Ketogenic Diet Plan for Bodybuilders
Although most dietitians will not recommend the ketogenic diet it continues to work for most people who try it so we will be going through a few basic reasons why it works so well and a few suggestions on how to implement the cyclical ketogenic diet (CKD).
There is a big difference between going on a pure ketogenic diet and a CKD diet which makes more sense as your body gets a chance to recuperate from the massive amount of ketones in your blood after 5 days on pure protein and fat only with no carbs added.
The diet has had enormous success with bodybuilders wanting to lose fat without losing precious muscle that you worked so hard to get. The advantage of going on this type of diet is that it increases the amount of growth hormone in your body as well as the testosterone and the IGF-1 (Insulin growth factor).
These are all powerful ways to naturally increase the amount of growth that you get from eating a CKD diet. The idea is to deplete all muscle glycogen in the muscles because there are no carbs available which will empty the muscles of glycogen with little or no increase in insulin.
However after 5 days of protein and fat ONLY starts the cycle onto 2 days of high carbs and your body is able to then pump out the insulin which pushes the glycogen back into the muscles and makes you feel like you have increased your strength by tenfold. But first we need to produce ketones which are done by ONLY eating proteins and fats with NO carbohydrates added.
When your body produces ketones it means that the digestion is still intact and is using only fat lipids as energy to drive your normal body functions and any energy used to work out. This is scientifically very important and can be measured by testing urine so that you know exactly how many ketones you are using to break down fat for energy.
Once your body has reached a stage of ketosis you will be using only fat as energy and your body no longer needs to oxidize protein in order to generate glucose which it normally does through a process called gluconeogenesis. It makes sense that when you do not consume carbs you will have extremely low levels of any insulin in your body.
These low levels of insulin will cause greater lipolysis with lots of free glycerol released. This along with the increased amount of testosterone and growth hormone manage to avoid any potential muscle loss that you might get from training less because of lower energy levels.
The CKD diet takes discipline and strict control to implement and even though you need to be extremely strict for the first few days it gets easier as the ketosis that you get reducers hunger very effectively. So we will examine the implementation of the CKD diet and how it works.
The first 5 days of the CKD diet needs to concentrate on reaching a state of ketosis which can easily be verified by using ketone sticks purchased at your pharmacy. Eating ONLY fats and protein like fried eggs and bacon or a tuna mayo and cheese on a low carb tortilla found in many stores.
Other ideas are a high protein Caesar salad with a full fat sauce and absolutely no bread or croutons to go with that. Your post workout shake made with full cream milk and maybe one fruit is good but you always need to make sure that you are not getting in too many carbohydrates as this will illuminate your ketone production and slow down the lipolysis and break-down of fats.
After the 5th day you immediately go onto a high carbohydrate diet where you eat every complex carbohydrate that you can find, pumping much needed glycogen directly into the muscles for 48 hours. At the end of the second day on carbs you immediately go back onto proteins and fats ONLY.
