Advice on workouts for a keto diet

TomfromNY

I'm 10 days into a low-carb ketogenic diet, went from 212->202 (a lot of water weight I'm sure) and have 20 to go. Would like some comments on the workouts I've been doing (please lets not turn this into a debate on low-carbs/keto)

I'm trying to do some cardio for fat burning, while at the same time I want to preserve muscle mass (when I lose some more fat I'll focus on increasing muscle mass)

I've been working out 4-5 days per week, alternating workouts

Workout 1 - I do about an hour on the elliptical (2 minutes hard, 1 minute easy), but take 3 5-minute breaks to do some upper body weights (2 sets each, about 8 reps)
- Shoulder press (barbell)
- Fly machine
- Dips
- Barbell curls

Workout 2
- Do 15 minutes elliptical
- Do Barbell Squats (a few warmup sets and 3 work sets of 5 reps) - today I did 165
- Do Deadlifts (4 sets of 5 reps, with increasing weights) - today I did 135, 150, 160, 175
- 3 sets of chinups to failure (today I did 6, 5, and 4)
- Do another 15-30 minutes of elliptical
On this workout day I plan on increasing the squats/deadlifts by 5 pounds a workout for at least a few weeks (before keto I was in the mid-200s on those lifts but its been a while)

Any thoughts on this? I'm trying to keep my diet at about 25-40gms carbs, 130gms protein, and 2100 calories. I haven't consistently done keto while working out at the same time in the past, so I am open to any advice.

mjudd1990

You pretty much don't need to do any cardio on a keto diet in my opinion. Lifting alone will promote fat loss and help preserve muscle. Cardio is just going to make you lose more muscle. It depends somewhat on the calorie deficit as well.

Just from experience with keto diets once your glycogen stores are shot you are gonna feel pretty rundown so I would personally wanna use what energy I had to just lift and get a better workout rather than do cardio and then have a mediocre weights session.

TomfromNY

You pretty much don't need to do any cardio on a keto diet in my opinion. Lifting alone will promote fat loss and help preserve muscle. Cardio is just going to make you lose more muscle. It depends somewhat on the calorie deficit as well.

Just from experience with keto diets once your glycogen stores are shot you are gonna feel pretty rundown so I would personally wanna use what energy I had to just lift and get a better workout rather than do cardio and then have a mediocre weights session.

Thanks for the advice. I was thinking that since I'm trying to keep my protein down (130 gm) to stay in ketosis, it would be difficult to have very effective weight training sessions in any case. My goal was to minimize the muscle-loss through some weight training and increase the fat burning through the cardio.

My glycogen stores must be low, but I have had pretty good energy levels during the workouts (maybe 10% less than before starting keto)