How the Ketogenic Diet Can Benefit Endurance Athletes

If you’re an athlete, one of the biggest factors of your performance is nutrition. If you hear about a diet that’s new, you might be skeptical at first but, at the same, you can’t help to see whether this could benefit your athletic performance and health. On the same note, if you hear that a diet can enhance your performance and help you lose fat at the same time, you might scoff at it and say that it’s impossible. But, with the ketogenic diet, this could very well be the case.

What is the Ketogenic Diet?

The ketogenic diet is a diet that restricts your carbohydrate intake to something along the lines of little to none at all and replacing it with high intake of healthy quality fats. This diet primarily aims to put your body in a natural state of fat metabolism called ketosis.

With a restricted carbohydrate intake, your body’s glucose (or blood sugar) and glycogen stores are not replenished. These would eventually run out due to the energy demands of your body. At this point, your body would turn to using the fat from what you ate and what your body has stored. These are then processed in your liver to be converted into ketones. This state of your body turning to fat, specifically ketones, for energy is called ketosis.

Unfortunately, because of today’s average diet being rich in starch and sugar, our bodies have become dependent on carbohydrates as fuel for our metabolism. This dependence makes it hard for our bodies to switch into ketosis and would just look for more carbs as a source for energy. With a ketogenic diet, you are just reminding your body of its capability to metabolize the fat naturally found in your diet and your body.

The Benefits

So you might be wondering why you should bother with the ketogenic diet. Here are a few things it can do for you:

Fat Loss

As an endurance athlete, it has been found that your performance could be affected by just having a higher than suggested body fat percentage. And, with a ketogenic diet, you are losing body fat in a more manageable manner. The ketone bodies produced from ketosis promote the production of hormones that make you feel sated after a meal and suppress the ones that increase your appetite and hunger. You can also hack this by  supplementing with a exogenous ketone supplement, which would basically give you these benefits on demand.

Better Performance

Endurance athletes who followed a ketogenic diet have been found to have significantly better oxygen uptake. Oxygen uptake (or VO2) is the measure of how well the body can distribute and use oxygen. A better distribution and utilization of oxygen would mean more energy for your muscles, which translates to better performance during exercise.

Less Muscle Strain

The levels of creatine kinase and lactate hydrogenase in your blood are considered an indirect indication of how much muscle damage you have. Athletes who followed a ketogenic diet have been found to have significantly lower levels than when they followed a mixed diet. For any athlete, less damage on the muscles means lower chances of performance deterioration and injury during exercise and better post-exercise recovery.

Improved Insulin Sensitivity

A ketogenic diet would go a long way in keeping your blood sugar in control, especially when one suffers from Type-2 Diabetes. Since this type of Diabetes is usually due to insulin resistance, one can say that the first step to fighting back against this disease is getting one’s insulin sensitivity back. And, one of the best ways to do this is through ketogenic diet, which has been found to increase insulin sensitivity by up to 75%.

Insulin sensitivity may seem like something that only diabetics should be concerned about. However, researchers have found that enhanced insulin sensitivity increases muscle blood flow and glucose uptake. The better muscle flow you may experience could greatly help you in terms of performance and, also, recovery as an endurance athlete.

Inhibit Neuron Degradation

The ketones that your body uses as energy during ketosis have been found to be a more efficient energy source for the brain. This efficiency is due to ketones not needing oxidation for it to be used. Without oxidation to burn fuel, there are fewer free radicals produced. Aside from this, ketones give more energy to nerves which has been hypothesized to lead to it’s observed antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effect on the brain.

How To Go Keto

A ketogenic diet is more than controlling the macronutrient portions of your meal. Here are a few crucial tips if you want to make your ketogenic diet work effectively:

Get rid of any simple carbohydrates from your diet

Simple carbs are carbohydrates that your body could easily convert into glucose. This would make your blood sugar shoot up, which is the exact opposite that you want to happen. Simple carbohydrates include sugars and any form refined carbohydrates like bread, pasta, and sweets.

You would want to stick to the carbohydrates found in protein, vegetables, full-fat dairy, fats, oils, nuts and seeds. You can use low carb substitutes such as a low carb coffee creamer powder, zero carb protein powder and coconut flour. Just keep in mind your carbohydrates should not exceed more than 5% of your caloric daily intake.

Incorporate high quality macros

The key to a successful ketogenic diet is in the quality of your macronutrients. You would like to avoid too many polyunsaturated fats and trans-unsaturated fat (trans fat). These two would be found in processed foods, peanuts, vegetable oils, margarine, and deep fried foods. These would have negative consequences for your body in the long term. Instead, get the fat you need from fish, meat, vegetables, coconut oil, nuts, seeds, and full-fat dairy.

In terms of the protein you take, stick to around 100g per day. So long as you moderate your consumption, you won’t have any problems with wrecking your efforts towards ketosis.

Supplement your diet wisely

A ketogenic diet might not be the ideal approach during a certain time of the year or of your training season. At these times, you can use alternatives that can give you the same effects of a keto diet by taking MCT/coconut oil as a pre-workout supplement, exogenous ketones, and drinking bulletproof coffe as a breakfast substitute.

The ketogenic diet is not only a sustainable strategy for fat loss. This has added benefits to your performance without resorting to any performance enhancing drug, medicine, or supplement. You are simply taking advantage of your body’s natural design to get the most out of it.