Exercise On The Keto Diet

You hear again and again how important exercise is for your health and wellbeing. It doesn’t matter if you are following a diet or not, you should still be getting regular exercise. There is a bonus though if you are following the Keto diet. Exercise will be more efficient when you are doing Keto. So lets have a look at Exercise on the Keto Diet.

Although exercise has its health benefits, the main reason people exercise is to look better because looks are important to most people. Obviously, the health benefits and feeling of wellness play a part too but they are not the main reason.

Diet on its own can not achieve this. Sure, it can help you lose the weight but to get the proper body toning and strength you desire you still need to exercise.

So how does exercise work with the Keto diet to get you the results you are looking for?

Improved Insulin Sensitivity

For most people, as they age and do less physical activity, there is a reduction in insulin sensitivity. People who do not engage in much physical activity tend to have higher levels of blood sugar and insulin secretion during the day. This leads to retention of extra body fat and an increased risk of diabetes.

Anaerobic exercise and weight training particularly have been shown to aid the absorption of nutrients as well as improve the efficiency of insulin in response to blood glucose.

Blood glucose is also lowered by following the Keto diet because of the restriction in carb intake. Muscle glycogen stores are also reduced. This all increases the bodys efficiency at dealing with small bursts of glucose.

Fat Burning Is Increased

The main benefits of the Keto diet and the main reason why people switch to Keto is the ability to lose fat quickly. With the reduction in carb intake and the large decrease in insulin activity the body burns a lot more fat.

When insulin activity is higher there is no fat burning taking place and instead the body starts storing fat. This is obviously the opposite of what you want when your goal is to lose weight. In addition, any exercise you do will use carbohydrates for energy and not fat.

Even if you are not fully following the Keto diet there are still many benefits you can get. Exercising on an empty stomach first thing in the morning will cause the body to use fat for energy because glucose levels will be run down over night when you have not been eating. This is why many athletes choose to do their cardiovascular exercise at this time.

Increased Muscle Gain

Exercise is good for promoting muscle gain but this obviously depends somewhat on what type of exercise you are doing. Steady state aerobic exercise is not going to gain muscle in the way that weight training or anaerobic will.

Muscle growth is important because muscle is where mitochondria is located. Mitochondria is what burns and oxidizes Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) which is the energy carrying molecule found in cells. Therefore, the more muscle we have, the more mitochondria we have or the larger those mitochondria are.

It also means that you will burn more calories even during periods where you are not active. It is important to keep exercising though or else these mitochondria will decrease and you will lose all of the benefits associated with them.

Keto Adjustments

In cases where carb intake is dependent on exercise, such as for athletes and bodybuilders there are adjustments which can be made to the Keto diet to make it more suitable.

• Cyclical Ketogenic Diet – This plan as the name suggests involves cycling the Keto diet with periods of high carb consumption. This would usually be something like 5 Keto days followed by 2 high carb consumption days repeated. It is typically used by weight-lifters, body builders, athletes and anybody doing high intensity exercise.

• Targeted Ketogenic Diet – This plan involves consuming high carbs based around workouts and is also suitable for weight-lifters, body builders, athletes and anybody doing high intensity exercise.

Conclusion

As well as exercise being beneficial for your health and your body composition it will also help you get the maximum results from the Keto diet by helping to burn the most fat possible. So you can now see that Exercise on the Keto Diet will help to maximize the results you will get.

To get the most benefit from exercise and use it to look your best you should be doing both cardio and weight training exercises.

Like many other things, starting off with a new exercise schedule may seem difficult during the first few weeks. You may also be adapting to your new Keto lifestyle. Once you get used to it though, it will become much easier and you will see and feel the positive results once you are efficiently producing ketones, losing fat and gain muscle and strength.