https://www.t-nation.com/diet-fat-loss/killing-keto
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The ketogenic diet (keto) has many potential benefits ranging from preventing epileptic seizures to potentially "starving" cancer cells. Unfortunately, when it comes to transforming your body, it's not the magic cure it's made out to be.
Can it help you lose fat? Sure, by satiating your hunger, helping you eat less, and creating a caloric deficit – just like any other diet. But when it comes to building muscle? It fails miserably.
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Article by Eric Bach over at TNation.
Satiating hunger, helping you eat less, and creating a caloric deficit. Just like any other diet?
He sort of refutes this here;
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When it comes to building muscle, carbs and a balanced diet are far superior because they give you adequate (and preferred) fuel for anaerobic performance. And above all else, they make it easier to consume enough calories to trigger muscle growth.
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So not just like any other diet, one with higher carbs, at least, makes it "easier to consume enough calories"--which certainly sounds like higher carbs sates hunger at a higher calorie level than keto does.
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A 2018 study, published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, tested how the ketogenic diet affected the body mass index (BMI) of 24 healthy males over the course of eight weeks.
All 24 men performed a resistance training program for the eight-week period. Nine of the men were assigned to the ketogenic diet. Ten were assigned a non-ketogenic diet, and five were told to eat like normal.
The results? The keto group saw a significant reduction in fat mass, while the other two groups didn't see a reduction in fat mass, but did see an increase in muscle gain. The researchers concluded that the keto diet might be an effective way to decrease fat mass without decreasing lean body mass. However, it's probably not useful to increase muscle mass (1).
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A few things here. Supposedly calories were controlled in this study. And it was supposed to be hypercaloric, to promote gain of lean mass. It's possible that the keto dieters just ate less than they were supposed to--but we're up against that "just like any other diet" claim again...
The increase in "muscle gain"--water and glycogen count as "muscle." When Jacob Wilson's group includes a carbohydrate refeed at the end of a study comparable to this one, the apparent advantage of carbs versus keto for lean mass goes away--actually reverses. I think that's likely a matter of glycogen supercompensation--I don't think an actual advantage for muscle growth with keto has been shown in Wilson's studies, really I suspect the whole thing's a wash.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6038311/
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A 2019 study in the Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness took 16 men and women through a randomized, counterbalanced crossover study analyzing exercise testing under ketogenic diets versus higher-carb diets.
The diets were matched for total caloric intake with carb intake being the difference in the subjects. After analyzing dietary compliance as well as urine pH and ketone levels, testers administrated the brutal Wingate anaerobic cycling test.
Here's what they found: Mean power, peak power, and recovery measurements were all significantly worse for the low-carb dieters. This lead researchers to conclude short-term ketogenic diets reduce exercise performance in activities heavily dependent on anaerobic energy systems (2).
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Short-term jumps out at me here.
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METHODS:
Sixteen men and women (BMI, 23±1 kg/m2, age 23±1 years) participated in a randomized-sequence, counterbalanced crossover study in which they underwent exercise testing after 4 days of either a low-carbohydrate, ketogenic diet (LC; <50 g/day and <10% of energy from carbohydrates) or a high-carbohydrate diet (HC; 6-10 g/kg/day carbohydrate). Dietary compliance was assessed with nutrient analysis of diet records, and with measures of urine pH and ketones. Anaerobic exercise performance was evaluated with the Wingate anaerobic cycling test and the yo-yo intermittent recovery test.
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This particular study doesn't really serve the intended purpose. I think there's liable to be some performance advantage for sprint-type activity for carbs versus keto, this isn't the study to show it. Even then, I'd wonder about individual variation, what works in an elite athlete might not work the same in a person whose metabolism is compromised in some way, but that's not a claim I can make, just I think a reasonable conjecture.
His next point is keto is low protein... his description of low protein is 15 to 20 percent. That first study used 20 percent for keto and higher carb groups. 15 to 20 percent protein might be low protein if calories are particularly low--but he's talking about muscle growth here, and he advocates higher calories for muscle growth. This is not low protein, it's just normal protein, even slightly elevated protein if you're trying to fuel muscle growth by increased calories.
Incidentally--last I checked on the bodybuilding.com forums, people commonly advocated 3500 calories cut to lose a pound of fat--and an extra 3500 calories consume to gain a pound of muscle. Which always seemed a little suspicious to me.
I've watched my 73 year old Dad put on muscle in the last year and a bit that he's been carnivore. People think they've put on muscle because they've lost fat, and it shows? Me and my Dad put on very little arm fat... and it's fairly obvious there. Obvious enough that we don't need to get out the tape measure, he was really losing lean mass in an obvious way prior to that. He puts it down largely to carnivore, I think the fact that he joined a gym and started working out for the first time in 20 years is hard to ignore.
One more kick at the can here, he goes into hormones;
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Also, those on the low-carb diet had greater levels of cortisol – your body's stress hormone (4). How much higher would it have been if the men were on a true ketogenic diet with a much lower percentage of their intake coming from carbs?
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The question here isn't how much higher would cortisol have been on a more ketogenic diet--the question is whether it would have been higher at all. What is cortisol for?
I don't really know what my stress hormones are up to. But my subjective experience of stress--a big deal for a schizoaffective bipolar with social anxiety--is reduced.