Keytones

 If you are exercising and dieting, and your body is not producing keytones, does that mean that you are not burning fat? I read that if you are not producing keytones when you are in a calorie deficit, then your body might be using muscle for energy instead. Can you be in a calorie deficit and burn fat without producing keytones??

gobbley:  I don't know if this site will help answer your question or not.  But thanks for asking the question; I had never read about ketones before.

http://www.weight-loss-center.net/about_fat_l oss.html

Thats interesting. I wonder, do you have to be eating low carb for Ketosis to kick in?? What about eating under 100 carbs and eating 1300 calories??? I'd like to understand this a little more so I can keep track of things a little. I do not want to burn muscle. I know that if you eat a lot of protein you will preserve muscle when dieting and exercising, but you could eat 1300 calories worth of protein, which is a large amount of protein, but you could still be burning muscle if your calories are not high enough, right??

You do not have to eat low carb to lose fat.  I get about 50% of my daily calories from carbs and have lost 40 pounds of fat with no significant muscle loss.

Yea, I know. Calorie deficits are what matters. But I was wondering if you have to eat low carb in order for keytones to be excreted. And the less bodyfat you have, the higher the chances are of burning muscle for feul.

Generally speaking, if you're in a caloric deficit, you will consume both fat and muscle. It's essentially impossible to NOT catabolize muscle when hypocaloric, but there is research to suggest that low carb/no carb hypocaloric diets result in lower levels of lean muscle loss.

It's entirely possbile to replace muscle at the same pace it gets lost or faster. That's why it's *strongly* recommended you do resistance training (weightlifting) while on a diet, with a higher level of protein intake (not an issue when doing low carb, obviously!)

Added benefit for people with a lot to lose: weightlifting will make you look "tighter" and result in more inches lost faster, as well as increase your basal metabolic rate. Cardio is good for direct burning of calories, but adding compound lifts (squats, deadlifts, etc) is a more efficient use of your exercise time and will result in dramatically faster and better results over dieting or dieting + cardio alone.

PS - Women need not worry about looking like she-hulk if they take up some resistance training. You might get a bit of shoulder and bicep, but in order to get those bulging muscles you need much more testosterone than what's normally in your blood... so don't be afraid to lift!

Original Post by hatamoto:

It's entirely possbile to replace muscle at the same pace it gets lost or faster. That's why it's *strongly* recommended you do resistance training (weightlifting) while on a diet, with a higher level of protein intake (not an issue when doing low carb, obviously!)

Absolutely.  Though you don't have to go totally crazy with the protein intake.  A 40-30-30 split is often recommended (with the 40% being carbs) though I personally find I do better on 50-25-25.  Others will find they do better with slightly lower carbs and higher fat.

Thanks a lot! I do resistance training 4 times a week, eat less than 100 carbs a day, but still have about 1 cup of oats and often 2 slices of w/w toast with a sandwich. I've been doing a lot more cardio lately after weight lifting in the morning and again in the afternoon, and always have a high carb day once a week, but I'm not progressing very fast. I'm concerned because I've been doing lots of leg-work, and they don't seem to be getting any leaner. I have ketosticks, so I wondered if I could track muscle loss/fat burning with them. Maybe I'm just crazy.

By leg work, you mean squats, lunges, etc. right?  Not machines?  Because machines aren't generally very good for you.

Also, the strength training on the legs isn't to make them lean, per se.  Working a particular muscle group doesn't make you lose fat in that area specifically.  It helps you lose fat all over (by increasing your metabolism and generally burning calories).  So, while proper leg work is the best kind of exercise you can do for fat loss, it won't necessarily take fat off your legs first.  Nothing will.  Your legs will eventually get slimmer, though, as your body will eventually have to get around to taking fat from there.

No no no. I mean besides my once a week leg workouts, I've been doing cardio twice a day. Intense enough so that my legs are burning throughout the exercises...step-ups, skipping, jumping jacks, stationary bike, running, stuff like that. Its just that I'm lean everywhere else, except the backs of my legs!! I would just like them to be more toned, thats all.

Aha! I found the answer to my question- Keytones are only produced on low carb diets, and calorie deficits will not cause you to excrete keytones if your carbs are high, depending on the person. I apparently would have to lower them in order for ketosis to kick in, 90-100 is not low enough. I'm not going to do that, nor am I going to waste my money on ketosticks. I'll have to rely on my strength to determine whether or not my muscle is getting eaten, which I highly doubt it is. Yup.

Original Post by susiecue:

By leg work, you mean squats, lunges, etc. right?  Not machines?  Because machines aren't generally very good for you.

Right, compound lifts with a bar are vastly preferably to machines... machines often force your joints into making unnatural motions, and your secondary and stabilizing muscles don't get worked out nearly as well as if you were lifting a free weight where stabilization is required.

The reason machines are popular is because you can stick a set of them in a 500 sq ft room and they'll always take up the same amount of space. For a superior workout and one that's much more effective at building functional muscle, you gotta go for what our bodies were built to handle originally: lifting heavy freestanding objects.