targeting ketogenic diet (TKD) because you’re ingesting carbs post-workout, but in my experience TKDs are tricky to “dial in” correctly and often result in markedly decreased fat loss than otherwise would have been accomplished on an Androsol-enhanced fat-fast-type diet. If you absolutely want to continue the TKD, I’d suggest dropping your post-workout carbs to 50g or less and work up from there (although IMO I doubt you’ll need to increase much beyond that, if at all). I would also suggest that you drop fruit from your diet, since fructose preferentially replenishes liver glycogen and, thus, tends to knock people out of ketosis (for this reason, eating fruit is excellent while in keto maintenance mode, but it’s a poor dietary choice while striving for fat loss on such a diet).
Make sure your calories are below maintenance. Also you need to keep carbs to a minimum at least for the first week or two. Your diet barely appears ketogenic. I’d guess you’re around 200 grams of carbs a day, which is fine for a mixed diet but not for a low-carb, high fat one. Good luck
I would have to say drop your carbs. I have done low carb, high fat many times, and they work great for me, but it does sound like you are 200g+, and that is not really low carb at all, that is what I eat on high carb days when I am not on a low carb diet. Cut down the carbs to <50g/day at the most.
Shawn: Not really sure where you are getting the 200+ carbs from. The only carbs I’m taking in come from my post workout shake which has 50 g of protein and approx 90 g of carbs. I only take that on workout days which is 5 days/week. The carbs from any fruit are no more than 15 g or so any other incidental carbs might come from ketchup or BBQ sauce but still don’t add up to much. I guess I expected to at least have an initial water loss from stopping all processed carbs sources.
Well, maybe I did over-shoot the carbs a little (I assumed that your fruit cup would be bigger than that), but even at 100-150, you are not really low carb. I am not trying to sound like an ass, just trying to give you a little help. I would definitly lower the carbs, and add some flax, but hey it might not work for you…just because it works for one person does not mean that it will work as well for the next. Thing that you could easily do to lower carbs…lower post workout carbs…cut out the fruit cup and the veg. (they both have some carbs…use other condiments (Catsup and BBQ sauce probably have more carbs then any other condiment). Lower your total calorie intake a little, it looks like your taking in ~225g of protein, and I am sure you could lower that a little if you are trying to cut a little fat, don’t lower the number of meals, just the amount that you eat at each meal (try 40g whey rather than 50, that would put you at ~195g, unless your LBM is much above 200, then I would not drop your protein). If you try those it should help.
I’m a very fortunate person in some ways. I can put on muscle in a bulking phase much faster than most. I also rarely lose a whole lot of muscle when I’m on a diet. My problem is that I don’t lose very much fat, either. I’m hoping that T2 can help, but you may be like me. That is, you need to lower calories lower than others to lose fat, and you have to allow for a much longer period of time to lose it.
Couple of things…some people need to drop carbs to 30g / day or less to effectively lose weight on a keto diet. For others, the keto approach does not work. Lastly, look at your training and the dreaded cardio. Most on the site disagree, but cardio is necessary for the majority of us, in tandem with any diet, to lose weight. At least 3-4X / week for 30 minutes or so.
3 weeks and no change??? Um maybe if we cut your cals. by 200-300 each week until you do start losing(fat).How much do you weigh? you don’t need 2g of protien per lbs. of bodyweight when dieting!