Non-Keto friends killing themselves in the gym!

Fat2FitChick

I have noticed that most if not all of my non Keto friends on here are spending 3-4 hours working out, killing themselves in the gym. Then when you look in there diary they are eating tons of carbs which may be counterproductive. They workout all that time just to end up working off the carbs they ate, but may not even be hitting their fat stores.

It just seems so counterproductive, yes they are losing weight but not at the rate they could be.

kiramaniac

Gary Taubes has an article on exercise and weight loss. "The Scientist and the Stairmaster: Why Most of us BElieve that Exercise Makes us Thinner - And Why we're Wrong". Basically, the more you exercise, the more you eat.

I've also noticed that the non low-carb ers dismiss when they have exceeded their carb targets. Some don't count "natural" carbs from fruits and vegetables. Thay dismiss the MFP Macros and dont think they apply if you're eating sugars from fruits. They can be awfully funny.

Here's the article and a paragraph: http://nymag.com/news/sports/38001/

The job of determining how fuels (glucose and fatty acids) will be used, whether we will store them as fat or burn them for energy, is carried out primarily by the hormone insulin in concert with an enzyme known technically as lipoprotein lipase—LPL, for short. (Sex hormones also interact with LPL, which is why men and women fatten differently.)

In the eighties, biochemists and physiologists worked out how LPL responds to exercise. They found that during a workout, LPL activity increases in muscle tissue, and so our muscle cells suck up fatty acids to use for fuel. Then, when we’re done exercising, LPL activity in the muscle tissue tapers off and LPL activity in our fat tissue spikes, pulling calories into fat cells. This works to return to the fat cells any fat they might have had to surrender—homeostasis, in other words. The more rigorous the exercise, and the more fat lost from our fat tissue, the greater the subsequent increase in LPL activity in the fat cells. Thus, post-workout, we get hungry: Our fat tissue is devoting itself to restoring calories as fat, depriving other tissues and organs of the fuel they need and triggering a compensatory impulse to eat. The feeling of hunger is the brain’s way of trying to satisfy the demands of the body. Just as sweating makes us thirsty, burning off calories makes us hungry.

albertabeefy

While I agree with the idea that for a certain segment of the population, (ie: anyone with diabetes, insulin-resistance, overweight/obesity, etc.) reducing carbs significantly aids in weight-loss, my own experience is I lose considerably more when I also engage in exercise and eat a caloric intake sufficient to support it.

One of Taubes' complaints about exercise for the obese is that because we're so biomechanically efficient at walking (which he often uses as an exercise example) that we burn very little calories above/beyond our BMR, and additional weight-loss is very minor.

I agree with that, and that's why I don't walk for exercise. Ever since my first day of riding a spin bike for a whopping 2 minutes, I've started to engage in HIIT - and I burn a ridiculous amount of calories between that and my strength training, because virtually all the calories I burn (well over 1,000 many days just from added exercise) are from fat. That's easily 2 lbs a week additional fat loss just from adding exercise.

Taubes' mentions the more intense the workout, the greater increase in hunger... but those studies weren't done on ketogenic individuals - they were done on people fueled by a carbohydrate metabolism. This makes sense as the resultant drop in insulin and glucose post-heavy-exercise does trigger hunger centers.

In ketogenic dieters that's not necessarily the case. I can easily workout 90 minutes a day at very vigorous intensity, and I'm not insanely hungry. But it wouldn't matter if I were hungry as I always eat (re-fuel with a high-fat protein drink) after every workout. (If you PLAN to eat after every workout, you're not eating extra calories, you're eating your planned calories.)

I don't have much to lose - about 20lbs. Without the exercise I'd maintain a steady keto-diet loss of about 2lbs a week. With it I easily lose - on average - 4lbs a week, sometimes more.