If you have been around the ketosphere for a while you would have heard about the assumption that exercise is not necessary when you are doing a ketogenic diet. While that may be true in many cases there are other reasons why you should integrate fitness into your daily regime…

But before we get started on that, YES you can lose weight quite effectively without having to incorporate exercise. When you are on the ketogenic diet and you become fully keto adapted you will be able to burn fat even when you are at rest. Therefore, you can lose weight without exercising, but exercising will definately allow you to burn even more fat than if you weren’t doing it.

But it’s not just the weight loss aspects of exercise that you need to look at. You also need to consider the health benefits of it. Exercise is known to promote cardiovascular health, improve mental acuity and increase energy levels. Moderate exercise has also been shown to lower the incidence of obesity, when incorporated with a healthy diet (i.e. ketogenic in this case), so why wouldn’t you do it.

When talking about exercise there are two different types that you need to consider to determine whether you should be exercising on a ketogenic diet and what types of exercise you want to implement.

AEROBIC EXERCISE (CARDIO)

The first type of exercise I am going to talk about is aerobic exercise, also known as cardio. There are two different types of exercise that fall into this category:

Long, Slow Cardio

My Recommendation:  If you are wanting to complete a marathon or a sporting goal for the purpose of saying you have completed it then doing Long, Slow Cardio is OK for that purpose. It is not great for weight loss and can have detrimental effects (see below) but as long as you are not doing it with the intention to lose weight, then go right ahead. If you do decide to do it, then the ketogenic diet is perfect and once you are keto – adapted you will most likely improve your performance (see below).

This consists of activities such as running, jogging, cycling etc and generally takes over an hour to complete. I do not recommend this type of exercise for fat loss and in fact research has shown that it can be detrimental to overall longevity if done for an extended period of time. I have heard numerous stories of marathon runners that have dropped dead at the end of the race due to the extreme stress this exercise has put on their system.

The ketogenic diet is great for those who participate in Long, Slow Cardio as long as you are fully keto adapted. I would not suggest starting a ketogenic diet just before a half marathon as it takes anywhere from 2-4 weeks to fully adapt but if you are adapted it is perfectly fine and will actually sustain you for longer than if you were carb adapted.

Let’s think about it for a minute. Most people, even those that are the slimmest of people have about 40,000 calories of energy that they are able to burn when fat adapted. However, if you are relying on carbohydrates alone you have a limited supply of energy and the moment you run out of the glycogen from the carbohydrates then you will bonk and crash. This causes you to be required to consume even more carbohydrates (in the form of gels etc).

High Intensity Interval Training

My Recommendation: I absolutely recommend when following a ketogenic diet, you incorporate 1-2 sessions of HIIT training into your weekly schedule. Watch the fat drop off.

When we talk about HIIT training we are talking about training which involves high intensity, of very brief duration and infrequent. In fact you do not need to do this type of training more than once or twice a week. Doing HIIT training too frequently can lead to catabolism (break down) of muscle, especially if you are not consuming sufficient calories.

When you are ketoadapted your body will use free fatty acids for the low intensity exercise and then will spare what glycogen you have (from gluconeogenesis and the 25g – 50g of carbohydrates you eat per day) to do the HIIT and Weight Training Workouts.

A good example of HIIT workout routines are sprinting or doing online programs like Turbofire, which are specifically designed to increase your heart rate.

HIIT training has been shown to be incredibly beneficial in promoting fat loss, muscle gain and improving metabolic health.

Plus, the added benefit of doing this type of exercise is the calorie afterburn. This means that even after you have finished the HIIT training you will still be burning massive amounts of calories and your metabolism will be substantially boosted for up to 24 hours afterwards. This is great news for weight loss. Long, Slow Cardio does not give this afterburn effect. Once you have finished it, you will no longer burn calories…

ANAEROBIC ACTIVITY (WEIGHT TRAINING)

My Recommendation: It is crucially important that you incorporate resistance training into your routine (at least 2-3 times per week). However it is much wiser to do as heavy as you can with fewer reps so that you can have an impact and get the metabolic advantage prior to you running out of glycogen. Remember to not do a strength training session and a HIIT session on the same day when you are on the ketogenic diet.

Now unless you have been hiding under a rock for the past 5+ years you would have heard about the benefits of strength training for building muscle, burning fat and increasing longevity. However there is also the assumption that you can’t do weight training when on a ketogenic diet. You need carbs to fuel your muscles blah blah blah.

Well I am here to tell you the complete opposite. Although there have not been a lot of studies published on this topic, there was one published in the which showed that the Ketogenic Diet does not affect strength performance in elite artistic gymnasts. These gymnasts were required to perform the following:

• hanging straight leg raise;
• ground push up;
• parallel bar dips;
• pull ups;
• squat jumps; and
• countermovement jumps.

After the 30 day period of being on the ketogenic diet, they found absolutely no reduction in their strength levels.

When it comes to doing bodybuilding or strength training while on the ketogenic diet then it is much better to do smaller amounts of heavy sets as opposed to more amounts of light to medium reps as your glycogen levels are a lot lower and therefore will not take as much for you to become depleted.

I read an awesome article written by a bodybuilder on this, so if you you can read up even more…