Can You Build Muscle on a Keto Diet? A Scientific Analysis | Alan Aragon | The Proof Clips EP #296

0:00 can someone build muscle as well if they're you know adopting a ketogenic diet versus a high carbohydrate diet where protein in both of those diets are matched for building muscle for building muscle no for losing fat yes so that's real simple answers there so ketogenic diets compromise lifting capacity because they compromise glycogen storage um and this isn't just speculation you know there is a consistency of studies that match protein match calories and run the experiment in resistance

0:46 traines um across uh different states of energy balance and the ketogenic diet either gets outperformed by the high carbohydrate for increases in lean muscle or or lean mass or it gets outperformed by the high carbohydrate diet in terms of retention of lean mass in hypocaloric conditions uh there are some exceptions to this rule but when you look at the body of studies as a whole and Vargas Molina has has done the work in this area um he he and his colleagues have a a recent systematic review uh I think it's a systematic review and meta analysis on this topic and um all of the studies in there you look

1:33 at the individual studies I want to say 75% of the existing studies that match protein and calories between ketogenic and non- ketogenic show superiority of the non- ketogenic diets for both gains in lean mass and retention of lean mass and so it's relatively inarguable but it makes sense from both a phys ological standpoint as well as a morphological standpoint when you think of higher resting glycogen levels in higher carbohydrate diets uh it makes sense from just looking at what goes on in the field with for example physique athletes bodybuilders and those sort of things if ketogenic diets were the way to get

2:20 leaner than everybody but you still retain your muscle then the people doing that would be the elite level bodybuilders both in the the natural realm and the uh enhanced realm that's not the case that's not the case um there's been a bunch of great work done by my colleague Andrew Chappelle and he looked at natural bodybuilders at the elite levels a national level natural bodybuilders and their carbohydrate intake during prep during prep is about four to five gram of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight so that that's roughly 2 gram of carbohydrate per pound of body weight on average during contest

3:06 prep um and natural bodybuilders they have to use every possible weapon to their disposal to retain muscle during contest prep and if they just went linear keto it wouldn't happen so during contest prep they have this High carbohydrate diet but our potent during that phase I imagine they're dropping total body weight they're dropping total body weight it's typically a low fat scenario that's another data point then that would be a kind of Mark against the whole carbohydrate insulin model oh yeah because in in that context of a very very high carbohydrate diet where you can imagine there is a significant kind of insulin response from a hormone perspective my understanding of the carbohydrate insulin model is that that

3:53 would be disadvantageous to losing body fat uh potentially potentially and and I I want to make the point Simon that there are there are um people who do very well on ketogenic diets and when you're trying to reach the goals that competitive bodybuilders are trying to reach most of the general public just they don't have those goals and so um therefore there is a wide range of viable carb fat proportions that can equate to very similar levels of fat loss in the non competitive population and so um it really kind of does boil down to people's personal

4:38 preferences and uh you brought up the whole insulin the carbohydrate insulin model of obesity which was made Popular by Gary TBS back in the late 2000s is when he really kind of made a splash uh with that and um a lot of that theory or a lot of those speculations hypotheses uh have not panned out in the literature it appears that insulin is much more of a bystander than a driver of changes in fat mass and as you mentioned this has been made apparent by multiple studies that equate protein in the diet groups equate total calories you run the

5:24 experiment and the diets that have a high fat low carb proportion they lose no more fat than the diets with a um high carb lowfat or if I got that if I got that mixed up or not but yeah if someone's new to this can you just do a highle overview of I guess energy balance model versus carbohydrate model how are they coming at this from kind of slightly different angles so the the kind of the bigger bigger picture the aerial view is that one Camp is sort of mad at the idea that it is about calories in versus calories out when we're looking at changes in body

6:11 mass the other Camp um the other C okay so so the camp that that sort of resents that calorie model says or makes the claim that it's about hormones specifically it's about insulin and so with insulin being labeled the in quotes fat storage hormone then which is the macronutrient that elevates insulin the most potently carbohydrate therefore since carbohydrate stimulates the greatest amount of insulin release it's the perpetrator then yes carbs are the per and so therefore carbs are the bad guy Ergo the solution is avoid

6:56 carbs so this this is the essence of the carbohydrate insulin model of obesity and over time in the literature with guys like lewig and stuff like that they're getting a little bit more refined with their position on that saying okay well it's it's more about refined carbs not necessarily carbs specifically but when when it comes down to it does come down to a uh that critical Lynch pin there of of of insulin being the the factor which is still incorrect and this once again this has been demonstrated by studies that rigorously equate calories and protein between the groups and the high carb versus low carb diets there is no significant difference

7:42 sometimes you know sometimes the uh high-fat um rather the high carb lowfat conditions have actually outperformed the low carb high fat conditions for body fat reduction and that this has been seen in in Hall's work uh Kevin Kevin Hall's work and uh but it makes sense though if you can equate these conditions calorically and proteinwise you're looking at carbohydrate and fat differences and when you think about what happens in and and we can we can run the the carbohydrate insulin hypothesis we can run this experiment in hypercaloric conditions we can run it in UK caloric conditions we can run it in hypocaloric

8:29 conditions it's been done in hypercaloric conditions where they can where they compare an overfeeding of a carbohydrate dominant diet versus a fat dominant diet and naturally with overfeeding studies where you're hitting people with a thousand calories above and beyond maintenance you can't ethically run that study for very long right but just to be clear these two arms of the study they're equating for total energy that corre but the energ is coming from different macronutrients so proteins the same in both contexts but one arm they're getting more energy from fat and the other arm more energy from carbohydrates that's right so so you you picture two diets that are totally equal in composition and then one diet you

9:16 stack a th000 calories on top of it in the form of carbohydrate and the other diet you stack a th000 calories on top in the form of fat so is one of these micronutrients more inherently fattening yes and it's the fat not the carbohydrate over feedings however in aggregate there's really not much meaningful difference interestingly um in the uh in the fat storage between the overfat uh the fat overfeeding and the carbohydrate overfeeding but it leans towards the fat overfeeds resulting in Greater stored fat and my point about even bringing that up is that if the carbohydrate insulin model of obesity were even remotely true we would just see the

10:01 carbohydrate groups gaining more fat because of insulin so that doesn't even happen hey friends the scientific evidence on lifestyle habits that lead to longevity is clear now it's time to put this knowledge into action I'm excited to announce the living proof longevity challenge a 12we program to build evidence-based lifestyle habits to optimize longevity my team and I have transformed over hundreds of hours of conversations with experts on Aging nutrition and exercise into a life-changing 12we program that will challenge you to develop habits that lead to a longer better life this is a unique opportunity to gather Health Data about yourself that has the potential to change your life for the better you'll

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11:32 have why is it that Gary tals and others my understanding when I sort of read their work and listened to them speak about this is that they're of the view that Upstream to this positive energy balance is these you know highly refined carbohydrates as you say which is a bit of an update on the on the model more recently that trigger this insulin response and this changes the kind of hormonal milar or status of the of the person the environment and as a result the energy that they're consuming is preferentially kind of shuttled towards fat storage not metabolism so my understanding of what they're saying in this context is that

12:19 you know you have this High carbohydrate diet your body starts to preferentially store that energy it's not available to be metabolized and as a result your body still requires energy so your hunger goes up so that you consum more kind of in this like negative energy State while being in a calorie Surplus why why are they attached to that position if there's all of these trials looking at comparing fat to carbohydrate Rich diets and the outcomes that we really care about body weight that are not showing a signif significant difference that is a great question and and I would speculate that it's very hard to let go of a simple answer like

13:09 insulin I think it's a honestly I think it's an ego thing um the the special in quote special thing about ketogenic diets is when you take a group of subjects who's overweight or obese and they've been subsisting on the standard Western diet pattern you put them on a ketogenic diet and kind of the beauty about putting somebody on ketogenic diet is its Simplicity avoid carbs go so all you're doing is consuming protein and fatr foods and so what happens to you know unintentionally on the part of the Dieter they're finally consuming enough

13:56 protein now to support lean body mass and they're getting a potentially higher therm thermic effect out of the diet and they're getting more satiety as well uh their options of these highly processed highly engineered hyper palatable junk Foods that's out of the picture I mean you're cornered into avoiding those types of foods on on a ketogenic diet now as a adding a little wrinkle here if you're eating like bacon cheese bits that can be considered hyperpalatable as well in the Savory department but okay so with the ketogenic diet they're finally consuming enough protein their variety of junk Foods comes down to you know a very

14:42 narrow margin so comes down a little bit calorie density comes down and what happens by default if you look at what happens in these ad libidum ketogenic diet studies the subjects end up consuming anywhere from On The Low End 400 calories Less on the high end like 900 calories less and this is spontaneously not purposely when you go from a standard Western diet to a ketogenic diet and that's where the End quotes magic happens with keto because it's a simple prescription just avoid carbs I mean it's not complicated people get on it they lose a lot of weight a bunch of Health markers improve they lose lose body fat they feel better

15:27 obviously because of the this stuff but the big problem with um ketogenic diets is when you look at the adherence data the majority of the subjects in these studies at the six and 12 month Mark they're already consuming double and triple the originally assigned amount of carbohydrates at Baseline so if they were assumed a ketogenic diet 50 gr Max at Baseline then at 12 months they're consuming uming 150 g of carbs so apparently in the general population who's not you know these wonderful zealous carnivore Bros that are super dedicated ketogenic diets are just tough to sustain for the long term for the

16:14 majority of the general population so that's the problem with keto it works wonderfully while you're doing it but most people can't sustain it and then there's issues of course with food selection fat Source what it does to and all that stuff right so you're you're of the position that a ketogenic diet can certainly help someone lose weight and clearly there's plenty of anecdotes of that but you explain that through the creation of a calorie deficit and not insulin and not some sort of magic Chang in hormone let go of the insulin thing it's people end up consuming fewer calories I think if Gary was here or someone from that camp they they might push back on some of those early studies that we were talking about and and often I hear people bring up this idea of

17:01 adaptation to a to a a keto diet but then I always find that hard to reconcile with the longer term weight loss trials comparing low carb to high carb that don't seem to see a significant benefit even at like the 12 month kind of Mark like Diet fits for example so uh how important do you think this idea of Keto adaptation is and is it blurring potentially blurring any of our understanding of this topic yeah the keto adaptation topic is interesting because you would first have to Define what is keto adaptation what happens what physiological process would characterize keto adaptation and

17:49 so you can look at a maximal degree of circulating ketones being part of what keto adaptation is you can look at a Max maximal level of fat oxidation from you know the convergence of sources but it's typically mostly the dietary fat that you're consuming on on KET on keto and so okay maximal fat oxidation maximal blood Ketone levels and uh maximal fat oxidation would would accompany maximal lipolysis those um reduce glycogen usage during training for the sub for the uh research that measures that all of those processes occur maximally within 1 to

18:36 two weeks of a ketogenic diet so if you're going to point to up not keto adapted yet then you have to consider that these processes of Keto adaptation the ones that you can measure they happen within two weeks of a ketogenic diet now there's other interesting study by uh volak and colleagues the faster study where Elite level endurance athletes believe they were cyclists um at the six-month Mark they interestingly had the had similar glycogen levels to the high carb group despite being on a ketogenic diet

19:22 so a lot of Keto Advocates say that there's some magic that goes on with ketogenic diets that takes a really long time to happen and there's a joke amongst the research Community where if ketogenic dieting gets outperformed or you know matched by the high carb model the study was just not long enough for keto adaptation so that's kind of the running joke there but who knows with with endurance athletes who knows what happens after months and months and months of of Keto but they're still not going to perform at the world class level it's still risk to run keto for endurance I doubt that this would pass ethics but I'm thinking of a a study design that could be useful

20:08 here has anyone looked at subjects injecting insulin who in two different ARS so one arm without injecting insulin and the other injecting insulin and does that affect either hunger or energy balance oh by the way there there are exceptions to the the low carbo Zack bidder is one of them who did really well endurance wise but Louise Burke and and and her group they've done fantastic work uh well-controlled studies comparing keto with non-keto and just showing you know performance impairments consistently in the keto group so um now your question about actually injecting insulin and the effect of that what's

20:55 interesting about that question is that starting the I want to say the the late 90s insulin use um amongst bodybuilders really kind of brought the level of competition way up in terms of uh muscular size so I want to say that around the time Dorian Yates started dominating um that that's kind of it coincided when bodybuilders started injecting insulin and interestingly bodybuilders in the 90s are known for having onion thin skin I'm talking like right here here's here's your here's your abdominal skin right right near the

21:41 navl injecting insulin man um I have a friend who who did that and competed at a very high level National level um post exercise meal you know big big meal insulin injection unfortunately he he got pulled over um on by the cops because he was driving on like maybe over injected or something uh that happened once this just pretty funny driving under the influence of uh too much insulin and being too jacked and uh did not affect body fat loss obviously uh and it and it still is a common thing amongst competitive bodybuilders who have to reach Extremes in leanness and they do

22:26 that in spite of insulin injections so even in that case it's [Music] questionable