Ep. #376: Eric Helms on the Ketogenic Diet for Building Muscle

The ketogenic diet is all the rage right now.

According to many, it’s the single best diet for losing fat, staying lean, and improving health and longevity.

It’s not, of course, because there’s no single diet that’s best for accomplishing all of that in everyone all of the time, but the ketogenic diet can work well as a weight loss diet for some people some of the time.

That’s how it has mostly been promoted, as well—as an effective way to lose weight rapidly—but recently, more and more people have been talking about the ketogenic diet’s superiority for building muscle as well.

They’re calling this approach “ketogaining” and the story is that it’s a healthier, more effective way to gain muscle and not fat than the traditional high-carb diet popular amongst most bodybuilders and weightlifters.

Poke around online and you’ll find some freaky big and lean people promoting ketogaining as well as a few studies that seem to validate their claims, and so understandably, it’s starting to catch on.

How legitimate is ketogaining, though?

Can you really have great workouts and gain just as much muscle but less fat by eating less than 50 grams of carbs and over 100 grams of fat per day?

To help answer these questions, I invited Eric Helms back on the show.

In case you’re not familiar with him, Eric’s one of the premier natural bodybuilding coaches in the game and is himself a professional natural bodybuilder and strength athlete, as well as an author and credentialed scientist with several peer-reviewed publications under his belt.

In this interview, Eric breaks down the research currently available on ketogaining and explains . . .

- The basic theory of ketogaining (why it’s a thing)
- What studies have shown and what questions still remain
- How the ketogenic diet is likely to impact your training performance
- How much fat you can expect to gain following a ketogenic diet vs a high-carb diet
- Eric’s personal recommendation for carbohydrate intake for maximizing muscle gain
- And more

12:27 - Does the ketogenic diet work for someone who wants to gain muscle and strength?
15:18 - Why does the ketogenic diet make you feel satiated?
27:19 - Why do you think that the performance was maintained?
33:37 - Does you body get more efficient with the glycogen it uses once you switch to a high fat, low carb diet?
37:48 - Does upping carbs improve performance?
47:58 - Where can people find you and your work?

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