Did you lift then ? How did you feel?

J-ray,

First off if you’ve only been fasting for 2 months your liver is only just starting to get used to the concept. I noticed a decided difference after 6 months. So give yourself another 4 months to get your liver efficiently accessing stored fat and being able to convert that to glucose and ketones. I do a lot of bike riding, sometimes in a fasted state.

Conventional wisdom says weight training should be done in the afternoon. However if you are attempting to weight train while fasting then I would suggest that early morning will be best. My logic? While fasting you are basically depleting stored glycogen, both in the liver and in your muscles. As the day progresses these stores are depleted. High intensity weight lifting is an anaerobic activity and taps into your stored muscular glycogen without the need for oxygen. If you’ve got very little glycogen left your asking for trouble.

Last night was the end of my fast day. My BG level was 3.7mmol/L. Unusually low but I felt fine. This morning when I got up my BG was 4.7mmol/L. It had gone up overnight. So overnight my liver was working overtime to replenish my glycogen levels and just before I got up (about 5am) it started ramping up my blood glucose levels.

For those reasons Im suggesting that you should try doing weight training in the morning. Lower intensity endurance training where youre operating at 75-85% of your normal non fasted state, no problems your liver’s ketone production should be able to cope once you have keto adapted.

Try a morning session and see what happens.

Yes I suspect that as a result of your workout you had depleted your muscle glycogen. The replacement and top up of muscle glycogen takes hours, so that may explain the crash and burn feeling you experienced in the afternoon. Im not sure taking BCAAs will help as such but I could be wrong. I know that sometimes after a heavy bike ride Im screaming for some tofu (I like tofu as my go to protein) but on other occasions Im not even hungry.

At a lower intensity, like the running you described, if you have a well operating liver system then your liver should be able to supply enough ketones to keep you going. You wont completely deplete your stored glycogen. For the high intensity weightlifting Im not sure how you can get around that crash and burn feeling/problem? Do you HAVE TO do weight training while in a fasted state?

I don’t think bulletproof coffee will put you into keto mode as such, but will help maintain you in a keto state while supplying you with calories. A lack of carbs (and to a lesser extent protein) will put you into keto mode. I do not eat a keto diet. I do however water fast once a week for 36 hours but allow myself two cups of coffee with milk. I enter ketosis after 24 hours (I measure this with a keto meter). Now here is the weird bit. After I go to sleep I will at some point drop out of ketosis. I suspect it is at about 5am when the “dawn effect” kicks in. At this point the body ramps up glucose production to ready your body for the days activity. If I continue to fast for a second day (I don’t do this any more) I quickly flip over to ketosis again.

Oop’s I meant to direct the above post to free radical