Adventures in Keto, Part 3 - Exercise

Its been about four months since I started eating keto. (I choose not to say "keto diet" because its not a diet in the colloquial sense, its a life style, a way of eating all the time, not just until I reach a target weight or some other goal.)

I'm pretty strict about avoiding sugars and grains. About once a week I go out to dinner at a nice restaurant. I love good food, but most menus include a lot of carbs with every dish. When possible, I ask to substitute vegetables, or I just don't eat the carbs -- Well, I'll eat a few bites. My day to day carb count is usually below 20g, so I don't worry too much about going over at one meal.

I also get dessert, because I love a good dessert. That totally blows my carb count. In fact, I've learned that sweet desserts, like cake and ice cream are an emotional weakness of mine. When I'm bored, I like chocolate. So I've learned to make some keto chocolate treats, like keto ice cream and, most recently, a keto friendly, flour-less chocolate torte (still tweaking the recipe, but I'll post it when I'm totally happy with it.) I always keep something like that around the house, so I don't end up going for something with a lot of sugar in it.

I usually check my blood ketones the next day to see if I'm back in ketosis, and don't have any problems after my dinner out. But... Dinner out is usually Thursdays, my night off. This past Saturday, at work, I ate a hamburger (after still doing dinner out two days before), bun and all. Usually, I skip the bun, but this time, for some reason, I didn't. I figured I'd be fine.

Nope.

First, it tore up my stomach. I had to get out of bed twice for unpleasant trips to the bathroom. In the morning I felt pretty normal, but my ketones were 0.1 mmol/L, so I was out of ketosis. I ate normally, Sunday and went about my business until about 4pm, when I crashed out on the couch until after 7pm. I haven't been needing naps since starting keto, a three hour nap is crazy! I woke up feeling total brain fog, but I was finally back in ketosis (1.0 mmol/L).

After being in ketosis for so long, my body definitely let me know the old way isn't as great as I thought. Which brings me to exercise.

I made the foolish mistake of beginning ketosis in the middle of a six month attempt to increase my bench press, because six months is a long time and once I decide to do something, I like to get started right away. Predictably, keto killed my gains and ruined my attempt... Well, not ruined, I did improve, but it got cut 8 weeks short of where I hoped to be.

It takes time to adapt to ketosis. When it comes to exercise, the science of ketosis for power is not well studied yet. Endurance and ketosis is well understood and heavily in favor of keto lifestyle, given enough time to adapt (read "start keto in your off season").

As I understand it (and I'm not a scientist or researcher, so do your own research and correct me if you find out differently), the process of adaptation goes through several stages. First, glycogen depletion, when you body uses up its carbohydrate stores in the muscles and other tissues during the first day or two.

After your body gives up trying to convince you to eat carbs by making you feel hungry and lethargic, it begins pumping out ketones, which your brain and muscles both use as fuel. You start to feel great, your head clears, and you're through the worst of it...Unless you try to exercise as hard as you used to.

You're power, and probably your stamina, will decline in the beginning. Mine certainly did. My lifts dropped by almost 50% initially, my stamina dropped through the floor. My heart would pound like a race horse and I would huff and puff like a coal fired locomotive after the briefest exertions. It sucked and I questioned the whole thing.

It also made me realize that I'd basically allowed myself to get strong, but ignored other aspects of fitness. I hate cardio, so I don't do much of it. When I do, its HIIT, so its short, but brutal. But my attempts to motivate myself to do that on a regular basis have been feeble for years. The last time I sustained a cardio routine was training for Warrior Dash  six years ago.

Also, I can't touch my toes. I'm not fat (I literally have a six-pack thanks to keto), I'm inflexible. I have been for a very long time, and its been nagging at me. Finally, I've decided I need to get serious about improving that, too. Maybe all this keto-clarity is helping me get focused on the neglected parts of my health?

So, with lagging power, shitty cardio and inflexible hips, I decided it was time to change things up. I started taking yoga classes and put the weights aside for awhile, in exchange for body weight workouts.

The yoga is pretty cut and dried. I pick a class that works for my schedule, show up and do as I'm told to the best of my meager abilities. Its funny, all the core work and Warrior poses that make people abs and thighs burn, are easy for me. Years of weights have made those muscles plenty strong. But all the Gumby, bendy stuff? Ha! I'm pathetic at that.

The body weight stuff is different. I had no idea where to start. Besides pushups, pull ups and crunches, I really had no idea what else to do. So I found an app to design the workouts for me. I don't get paid to endorse anything (probably because no one reads this blog), but I've really found this app useful, so here it is: Freeletics Bodyweight.

The app alone just gives you individual exercises and stacked cross-fit style workouts. I decided to spring for the virtual coach, which designs a whole program week by week. I wasn't expecting much, but I'm pretty impressed after five weeks.

First, I answered some questions about myself and my goals, then it had me do some simple exercises, and rate how easy/hard they were for me. Then it gave me my first week of workouts.

Each workout includes a warm up and stretching cool down, so that alone impressed me. Then each workout includes two individual exercises, like 10 pullups and 20 crunches, or whatever, they vary. After which you're asked to rate your performance on a sliding scale. I assume it uses this to gauge progress and design the next week.

Some days include an interval session, which will be two or more exercises, followed by a rest, then repeating the exercises again, etc. for several rounds. This is usually pretty easy for me. Intervals are meant to raise your heart rate, then let it drop, then raise it again. Its more interesting that doing sprints, my usual for of HIIT, so I learned something new!

Next every workout includes a "named" cycle of exercises, which is basically cross-fit. They can be anywhere from one to ten rounds, of two or more back to back exercises. These can be very exhausting. After you rate your performance again, both in terms of how exhausted you were and how your technique was.

All the main routines are timed. It was not until week five that I repeated the same workout. This time the goal was to beat my previous time, PB (personal best). To be clear, in the first couple weeks, this app kicked my ass. It gives a time range for each routine, which I assume is the average. One of them said 17-23 minutes, but took me 29 minutes, after which I thought I was going to die. I haven't felt do defeated by a workout in years, and most people who look at me assume I'm in great shape!

When you begin a routine, you click "Start" and it counts down from five, then begins. An animation on screen shows you the exercise and how many reps to do. When you finish, you touch the screen and move on to the next one, while the time keeps going.

Repeating a routine, every time you move to the next exercise, it tells you how far behind or ahead of your previous best you are. I found that motivating, instead of just wondering and waiting until the end to find out.

I did beat my previous time by over 90 seconds. Proof of improvement.

So, four months into keto and this is where I'm at: I've switched from low rep/high weight lifting, to high rep/body weight exercises, which is a huge change for my body. It is definitely taking time to adapt, because there's a third stage of ketosis which takes more than a couple weeks.

The long term goal of ketosis is to become "fat adapted." This is when your muscles preferentially burn available fat from your blood stream and then from your tissues, instead of ketones, leaving most of the ketones for your brain, and this can take time. According to some, it can take months (this also doesn't seem to be well studied scientifically).

My thinking, (again, I'm not a scientist or researcher, so I'm just guessing) is that muscles are used to having glycogen stores to go to when they need power. Now the don't, so they see ketones as the next option. Eventually, they learn that they can use fats directly for energy. But when they get stressed, like during a workout, they go back looking for glycogen and ketones,  because those are easier. But if you continue to put them in that stressed condition enough, they adapt to using fats more and more. Thus you become "fat-adapted."

How long this takes depends on a lot of factors: your diet (micro and macro nutrients), your initial health, your stress levels, your hormonal balance (or imbalance), how much sleep you get, how you workout, etc. Its not well studied, just hang in there.

As I continue on this journey, I continue to notice differences. After loosing weight for the first couple months, I'm now stable. All the weight I lost was water and fat. I have maintained roughly 9% body fat for two months without counting calories or macros. I just avoid sugars and grains, and eat lots of fats (bacon, egg yolks, butter, etc.) until I'm not hungry any more.

I still drink. Liquor is my go to, wine with my dinner out. Alcohol is not a carb, its a fourth macro-nutrient (7 Kcal/g), so its doesn't seem to affect my ketosis. I average one to two servings per day (which means 3 days a week I don't drink, and I drink more than two on the other four days. Bar life). Beers have too many carbs, I don't drink them (never really a fan of them anyway) Some people seem to react to wine on ketosis, I don't, but I don't over do it since they have residual sugars, I prefer dry, higher alcohol wines, which have fewer sugars.

To sum up: I've lost weight, but stabilized at a healthy point. I've lost a little in my over all measurements (I do care about how I look), but not so much as to make me look bad (still a decent shoulder to waist ratio). In fact, I'm pretty ripped, even without lifting weights for two months. I'm gaining stamina again, and feel like I'm improving my overall fitness, even if its has cost me some strength (I expect to get back to weight training eventually, but I feel this change is good for a lot of reasons.)

I love lifting, and I love getting stronger. I started working out 20 years ago with the purpose of putting on muscle. There are very few studies of muscle building and ketosis, and those have been poorly designed. But there are a growing number of strength/power athletes trying ketosis and having good results after adaptation, which can take months. Its hard to find volunteers for a study like that.

So, for now, how to build muscles and get stronger on keto is not well understood, and I'll be following the suggestions of those who seem to be successful and waiting for more science. I believe its possible, I just need to get through final adaptions.

If you think about it, it makes sense. ketosis reduces inflammation and catabalism, improves recovery and energy levels, while ending the competition between brain and muscles for the same fuel source. Some athletes are reporting that they can build muscle in ketosis with much lower levels of protein... In fact, at least one insists you must lower your protein to do so!

There's a lot of unknowns here. But the known benefits of living keto are too good to pass up.

Ten Thousand Miles

The day I bought the bike (bottom), and 10,000 miles later (Top).

Yesterday, I passed a milestone, 10,000 miles on my motorcycle. Just under two years ago, I decided to learn to ride, and almost as soon as I started, I nearly quit.

I got thrown off the bike in day one of classes and scared the hell out of myself, and my instructors. That night I made the decision to finish the class, get my license and become a competent rider. Only then would I allow myself to quit riding IF I decided it wasn't for me. I would not let fear be the deciding factor.

Twenty one months ago I bought my bike and began riding daily. First in parking lots, then the mile and half to work, then longer. The first time on a highway above 35 mph, the wind, the speeding cars, the huge trucks, was terrifying. Now its routine.

I ride alone, I didn't have buddies or a club to ride with, so it was a few months before I felt confident enough to venture OTP. By the end of the summer I took my day trip, 200 miles. There's a special kind of courage to wonder out into the unknown alone. You have to have confidence in yourself that you can handle whatever comes your way.

I still ride every day. Every step out my door is preceded by the question: Can I ride the bike? Rain, sub freezing temps and the need to carry anything that won't fit in my backpack are usually the only things that answer that question with a "no."

Now I've done ten thousand miles! (On a bike that only saw 2,000 per year before I got it.) Riding through the steep hills and curves of the North Georgia mountains yesterday, still gave me moments of anxiety and challenge. Finding the right gear, leaning a little more, remembering to brake before the curve, NOT in it, managing front and rear brakes -- Riding take thought and purpose and skill.

But unlike two years ago, I didn't have the terror in the pit of my stomach. I knew that if I went down, I would survive. Ego, and probably body, bruised, but I could handle it, because I'd handled everything the road had thrown at me for 10,000 miles.

I give myself permission to quit riding now.

But I choose to continue anyway. Its who I am now, its a way of life for me now.

I'm also reminded now, that I'm entering my third year of riding -- The most dangerous years. Riders in their third year are the most likely to have an accident, more than cautious newbies, and far, far more than seasoned vets who continue on beyond year three.

I told myself, when I began, that I would remain cautious through this year, that I would not let hubris bring me to tragedy.

I see other riders in shorts and t-shirts, in minimal helmets, no gloves, etc. I feel the heat in the summer and think it would be great to go without a jacket, that my boots are thick and hot -- That I don't look "cool." But I also know the cost of a small mistake without protection can be huge, and that even if I do it all right, someone else might hit me, or a mechanical failure could bring me down hard.

I ride to feel alive, I do not want to die doing it... Or get maimed or crippled. I realize I always run that risk, but there's no need to multiply.

So I enter my third year of riding with a renewed sense of purpose to my riding. To get better. Be more aware, become more skillful, to push my limits more.

And I ride on.

Handlebars: Take 2!

Phaedrus got some more upgrades yesterday.

When I first bought my motorcycle, a 2004 Honda Shadow VLX 600, I knew I'd be making changes. One of the first things I did was to take pics and work up what the natural angles and lines of the bike were.

Follow the pink line, that's the natural visual spine of the bike. Notice how the original bars and mirrors stick way above? Ugly!

The line from the seat, over the gas tank to the top of the speedometer (the highest natural point on the bike) looked pretty good, but the original handlebars, and especially the mirrors just stuck way up and shattered the natural lines. They had to go.

After a minor involuntary dismount, the handlebars got bend and it was a quick swap to low-profile drag bars. Then came the electronics upgrade with new control buttons, internal wiring, a Motogadget M-unit and a new custom (by me) wiring harness. All this looked a lot better.

But those mirrors. Ugly!

Not to mention cheap. At the time I wasn't ready to shell out for high quality mirrors, and didn't want to waste money on mid-range that I knew I'd be replacing. So I bought a pair of cheap ($15) mirrors. After about 3000 miles the plastic on one cracked and it wouldn't stay straight. I bought another set. Then the glass fell out of another at 60 mph.  Four thousand miles later, another cracked in the same place.

Time to get on with the upgrades.

The drag bars were cheap steel. This time I upgraded to high quality, thick walled aluminum street bars, with about a 2" rise.

To keep the natural lines of the bike, I knew the mirrors would have to under mount, so I got a pair of Oberon bar-end clamp ons.

I never liked the stock turn signals, which are big cruiser style. I always have intended to strip the bike down to a bobber style, with minimal accessories, so I really wanted to minimize the signals. Motogadget M-blaze LED bar end signals are ideal. The function as front and rear signals, plus as marker lights, and look like part of the handlebars, so all the other signals can go!

To finish it off, I needed new grips to accommodated the bar-end signals, so I got a pair of Motogadget rubber grips. They make metal ones, but I prefer the comfort of rubber, plus the insulation between my hand and the bar in winter helps a little with cold hands, and they're 1/5th the price.

Since I was doing wiring, I disconnected the power by pulling the main fuse. Its easier to get to than the battery cables.

This whole exercise also served as a test of the wiring harness I'd built and installed last year. Pulling the old bars was simple: I removed the body panels in front of the tank to expose the wire connections. Disconnected and labeled all the connectors. When I rewired the bike previously, I used nylon OEM style connectors, which made this supper easy. Then dismount the levers, and unbolt the bar from the risers. It took maybe ten minutes.

I removed the original turn signals, front and back. They'll go on Ebay to recoup some of my expenses. Bye-bye!

Then I mounted and test fitted the new bars, making sure to carefully mark everything to make sure it all went back exactly where I wanted it later. Measure twice, cut once.

Taping and marking where the bars meet the risers makes sure that every time I take the bars off, I can put them back exactly how I like them.

One mistake I made with the drag bars was positioning the buttons, they weren't exactly were my thumb naturally went. Since they depend on holes in the bars, I wanted to make sure I got them perfect this time.

With the bars mounted and positioned exactly how I wanted it, and taped and marked to ensure I could get it back there, I installed the grips and throttle assembly, making sure to allow enough space for the mirror clamps. I was careful to allow about a small gap between the throttle grip and the mirror clamp, to ensure the throttle didn't stick.

With everything in place, I put a piece of tape roughly where I thought the buttons should go and gripped the handlebars in riding position. Then with my eyes closed, I extended my thumb to touch the tape. I marked the tape at the middle of my thumb top to bottom. That would be the vertical center of the button hole, the natural position of my thumb.

Grips and mirror clamps installed, and the wiring holes marked for ideal position based on my natural thumb position.

Then I marked the left/right center by measuring to allow for the full width of the button housing and to the natural center of the pad of my thumb where I press buttons. All this ultimately put all the buttons in comfortable position.

Drilling the aluminum bars was much easier than the steel ones. I started with a 1/8" pilot hole, then stepped up with progressively larger drill bits to 5/16". I drilled both holes while the bars were mounted.

Wiring whole drilled.

I also marked the center top of the handle bars as mounted, and made a mark on the bottom end of each side to show the lowest point when mounted. Then I removed the bars.

The exit whole for the wiring needs to be in the center of the bottom of the bars. I used the marks I made while they were mounted and located the bottom center. I drilled three pilot holes, and progressed up again until 5/16" and all the wholes formed one slot. Wiggling the drill bit back and forth a bit chewed away excess metal to help make a smoother slot.

Finally, I cleaned up all the drill holes with a roto-tool to remove any burs, and smooth the sharp edges that would chew up the wires. The last thing I want to do is have wires shorting out from rubbing on the metal edges. 

Thne it was just a matter of routing my existing wiring from the other bars into the new bars. I used a left over piece of wire and tape to fish the lines through and that was done.

Then came the M-Blaze bar end signals. 

Motogadget's instructions are pretty clear. Before installing them, I used heat shrink to wrap the wires where they exited the bars as an extra layer of protection against abrasion, then installed the M-Blazes.

M-Blazes are sold individually as left or right side, and the Motogadget logo needs to face up when they're installed. If you look closely, you can see that they have two LEDs facing front, and one facing the back when installed correctly. 

Now back to the bike for another test fit. I wrapped the M-blazes in masking tape to ensure I didn't scratch them while working. 

Using the tape markings, I mounted the bars again and checked the routing of all the wiring. 

This time, I was able to find some black vinyl tubing, which gives a way more professional look to the wiring than wrapping them in electrical tape. Also, since the wires can slide easily in the tubing, they're more flexible and should have less stress on them. 

I decided to route the M-blaze wires in the tubing with one set of control wires, and the other side separately. Cut them to length, and install the nylon connectors I'd used before and they were done!

My custom wiring harness made the whole thing easy! I took a lot of time and effort to think ahead when I built it, and now I feel vindicated. I could have run wiring straight from the M-Unit, all the way to the buttons, in a continuous single piece, but I assumed I'd need or want to remove the bars, or replace broken parts eventually, so it made sense to add connectors. Glad I did. 

I rehung the clutch and brake levers, reconnected the throttle cable and reconnected the M-unit. The moment of truth: turn the key and test each button. Everything worked right off the bat.

It works!

Then came time to mount the mirrors. The go on easy enough and I thought I had them where I wanted them. It was raining out, plus I'd just installed new grips, so I decided to wait until morning to ride and see. Since I used WD-40 to help slide the grips on, I knew I need to give them at least over night to set up.

Left side - Now to figure out how to get rid of the mirror mount on the clutch lever?

Right side.

Clean look, and the under-mount mirrors make riding feel more open, nothing obstructing my view.

Nice and clean, no bulky turn signals.

Profile. The natural line from the bottom of the seat all the way up to the bars is clean. (Need a new seat, though!)

A little reprogramming of the M-unit to make the M-blazes function as marker lights, too (10% brightness) and its done. 

The whole process took me about 4 hours. The simple wiring harness and nylon OEM style connectors made a huge difference in how easy everything was. 

I'm about out of things to work on before getting serious about the body work. With the electrical and controls finished, and the lighting upgraded, plus velocity stack and pipes wrapped the next move is really removing the rear fender and replacing it with the seat to make it a bobber. That will mean cutting down the front fender to match and getting a paint job. Guess I need to start saving some cash!