Low Carb & A Lot Of Excercise

Hi @RuthieSadler
Are you diabetic? Most experience here will be from that angle.

Your profile says "other" so not sure what you have but....
There are quite a few ketogenic eaters that exercise fasted. The energy comes from body fat.
I can't recall the exact figures that I heard quoted but the average body has I think about 40,000 calories stored as body fat that become accessible for energy when you are in nutritional ketosis. When I was swimming I was doing up to 10k a week always fasted with no probs.. also walking the dog etc and rare gym visits (I find it really boring). I never eat until after 1 pm usually but had no probs with energy. I also have fewer than 20g of carbs per day. I will freely admit that I am not exercise driven (before someone else reminds me) and haven;t been swimming for a while but that's down to laziness...
One of the 2 keto dudes quite regularly does 100km bike rides fasted too.

Did your consultant say why low carb is not for you?

Energy comes from stored fats and from dietary fats on a low carb diet.

RuthieSadler said:

Not that keen to do low carb, just wondered how others coped with it & exercising. There’s a lot of carb bashing tv programmes on in the UK at the moment & this week there’s one called fast fix diabetes - it’s all quite irritating.

Click to expand...

Why do you find them irritating? Genuinely interested. carbs are the one non essential nutrient which have been bigged up by... you guessed it the people that produce them and a weird connection with the Seventh Day Adventists..
If you don't want to do low carb then I don't think anyone will be there forcing you to... but if you are Type 2 then it could well be of major benefit to your blood sugar control.

I see from your profile you take Gliclazide. This is a strong drug that forces your pancreas to produce extra insulin, so you can manage more carbs if you are happy to eat up to your medication and run the risk of wearing out your pancreas. Most of us T2s on here prefer to reduce our medication, hopefully down to zero.

RuthieSadler said:

Hi.

Reading a lot about low carb. Consultant said it’s not for me. However interested to know how people do a lot of exercise in a low carb diet - where is the energy coming from.

My average weekly exercise is swimming 6-7K at approx 35 min for 1500 metres, walk 3-4 miles a day plus 1-2 gym sessions.

Can anyone share experiences of low carb & exercise.

Thank-You

Click to expand...

Hi

I'm a newly diagnosed t2 who does a fair bit of running (about 15 miles a week at the moment) and am currently eating less than 50g carbs per day.

I haven't noticed any difference in my perceived effort but of course everyone is different.

I'm assuming I'm in ketosis due to my diet but I have no evidence to support this. I was thinking about getting one of those breath meters but don't know enough about it at the moment.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www....-diet-for-endurance-athletes-in-three-graphs/

This article suggests that being in ketosis is not great for endurance athletes as they need more oxygen to produce the same amount of energy as carbohydrate.

Unless you're a serious athlete, in my very uninformed opinion, I wouldn't rule out low carb due to your training ambitions.

Gav

gav_red said:

Hi

I'm a newly diagnosed t2 who does a fair bit of running (about 15 miles a week at the moment) and am currently eating less than 50g carbs per day.

I haven't noticed any difference in my perceived effort but of course everyone is different.

I'm assuming I'm in ketosis due to my diet but I have no evidence to support this. I was thinking about getting one of those breath meters but don't know enough about it at the moment.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www....-diet-for-endurance-athletes-in-three-graphs/

This article suggests that being in ketosis is not great for endurance athletes as they need more oxygen to produce the same amount of energy as carbohydrate.

Unless you're a serious athlete, in my very uninformed opinion, I wouldn't rule out low carb due to your training ambitions.

Gav

Click to expand...

Also the study you quote used a ketogenic type diet for 3 weeks by which time its fairly unlikely they would have been fat adapted fully. If it had been 3 months the results may have been slightly different.

I am eating a Low Carb High Fat diet with around 20g of carbs a day. I am currently fasting until my blood sugar goes into my target range (atm under 5.2), which means I am fasting for around 18-29 hours between meals. Doing this I have reduced my blood sugars considerably in a week. I am also doing 3-4 hours of exercise a day (walking and cycling) and having no problems with this. My aims are to improve insulin resistance and bring my blood sugar down, and to lose a lot of weight as I am currently carrying at least 80lb more than I should be to get into the healthy BMI range.

I ran the London marathon on 30g of carbs a week