Originally Posted by
awesomeame
I was eating mainly Keto prior to the cycling season, (less than 20g carb) but after starting to ride had to start including carbs, at about 20% of daily cals. I found flat riding at low intensities no problem, but I'd be a complete wreck on any sort of climb. Even small climbs were slow going and exhausting.
From my experience, if you can keep your heartrate below I'd say 70-75% at all times, keto is easily manageable. Above this, your performance will be crap, and you'll exhaust quickly which you'll feel for the rest of the day..recovery seems slow.
I read base building for cyclists last week, and in the book he recommends going to 45% daily calories from carbs, so I've been trying this. Although great for performance (87km ride 2 days into diet, avg 26.8km/hr but kept it low-ish intensity) it doesn't appear to have done much for weight/body composition over the last week, and in fact I'm up 3lbs. I'm also noticing I'm sweating and am tired a lot...I feel very full/bloated, and frankly, dumb...like my brain isn't turning on. But at the same time muscle fatigue seems to be much less, I can definitely ride longer than at 20% carbs.
I'm going to dial back the carbs to maybe 25-35% and see how that goes.
Matt
Well, I dialed back the carbs, kindof, and rode 114kms on Sunday with no issues. Ride time was 4hrs, 23mins. I did, however, carb load Saturday night by eating a pizza and having beers/liquor, lol.
I notice my diet is continually getting poorer, like lower quality. Craving carbs, & eating junk. Doesn't help we have easy access to junk food here at work for free! Like, I'll plan to eat 30% carbs, but then will binge on junk so it'll up the carb %%, but then also go overboard on calories.
Eating keto (less than 20g carb/day) easily let me control food intake, and calories didn't matter so much. Didn't have cravings, always felt alert. Eating carbs seems to eff me up, I can't control intake at all, constantly craving crap, and I am becoming increasingly unhappy mentally.
I'm going to go back to keto for now. During my bodybuilding days (which is a LONG time ago, lol) I ate a targeted ketogenic diet which gave me good results, but I wasn't doing much besides lifting at that time. It was basically drink sugar water with a preworkout powder 30mins prior to working out, and those would be the only carbs consumed...I had a formula for amount of carbs required per minute of work done...it's around here somewhere.
Matt