You must have come across the word ketogenic diet. The ketogenic diet is a low-carb, high-fat diet that involves eating a lot of healthy fats and almost putting an end to carbs. This diet scheme is traditionally used in treating epileptic patients as well as patients with other serious health issues, and this has allowed this diet to work its way into the mainstream and it’s now very common among athletes and fitness personnel.
It is definitive that the keto diet possesses a great deal of weight loss benefits, however, adding exercises to this weight loss process can be a little tricky because unlike most routines, certain workouts may be a little more difficult than others during keto. Low intensity workouts are often less affected by the diet. If you’ve concluded to give the ketogenic diet a trial, you would probably hope to be a beneficiary of the countless health benefits that comes with keto dieting such as weight reduction, blood sugar regulation, energy boost, and so on.
What exactly is a ketogenic diet?
In a nutshell, the ketogenic diet was designed to push your body into a state of ketosis. ketosis is a stage where your body starts utilizing fats as a source of energy instead of carbohydrates. However, despite all these health benefits of keto diet, a question that keeps ravaging the mind of keto dieters is if it truly does exercises any favors or if it improves the result of working out. Well, according to some scientific studies, it is believed that the ketogenic diet is excellent for anything exercise-wise, although it might affect the performances differently based on the type of work out. Also, it is expedient to note that, when you start a keto diet, it usually takes about a week or two for your body to attain the state of ketosis, and this depends on your eating habits and a few other factors. It is also advisable to include an additional two weeks to attain a significant result with your dieting.
Here is a list of exercises that are good for keto dieters;
Swimming
This is an aerobic exercise that improves your blood flow, lowers your blood sugar level and also, helps to burn more fat during keto.
Yoga
Yoga exercises are also excellent for burning belly fat and weight reduction
Check out our Yoga burn review
Jogging
Jogging helps to burn fat as well as reduce the risk of chronic diseases. You can start by jogging twice a week.
Crunches
It helps to strengthen your core and burn belly fat.
Strength exercise
This helps to burn body fats and build lean muscle mass
Aerobic dances
The aerobic dances enhance your overall cardiovascular system and health. It helps to burn fat from your body system.
Press-ups
After eating in the morning or evening, you can do a few reps of press-ups as it aids insulin production and also regulates blood sugar level. Most importantly, it can help you to prevent the keto flu symptoms.
Team sport
Like I stated earlier that keeping up with your ketosis and workouts can be tiresome and boring. However, getting involved in a team sport can help you get motivated to exercise regularly, since you are not all by yourself.
Stretching and warm-ups
Stretching has proven to be a popular exercise choice around the world today because it has many benefits. In addition to the benefits of stretching, it is easy to work out. You don’t need special equipment or a gym membership to exercise; you just need the willpower to exercise.
Related review: Hyperbolic Stretching Review
Cycling
Walking
Importance of Exercises During Keto Diet
- It launches you into ketosis faster
- It prevents loss of muscle
- It enhances your libido on keto diet
- It helps you to burn belly fat swiftly
- It regulates your ketone levels during ketosis
Reading more:
Understanding My Workouts on Keto
During keto, your body relies on a different and unusual pathway of releasing the energy it needs to meet the demands of your workouts and exercises. Therefore, high intensity workouts are not very advisable on keto diet, because your body now relies on breaking down fats for energy sources and this process is a bit more difficult and time consuming than the usual breakdown of glucose. In summary, what you are asking your body to do during ketosis, is to work on a new energy system that won’t be able to keep up with your demands in the way that you are used to. Therefore, you have to do your exercises differently. We would advise that you draw out a monthly plan on what your workout routine will look like during keto then try to talk to a diet of fitness experts to help put you through.
There are a number of different exercises that you can practice on keto, cycling, jogging, running on treadmills, weightlifting and many more. Many keto dieters run on different exercise programs. The most important factor is to understand the general rule of thumb about high intensity exercises and ketosis, then you are good to go.
I hope you are following?
Here Are a Few Things You Should Know About Exercising on a Keto Diet:
The Keto Flu
Keto flu is a series of terrible flu-like symptoms that often surfaces as your body adjusts to a new energy system and decreased electrolyte levels. Often, most new keto dieters show the keto flu symptoms after a few weeks of starting ketosis. Why is this? This is because most newbies often fail to fuel their workouts well. To do this, you have to ease your body into the ketogenic state by adding the proper workout routine to your diet.
For easy transition into ketosis, it is advisable that for the first two weeks, you pay attention to exercises that ensure that your energy is balanced as well as improve your appetite craving.
You can introduce weight lifting and low intensity cardiovascular exercises for about two to three times a week. The low intensity cardio will allow your transition into ketosis to go with much ease. This is because low intensity workouts usually burn more fat as energy source, while high intensity exercises burn more glucose as fuel.
Reading more:
Keto Helps You to Maintain Your Muscle Mass Than Adding to Your Muscle Mass
One of the best ways to slow down your aging process and bone loss is the growth and maintenance of your muscle mass. Your muscle mass helps to burn out calories everyday even when you aren’t working out. For those that intend to go to the gym to maintain their muscle mass, a ketogenic diet would be excellent for you but if you are aiming to increase your muscle mass, keto diet is definitely going to make it difficult for you, because of your low protein and carbs intake. It is much more challenging to add muscles during keto than it is when you rely on glucose as the main energy source.
Do Not Under-eat Before Working Out on Keto
It is important to ensure that your body is acquiring a substantial amount of energy. This is important because people on keto naturally have a high tendency to under-eat. This is because of the restrictions placed on some certain food classes such as carbs. This situation, naturally, makes you reduce calories. Furthermore, keto diet acts as an appetite suppressant. It makes you think you are not hungry even when you starve your body of necessary energy. Combining this effect with exercises will only result in an unwanted outcome as your performance and result will be greatly impaired.
Keto Allows You to Burn More Fat During Cardio
One of the reasons why people like to be on keto for weight reduction, is its ability to utilize fat and ketone bodies as fuel instead of glycogen. Aerobic exercises such as running, walking, cycling, swimming, will increase the oxidation of fat in your body, spare glycogen, secrete less lactate and make use of less oxygen. All this will lead to an increase in the rate of fat burn during your workouts. However, it won’t improve your performance. How do I mean? Ketogenic diets will help you burn more fat, however, it won’t boost your performance in any way. If at all it affects it, it would only worsen your performance for the time being and this is because it now takes more exertion to complete the same workout that you are used to completing in no time.
Reading more:
- 5 Types of Ketogenic Diets – Are Ketogenic Diets for Everyone?
- Keto 101: How to start a keto diet – Are you ready to go keto?
Burning Fat Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Losing Fat
The A-Z of weight loss is built on burning more calories than you are consuming. That is, for you to actually lose fat, the amount of calories you consume has to be significantly lower than the amount of calories that you burn per day. Most keto dieters often think that because their body utilizes fat as an energy source, they are losing a significant amount of weight. That is untrue, burning of fat as fuel does not mean that all the fats will be used up during your exercise. I know you are probably asking the same question I did “if keto diet is a weight loss program, how come burning those fats does not transition into evident weight reduction?” During ketosis, you use up more fats, but you also store up more fats, because your calories now come from fats rather than carbs. so, you still have a calorie deficit. Therefore, you still have to reduce your calorie intake to see an evident reduction in your body weight.
Steady and Consistent Work Out is Key
The keto weight loss program is a mid or long term program depending on which one you opt-in for. This month long program requires strict discipline, consistency, dedication. As a result, after some weeks or months you might become bored of your normal weekly, interval workout. What do you do? What you don’t do is throw in the towel. Instead, you gently fall back on a steady and consistent endurance-style workout. At this junction, your body calls upon the stored glucose to fill a quick need. You can start your endurance workout with cycling a long distance, then gradually increase your intensity week by week to see how well you perform.
Reading more:
Strength Training
Towards the end of your keto diet program, it is important to slightly incorporate some strength training exercise into your workout routine on a weekly basis. At this point, the strength training begins to provide a more metabolic effect than the cardio workouts, regardless of your present state (ketosis or not). Also, the strength workouts also enhance your testosterone and growth hormone which often results in two things you want to experience in your keto journey. Fat burning and muscle growth.
It is advisable to introduce strength training to your routine for about 3 days a week, after which, you can hit the cardio for about twenty minutes.
Working Out During Keto Helps Your Body to Attain Your Body Composition Goals
While training in the low-moderate intensity zone, your body, with the help of a good ketogenic diet, burns fat swiftly. Not only does your body burn fat during exercises, but keto allows your body to burn fat even at a state of rest.
Listen to Your Body
You need to pay attention to your body changes especially during ketosis. remember that keto diet has the tendency to reduce your energy level. Therefore, you need to listen to your body, so as to prevent workout injuries. If your body can’t exercise on a given day, rest and do it the next day. Note that I’m not in any way advocating for procrastination, but rather for diligence in healthy living.
The Bottom Line
Ketogenic diet is able to aid muscle recovery, enhance fat burning and boost endurance. However, if care is not taken, it can also inhibit muscle growth and reduce energy levels. Therefore, to have a steady and worthwhile keto journey, it is important to avoid high intensity work outs but stick to low and moderate intensity workout. This will help you to properly explore the full potentials of ketogenic diets.
Related buyer’s guide:
