Hi Lyle,
I’ve just read through your excellent web-information about CKD. Thanks! I think I have an interesting issue/question to you – BodyOpus and females.
I am 33 years female natural BB, 6’00”, ca. 184 lbs, ca 13-15BF%, also in excellent cardiovascular shape. I’ve been on BodyOpus for second week. Week 1: 30E% prot – 70E% fat about 9g carbs/day my glucose never dropped below 70 mg/dl ketostick showed very slightly purple maybe twice Cardio each day to speed up descent into ketosis. Fat sources: mostly flax seed and olive oil
A: First note, blood glucose never gets very low on a CKD. I know what Bodyopus says but it happens to be wrong. 65 mg/dl is about the lowest it will get even during total starvation.
Results: (from BF% measurements): lost 3 lbs of LBM, gained 3 lbs fat.
I have trouble believing this. One thing to consider is when you are taking your bodyfat measurements. Contrary to what I did during my diaries, you shouldn’t compare Friday readings to Monday readings. The shifts in water and glycogen screw everything up. Instead either just look at total skinfold measurements (i.e. just look at the numbers and forget the equations) or compare measurements made on Friday to other measurements made on Friday (and Monday to Monday). This will be more accurate.
I learned that I ate too much protein, which was converted to glucose. Week 2: 15E% prot – 85E% fat about 7-9g carbs/day glucose levels are still pretty high, about 60 mg/dl ketosticks – neg BF% measurements are showing lost LBM while maintained bodyfat .
Rather than thinking in terms of percentages for your diet, I would suggest calculating calories this way: 1. Set calorie levels: 12-13 cal/lb is a good place to start 2. Set protein: should be 0.9 grams/lb of bodyweight. More important than the percentage of protein is how much you are taking in relative to bodyweight and this much is needed to prevent msucle losses. 3. SEt carb intake: low 4. The rest of your diet is fat.
My wondering is, if you have any experience with female athletes who have problems with CKD. I really like (theoretically) CKD and I believe that it should work. And I don’t want to give up (just for your information, I am normally on 40-30-30 (p-c-f) diet, and my body responds pretty well to it). Do you possibly have any explanation what is going on?
It’s really hard to say without more details about everything you are doing. Other things I have found that seem to shut down women’s fat loss (and increase muscle loss).
1. Eating too few calories. This is critical as women’s bodies seem to go into starvation mode more easily than men’s. 11-12 cal/lb total bodyweight is about the lowest you should go but try starting a little bit higher and see what happens.
2. Too much cardio. The body interprets too much cardio in the same way it interprets too few calories, and it goes into starvation mode and hoards fat and burns muscle. I think 40′ 4-5 times per week is plenty.
Finally look at your carb-up. One of the biggest modifications we’ve made to Bodyopus is to shorten the carb-up. If you tend to put on fat easily over the weekend, cutting your carb-up back to 36 hours OR LESS can be the key to making it work. yes it makes the diet less fun but that’s life. In practice this means that you should have your last workout on Friday (and it should be a full body workout) and carb-load from immediately after to bedtime on Saturday. If you get up Sunday morning and hit some cardio first thing, you should be able to hit ketosis by that evening. See my article on this page for more details about the workout. And it none of this works, simply consider that your body doesn’t respond to the CKD ideally and Zone is a better choice. YMMV.
About the author
Lyle McDonald+ is the author of the Ketogenic Diet as well as the Rapid Fat Loss Handbook and the Guide to Flexible Dieting. He has been interested in all aspects of human performance physiology since becoming involved in competitive sports as a teenager. Pursuing a degree in Physiological Sciences from UCLA, he has devoted nearly 20 years of his life to studying human physiology and the science, art and practice of human performance, muscle gain, fat loss and body recomposition.