That makes a lot of sense. I’m also a nut fiend—I go a little crazy with that. Like, by the *handful*. I recognized this and tried to buy the single serving calorie packs, but even in the packs I bought (which are pretty tasty, I might add) I wound up eating the whole package which is actually 2.5 servings or 400 calories-ish. Being about ~250 and riding for 2 hrs a day on a semi-hilly commute, one of these packages probably cancels out an entire one-way commute, calorie wise (9-13 miles of cycling, depending on route)—and it’s probably still too many carbs to stay strictly keto, even with the exercise.
I had been trying to avoid carbs altogether (worries about getting kicked out of ketosis, etc, etc) but it may make more sense to have a KIND bar or something a little bit more carby before or after rides and see if I can keep it to a minimum (replenishing muscle glycogen or just having enough fuel for intense exercise twice a day).
Honestly, if cycling performance continues to improve, and the numbers on the scale/fit of clothes continue to get better (even slowly, I’ll gladly accept slow and steady!) I don’t really care if I’m completely keto or “carb cycling” or simply maintaining with a whole food or other reasonable carb intake lifestyle. My problem—as you mentioned in the insightful comment about smoking and drinking—
is that I’m a huge carb addict, so for me it almost makes sense to “stay sober” altogether if I can. But unfortunately, I might not be able to enjoy cycling to work as much if I’m completely depleted of glycogen/glucose and dragging all the way there and back. It’s way more fun to have a brisk, enjoyable, fast paced good workout than it is to spin up hills feeling depleted of glycogen and fatigued.
The other thing I was trying to do was intermittent fasting with a 2 hr food window when I got home from work, which worked GREAT from 300 lbs down to 250, before I started commuting by bike. Once I was down to 237 lbs though, and commuting, I couldn’t sustain it anymore. I had to replenish with nuts or low carb ice cream or something, but it was hard to keep it to just one serving.... for me nuts and low carb ice cream lead to “no sugar added” ice cream which leads to “no sugar added fudge tracks” ice cream, leads to a taste of the wife/kids’ regular ice cream which leads to a forkful of apple pie and a birthday cupcake and pretty soon I’m rationalizing having two pieces of NON-keto cheesecake because I can go back on keto *tomorrow*.....
