UKC

I'm currently doing some personal research about switching to a keto diet so see what impact it has on me.

I know and under stand changing diets can be risky and have started reading a range of information. 

My current diet is quiet carb heavy, so I know dropping them will be a challenge. (Looking at you honey on toast)

I'm just looking for peoples experiences, what impact it had on them and their climbing ability, negatives they encountered, how difficult or easy it is to stick to. Anything that helps track diets. Just anything I might need to consider.

And recipes would be helpful.

Thanks

Take it slowly at first, begin to wean out the carbs and replace with bacon and eggs, making sure these are fried with 100g of butter. Move to gold top milk or straight from the udder if you can source locally. Meat can be expensive so think about cheaper cuts and offal. Some favourites include liver, brain, tongue and heart, sweet bread on Fridays as a special treat. Make sure to drink plenty of coffee and seakelp juice to purge the digestive tract weekly. If you fail to notice a shift in symptoms or increase in grade within 2 weeks, give it up as a bad job and pop to the local chippy, ask for a cone of chips with plenty of salt and vinegar, if this settles ok then wash down with a can of dandelion and burdock. 
 

good luck

JS

A useful app available from a GP that I work with can be found via www.lowcarbfreshwell.co.uk.  They also provide some decent recipe books for not much money - it is non-profit.  By way of encouragement, they have moved 70 type 2 diabetics off medication.

My diet was carb loaded, though not too much processed stuff.  I thought I would use keto to lose my target of 3 kg in a few weeks.  After a few days, any carb craving just disappears and I now only have them very occasionally - restaurants for example.  One trick is to go as low as you can with carbs at the start and combine with 16:8 eating pattern as this more or less guarantees ketosis happens quickly.  Once your body is used to fat-fueling, you can be a bit more relaxed as your system learns to switch to ketosis more easily.  That said, I usually stick to 16:8 and my carbs are all in vegetable form, including some potatoes now and then.  

I'm pretty convinced that my calorie intake is higher than previously (I've measured it) yet I am now 10 kg lower in 9 months.  The good thing is it's easy and doesn't feel like a 'diet'.

Lastly, remember to replace carbs with fat.  Adding protein is self-defeating as your system can convert surplus proteins to glycogen and this fuel will prevent ketosis.

Hope that helps  🙂

I have been eating keto for four years. 

I am no longer asthmatic.  50 years of wheezing and inhalers, gone. No hayfever, allergy to cats, horses etc.  Much improved mental focus and depression gone.  I am much lighter, and am now a fairly keen runner. 

I no longer drink, I never saw that coming.  I loved drinking and honestly thought I could never stop.  Within a week of keto, I no longer wanted to drink.  The chemistry changed and I stopped, bang.

I have fasted for days and carried on with activities. 

I don not eat breakfast, but do have a coffee with double cream.  Yesterday I ate three fried eggs around lunchtime and had meatballs in the evening.

I eat some vegetables, ones that may go in a recipe like stew, bolognaise etc.  I eat a lot of beef, pork and some chicken.  Chorizo, cheese, nuts, greek (10% fat) yogurt.

I never eat 'vegetable'oils and cook with butter, lard, dripping, occasionally olive oil.

I rarely eat fruit. 

Satiety comes from the fat and protein.

I eat a lot of salt.

I know there is more.

I did keto for 6 months and I think it's a worthy experiment to try and understand your own nutritional responses. As has been said go less than 20g of carbs per day to start with and then as you adjust you may find that less than 50g will keep you in ketosis. 

Points of interest

• Buy some electrolights / salt tablets that have a good amount of magnesium in them. These prevent cramping and headaches which you might get in the first few weeks if your salt levels drop. 
• The urine sticks are pointless 
• Total carbs = carbs - fiber (fiber is a carb but it's not digested so you can subtract it)
• Chronometer app can work all this out for you automatically
• Track all your meals and drinks for the 1st two weeks as you learn about which foods are working for you
• Milk has carbs in it
• Learn about alternative sweeteners as they can mess with your guts and are not that great
• There's no such thing as keto/non keto it's all just how many carbs a quantity of food has
• Don't worry if you make a mistake

Pros

• It doesn't feel like a diet
• Keto mug cakes are a dietary requirement 
• Experiment with keto baking
• Never feel hungry
• Stable energy throughout the day no afternoon slumps
• Nandos
• Rotisserie chicken 
• 4 Eggs for breakfast
• Hot chocolate made with 90% chocolate 

Cons

• Can be expensive
• Learning curve to start with
• Social eating is tricky but possible 
• Having to rethink all your hiking snacks (cheese nuts? boiled eggs) 
• Alcohol is debatable 
• Sweat and urine get very pungent 

Would a high carbon footprint not be one of the cons as well?

Not saying it’s a reason not to do it of course, people can offset this by making other changes, but it could deter some…

I think you've put Nandos in the wrong category 

Why would you cut down the number of eggs for breakfast?

In terms of beneficial effect on climbing and just about everything, cutting out alcohol has had the biggest beneficial effect for me. It’s not just the calorie and fluid retention reduction, overall well massively improved.

I did try keto, but as a vegan I found it just one step too far in terms of restriction. In any case, just dropping animal products, particularly dairy seems to keep weight down, while still being able to eat loads

Keto had a great side effect for me in that I just didn’t want to drink alcohol. It instantly made me feel hungover. Often before I was even half way down the first drink.  At home it was easy, not really like I had to make any sacrifices. Out of the house was much harder and trips abroad much harder still. It defo makes you a bit weird in restaurants. Like you have a self inflected eating disorder.

and the side effects are real. Headaches and mood swings in my case. 

Just to provide a little contrast, I tried being keto for six weeks and saw no discernible weight loss. Possibly six weeks isn't enough to see much difference anyway, and possibly I wasn't properly in ketosis after all (didn't notice any particular difference in sweat or pee smells. Though maybe others did.

I did find fairly quickly that I didn't really crave carby foods, however - I'd occasionally have to remember not to eat biscuits with a mug of tea, but that was due to habit rather than desire. And quite possibly unrestricted eating of pork scratchings and roasted peanuts countered any weight loss to higher fat-burning rates.
I also felt like I couldn't manage bursts of activity so well, on a bike ride, say, though I was happy enough chugging along at a steady pace.

On the other hand, a friend of mine, of a similar heigh and build, lost 15kgs with a longer-term keto diet. Maybe I just needed to give it more time

I'd say consider that carbohydrates are the best fuel for physical activity and that keto diet has a detrimental effect on hormones (testosterone and cortisol levels) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35254136/
Under ketogenesis you're going to have a hard time maintaining strength and muscle mass, forget gains.  "Furthermore, the long-term effectiveness and safety of this type of diet remains to be determined." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8469041/

It must be a brain chemistry hormonal thing, some relationship between neurotransmitters and fat etc. A friend recently became a Keto guy, he claimed it sorted out his mood / energy issues. From an external perspective he appeared to become a right irritable neurotic arse. 

I've only read the abstract, but it seems to be saying cortisol drops were short term, and returned to normal after a few weeks, and that was a low carb, not specifically a keto diet. And the reported testosterone drops were on a high protein diet, not a keto diet.

Become almost as annoying as crossfitters and vegans...

I'd recommend Dave Macleod's site/YouTube content. It's pretty comprehensive.

I've been following a ketogenic (and fasting) paradigm since mid 2000s. My scientific knowledge is out of date but effortlessly maintaining abs at 50 tells its own story. Never really hungry, pretty energetic, food measurement/food prep doesn't dominate my life - I'm unlikely to revert.

I actually follow a targeted ketogenic diet (TKD) as this allows some carbs so my diet fits in unnoticeably to family life.

A couple of thing I'd advise:

You don't need to go zero carb. Going lowER carb might be just as beneficial, especially if you ditch highly processed foods.

Beware low carb flu - keto adaption (upregulation of gluconeogenesis) takes time.

Cyclucal ketogenic diets (CKD), can lose effectiveness with repeat cycles/bounce back. This is anecdotal. 

TKDs for me, are the sweet spot as carbs are necessary for peak performance.

I did a low carb diet through lockdown based loosely on Dave McLeod's podcasts.

Not sure if was the diet or being off work and being able to focus more on what I ate but.....straight away my hunger was under better/ full control (I'm greedy and will eat n eat usually). I lost alot of fat around waste quickly. I found the diet easy to stick to.

After 6 months I started to go back to more normal diet. Maybe in my head but I found endurance exercise was good, climbing was good, any higher exercion like cycling up hills was harder work unless I just plodded steady.

Now, I've tried to do it again, but I enjoy carbs...bread, pasta etc. And the keto diet can be expensive and take effort to prepare. I now limit carbs abit. Everyone is different how they'll respond maybe. I don't think it affected my climbing at all in a good or bad way. 

I jumped straight into the diet and found that fine for me. I felt abit achy a week in maybe. Was defo keto .....I checked urine with ketostix.

I also didn't have a great experience with it though, again, I only lasted about 3 months. On the plus side, I did drop quite a lot of weight easily and was able to redpoint my hardest project ever. On the downside I felt gross, had greasy skin, low energy for running/cycling and, most importantly, found myself developing a really unhealthy obsessive fixation about what and how much I was eating. It was this last bit that really put me off the diet - it took me a while into adult life to develop a properly healthy relationship with food/my weight after growing up with a mum who was constantly dieting. Doing keto just seemed to trigger a whole slew of those guilty, bingey, negative body image feelings of obsessing about my weight and food intake. Plus I really missed toast.

Maybe I didn't stick it out for long enough or maybe the problem was switching from a 95% vegetarian diet with loads of whole foods to something really high in fat and meat and loads of random processed low carb substitutes but whatever the reason I felt a lot better when I canned it.

youtube.com/watch?v=L9dtfNZahKw&
 

Dave’s 4hr keto video. 

It was toast that did me in the end as well. It’s the best delivery mechanism for butter ever invented. You’d think on keto you have a good way to eat butter but it’s not the same just melting it on stuff/everything (or putting it in coffee you absolute weirdos).  I need the toast! 

The main advantage of reducing overall carb intake is it allows you to increase nutrient density from other sources and include more satiating fats. Anecdotally many people who have previously experienced strong hunger signalling on a higher carb diet find this is much more regulated on a lower carb diet which in turn allows for moderate reduction in calorie intake without overt struggle. 

This last aspect more than anything else is the key win of lower carb diets and is likely the main reason people easily keep the weight off whilst following it. However it's important to note that this is an inclusive effect, not a reductive effect. What I mean by this is that the reduced hunger signalling (likely) stems from the inclusion of more satiating fats in the diet. The reduced carbohydrate is a mechanism to make calorific space for the new inclusion, rather than having a significant effect in itself (again, maybe but is consistently observable in an anecdotal setting). 

With this in mind, actual ketosis is perhaps jumping the queue for people who may want to first try a simple lower carb, higher fat diet with a focus around satiating fats such as dairy, nuts whilst maintaining a carb intake of around 80-150g/day. This allows for much more dietary diversity whilst still having the desired effect on hunger deregulation and thereby allowing more capacity for calorie deficit without significant hunger signalling. 

I do find the claim that keto 'doesn't feel like a diet' to be a little bizarre because it's very restrictive which is one of the key reasons that people tend to struggle with dietary adherance. I think what people mean by this is that they don't feel significant conscious restriction is necessary which is likely true but can likely also be achieved on a more diverse diet which will be more supportive of the general athletic person. 

Hope this helps. 

Thanks to everyone one who has posted their experience and advise. There's a lot to digest here and consider, before making any changes.

I think for the time being I'll start reducing my carb intake switching it for other substitutes where it's easy, but not aim to go full keto.

Someone did mention about the environment impact and that's another concern of mine from going keto. This is one of the cons on my list of pros and cons

I've been doing it recently and while I cannot deny that it's very effective if you do it right, it's also a bit of a pain.  When I say a bit of a pain, I mean a massive amount of pain.

There's some things that are odd.  You don't need to track it really, just make sure you're eating the right meals and it broadly works.  Quantities don't seem to matter that much. 

For example, I can quite happily have eggs and bacon for breakfast.  Then have salad with cheese, chorizo and olives for lunch.  Then say steak and asparagus for tea.  As an evening treat / general snacks, I'd have a bit of dark chocolate and a load of cheese/chirozo.  Then cocoa to go to bed with.  Broadly you can have as much as you want, as long as it's the 'right' food.

But if you want to go outside that, it's horribly restrictive. 

Want to have a meal out?  Good luck. 

Family meals?  Nope, you'll end up cooking two meals.  That's what I'm doing.  Food for the wife and kid.  Then I cook a meal for me separately.

Want to have a sarnie when out on the hill?  Nope.

General things, make sure you get your fibre properly.  You do want to eat some of the low carb fruit.  Also plenty of nuts.

Make sure you stay hydrated.  Don't go nuts on caffiene. 

But I have to admit, it does work, you don't have to watch quantities at all, as long as you eat the 'right' food.