My Ketogenic Diet in Hindsight

Essentially, I'm writing this post to air my qualms with this diet or, to be fair, the way I did this diet. In terms of chasing aesthetics/bodybuilding, I'm sure this diet really can work very well for some people, but in hindsight, I don't believe that this diet is actually ideal for those that are focused on performance and/or health.

Dave Palumbo is a big proponent of ketogenic dieting and was a top ranking bodybuilder. He was/is also chemically assisted though and that will make losing fat while retaining muscle much easier.

So, I did lose quite a bit of weight and I did gain strength while following a cyclical ketogenic diet. While doing the diet, I was quite the fan and was very happy with how quickly I was losing weight and how lean I was getting in such a short amount of time. I believe that my lowest weight on the diet was 178 lbs., which is considerably less weight than my starting weight, and I was gaining strength throughout the ordeal. I thought this was all well and good until I started thinking it through a bit harder and learned a bit more. Also, multiple people had commented on how "small" I had gotten, and that'll get any meathead thinking!

The diet went from the beginning of May to the beginning of August, which is roughly 3 months. In that time I lost 18 lbs., so that averages out to 6 lbs. per month. Now, if I had actually lost 6 lbs. a month (1.5 lbs/wk) consistently, that would've been a pretty good rate of weight loss. Unfortunately, that is not how it went.

If I remember correctly, I lost about 10 lbs. in the first month, 5 in the second and 3 in the third. In that first month I was working a construction job in the morning and serving at a restaurant at night, which is considerably more physically demanding than an average job and therefore I was burning a massive amount of calories while consuming very low amount of calories throughout the day, creating a caloric deficit that was far too large, resulting in a loss of quite a bit of muscle. In the second month, I cut back on the construction job, but was still working the serving job and sticking to the 2,400-2,800 kcal/day. In the second month, my rate of weight loss was actually pretty good and my third month was even better, as I was no longer working construction and upped my caloric intake.

I personally lost a considerable amount of muscle. I'm weight about 180 lbs. in this picture. The red shirt was previously quite tight on me and is very loose in this picture.

You can see that I did made a strong correlation to the amount of calories I was burning in the day and the number of calories I was consuming (caloric deficit); When I was working a lot (burning a lot of calories) I was losing weight far too quickly/losing muscle and when I cut back on the work and upped my caloric intake a bit (reduced the caloric deficit), I was losing weight at a good rate of speed. This is why I think that it is fair to say that I personally made a mistake in the way I carried out the diet and that I believe that it can still have a place in the world of aesthetics/bodybuilding. If I had kept a more appropriate and consistent caloric deficit throughout the 3 month period, I would have still lost fat and retained far more muscle.

I also claimed that I was gaining strength while losing a lot of weight, which is true; I did get stronger than I was when I started the diet. I originally accredited that the to ketogenic diet, thinking that I was able to lose weight and get stronger at the same time because of this diet. In all actuality, the strength gain was due to the fact that I was really just regaining strength that I had before I got injured and I had just started focusing on strength. My body was simply adapting to the new stimulus that I was subjecting it to, while regaining the efficiency of my neuromuscular system. Your body certainly does need carbohydrate to perform optimally in sports/activities that require the anaerobic pathway and you can't do that while running on little more than fat, protein and ketone bodies.

I'm quite certain that Brandon Lilly (one of my personal favorites) consumes carbs to power his training!

My final thoughts on the the cyclical ketogenic diet:

• It can be effective for aesthetic/bodybuilding needs
• You can lose fat rapidly on the diet
• It is easy to create a caloric deficit that is far too large, resulting in muscle loss
• It is difficult to get in the required micronutrients for optimal health
• The diet is not ideal for those concerned with athletic performance