• Guest - w'd love to know what you think about the forum! Take the 2026 Survey »

How to keep BG steady when exercising and on ketogenic diet?

cz_dave

cz_dave

Well-Known Member
Messages
450
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
I have started a ketogenic diet today and I am trying to stay below 50g carbs per day. Tomorrow I will be playing badminton for an hour and it will be quite intense. I wonder what is the best way of increasing my BG during the game? In the past, I would just eat a banana and/or drink apple juice. I think this could, however, kick me out of ketosis?

Thanks for any advice.
 
One of the Ketogenic bloggers talks about glycogen deficit in relation to a ketogenic diet. It's fairly complex to calculate, but basically, as long as you only consume enough carbs to reload the glycogen stores in you muscles, you won't get kicked out of ketosis. The other thing I would assume you are doing is reducing insulin relating to the timing of the badminton game.
 
@tim2000s would you remember which ketogenic blogger writes about this?

It's been now over 2 weeks that I am in ketosis. Two days ago I went to play badminton which is my regular sports activity every Sunday evening. This Sunday was my first time playing badminton while in ketosis. I was shocked at the BG response of my body. In the past, my BG would go down and I would have to keep drinking apple juice and eating bananas to stay in the normal range. This time, it was completely the opposite. My BG soared from 5 to 10 from just the sports activity - badminton is quite an intense game, so it would probably be categorized as anaerobic. Still, in my pre-ketogenic phase, my BG would never go up like this, quite on the contrary.

To make things worse, the BG rise even kicked me out of ketosis. My ketones went from around 2.0 to just 0.4 after the badminton game. I also suspect my brain started running on glucose again. However, my ketone production was back to around 2.0 the next morning. Still, I suspect I need to partly re-adapt to the ketogenic state.

I really love badminton, so if anyone has any advice how not to be kicked out of ketosis during an intense sports activity, it would be highly appreciated.

On the plus side, I have to say that I felt very much in form during the badminton game (I suppose my muscles got already adapted to fat burning?).
 
The only way you can stop your bg level spiking is to give yourself a shot of insulin, however, the fact that for this type of intense anaerobic exercise your body requires glucose means that it is very difficult to maintain ketosis throughout.
 
Back
Top