I've tried to do heavy workouts on low-carb. Like you said, it's very effective for weight-loss. But there were a lot of thousand-yard-stares I gave, trying to get the motivation to pick up the heavy weights.
It takes your body around six months to adapt to a ketogenic lifestyle. Your mitochondria have to breed new generations that activate the genes they have for optimally utilizing ketones as fuel. One of the weird side effects of this is building muscle rapidly and the other is muscle fatigue and DOMS nearly disappear completely, enabling you to push yourself much further. Dr. Shawn Baker (a beast of a man and heavy lifter) lives a zero carb lifestyle and holds multiple world records in rowing despite being in his 50s. A personal anecdote I have is that I moved houses a couple weeks ago. After spending an entire day lifting and carrying heavy things I was convinced I would be unable to move from the pain in the morning. (I'm in my 40s.) But after spending a year on a no-carb diet I had a little soreness the next day and then was fine the day after that. I've gotten noticably larger instead of noticeable sorer.
You really do have to reel in your expectations for those first six months but after that your gains take off like a rocketship.
maxk42|2 years ago
You really do have to reel in your expectations for those first six months but after that your gains take off like a rocketship.