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how to regulate exercise on a lchf diet?

hansolo

Active Member
Messages
36
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
I have to ask how one regulates exercise on a lchf diet? I tried (and failed, mostly owing to the fact I struggled to keep it up whilst travelling) the diet and immediately saw the benefits of stable BGLs.

My problem came when I dropped into hypo-bound figures; being low 4s and knowing you have a while until next meal - even if I weren't yet in ketosis, taking on carbs to avoid hypo meant that I would mess up the lchf diet.

And then, when it comes to considering doing exercise, I cannot fathom how I determine if I have enough energy (gained from saturated fat) to do a 25 min cycle to work..! At least by carb counting I have a formula to follow to determine if I have energy available and can inject accordingly...

Confused? You might say so
 
Hi hansolo. It really all comes down to just taking a little less insulin when you eat less carbs, and for many people even less again if you're doing a lot of exercise. One of the reason that T1's do LCHF is that the smaller insulin doses generally give smaller errors and more stable BG levels.

Once you're fat adapted cycling 25 minutes (or even 1h 25min) should be no trouble as you'll be using mostly fat as fuel. Personally I find that on LCHF I can cycle for 2 hours or more without eating and without any drastic drop in BGL.
 
hansolo said:
I have to ask how one regulates exercise on a lchf diet?

...even if I weren't yet in ketosis, taking on carbs to avoid hypo meant that I would mess up the lchf diet.

Confused? You might say so
Click to expand...

I was the same when I started LCHF and was concerned about being kicked out of ketosis after eating carbs during exercise. I realized there is no need to be so extreme. Just top up with carbs when needed, it will not mess with your LCHF diet.
 
It would be worth trying either coconut oil or MCT oil as a faster source of energy. Medium chain triglycerides don't need so much processing, so are more quickly available as fuel. They also help to get deeper into ketosis.
 
Also worth looking at HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) as this will raise your BS instead of lowering it. I cycled home from work last with a BS of 3.9 (I'm type 1 by the way - 42 years) and by the time I got home my BS was 4.6. All this entailed was cycling at an average pace (not breathing too hard) for 5 mins and then cycling like hell so you can hardly breathe for 30 seconds.
 
I'm type 2 but also on LCHF.

I can now easily ride 30 miles fasted (nothing but water) at just under 15mph average.

25 mins easy cycle should be achievable if you are eating more than 40% of your intake as fats.
 
I was wondering if you could help. I cycle quite a bit. Last week I cycled over 80 miles (4 different rides 2 of them 30 miles long). Today I planned to do another 30 mile cycle ride. I could only manage 20. I'm also a lot slower than I was. I've been on the LCHF diet for 3 months (lost 4 kilos!) Do you think that is making cycling much harder? Or is it nothing to do with the diet? Can anyone help?
 
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