A common misconception about weight loss is that there’s a “quick fix,” but burning body fat and building muscle sustainably takes time, patience, and dedication, according to Robert Sikes, a bodybuilder who has six years of experience on the keto diet. Common mistakes people make when trying to lose weight are not creating a personalized plan, cutting calories too quickly, and staying on a diet for too long, Sikes said in a recent presentation for KetoCon Online. To avoid these, Sikes offers simple steps — be strategic, don’t overdo it, and give your body a chance to recover — to help people burn fat without losing muscle, whether or not you’re on a keto diet. The first step to burning fat while maintaining muscle is to understand your metabolic baseline, according to Sikes. That includes how many calories you need per day to maintain your current weight, as well as how many calories you typically eat in a day, and what percentage of that is carbs, fat, and protein. From there, you can figure out what balance of macronutrients works best for your body by experimenting with different ratios of carbs, fat, and protein. Sikes recommends getting around 0. Too much protein, especially on a keto diet, can cause bloating, digestive issues, and higher blood sugar, as well as other long-term health issues. Once you’ve establish a balance, you can figure out how many calories you need to cut to be in a deficit — eating fewer calories than you burn is what prompts the body to burn fat. Sikes recommends doing this gradually, tapering off proportional amounts of fat and protein and carbs if you aren’t keto each week so you’re slowly getting fewer calories. This can help prevent your body from starting to burn muscle or slow your metabolism, both of which are survival mechanisms used in response to an abrupt or severe calorie deficit.
As such, a targeted ketogenic diet perhaps higher carbohydrate, with carbs biased around exercise may allow you to reap the best of both worlds i. Make sure to drink plenty of water to help your body cope with these symptoms. Schorr M et al. Gabby Landsverk. Key Takeaways: Calorie- and protein-matched ketogenic and non-ketogenic diets lead to similar rates of fat loss. In fact, keto-adapted athletes who were compared to athletes consuming around grams of carbohydrates per day actually had similar levels of stored muscle glycogen. Critics of the diet, however, often say the exact opposite: Ketogenic diets limit your ability to train hard, the theory goes. Even if you are doing very long cardio training, marathons and biking included, a ketogenic diet has been proven time and time again. On the other hand, if you want to lose body fat and maintain muscle mass, then you must increase protein intake while you are in a calorie deficit. Athletes who play explosive sports like football, soccer, lacrosse, and hockey and people who do high-intensity training multiple times a week like CrossFit and heavy weight-training will benefit most from the cyclical ketogenic diet.
This high-fat, low-carb approach has become one of the most popular ways to lose weight, but you should be aware of these risks before you give it a shot. While this is a deterrent for many, Christy Brissette, RD, a private-practice dietitian in Chicago, notes that many of her patients like the diet because of its strictness. Brissette agrees with this line of thinking. As you can see, there are many potential benefits and side effects of the ketogenic diet. This may be related to the fact that protein alone is less effective for muscle building than protein and carbohydrates together after exercise. Yet the folks on keto did lose more leg muscle.