Prove to who? To you? Life is far to short to argue pendantics against the bell curve on teh intarwebz.

As for myself, I absolutely can see the qualitative difference in how I ride now vs how I rode then. 50m [MENTION=50141]tempo[/MENTION] midtown-piermont-midtown used to be a two bottles of gatorade affair. Now I can do the same tempo ride on water only. I have proven it to myself, and in my world, that's the only judge with half a clue, because in my world I don't pester myself with snarky crap like wondering if I really protein adapted so I can burn muscles off.

Best article I've read on the subject. Thanks, Greg.

In case anyone is really wondering How to test Ketosis.

So, 5 weeks in.

I did a 50 mile / 1000m ride on the weekend.Started the day with a 700kcal kale smoothie which tasted every bit as bad as it sounds. During the ride I had around 30g carbs ( 10g an hour) from Brown Rice Syrup. I also put in 15 g of MCT oil. Spent the majority of ride in zones 1-2 (70% of ride). Zone 3 15% Zone 4 8% Zone 5 4% and the rest 1% and 2%. In hindsight i probably should have taken on more cabrs - i felt fine during the ride but 4-5 hours after I felt pretty damn ropey, like I was coming down with a cold. I'm guessing this was down to my body being in a glycogen depleted state.

On the one hand, there are signs that I'm slowly becoming fat adapted. The ride was fairly tame and I would normally be taking on 40-60g carbs for a ride of this nature. On the other, my body is clearly still getting used to diet highlighted by the feeling crappy post ride.

I have liked the way a keto diet sounds, but after reading through the riding style that many of those on here have, I don't think it would work for me. I don't usually have long periods of time to pound out long miles at a lower intensity, and when I am not riding, I am generally doing interval based running or rowing. When I do ride, I like to go as hard as I can (pathetic wattage numbers and times, I am sure, but it is difficult for me). Doesn't seem like I would respond well to a low carb diet, based on anecdotal evidence shown here.

Several of the Cruzbike folks have had success both racing & training while in ketosis (primarily endurance & ultra endurance events). They share info in this thread.

BTW, how does cycling aggravate rosacea, and what treatments are effective?

Thanks for that contribution, even if it is from a couple months ago. Hey, I didn't necro this thing! I've been doing a lot of thinking about these things lately. I am in fact a fat body, and am working consciously toward my body being better adapted at burning fat for energy during my rides. I'm not on a keto diet per se, but generally am eating fairly low carbs through my day, on purpose. I haven't peed on a stick or anything to see if I'm actually in keto or not, but carbs definitely play a much smaller role in my diet these days than at other times. Lately I've been purposefully doing a combination of maintaining Maffetone's MAF heart rate, which for me is around 130bpm, to build my aerobic efficiency, and doing some "empty tank" rides in the morning. That is, I'll do a morning ride on water and black coffee only, so I'm in a fasted state since eating a low-carb meal the night before. Again, I haven't checked if I was actually in ketosis or not, but it stands to reason my blood sugar level would be fairly low at this point. So far the rides have been going well. I've done some rides on my 32.5 mile route this way and have felt fine during them. Doing the MAF heart rate to train up my aerobic efficiency is also showing some results. At lunch today I got my 3rd best all time performance on a certain 12.5 mile route while strictly keeping to that 130bpm heart rate zone, and that includes all the rides I did on that route before where I was purposefully pushing much harder, at much higher heart rates. So I believe the aerobic efficiency really is going up.

I think that even on very fast rides where some percentage of one's energy is coming anaerobically, a large percentage is still coming from that aerobic base. So I believe that training to improve that, including training for better fat adaptation, will help even on faster rides over long distances where after some certain distance one starts to augment with sugar-based energy sources.

I haven't yet gotten to the point where I'd do a fast-paced group ride on body fat alone, so I'll take some sugar-based energy on those rides. But being able to do this rides without external sugar input is one of my goals, and I think it's achievable.

Wind and sun aggravate it. It's a skin disorder, wouldn't like to call it a disease. There is treatment, but no cure AFAIK. A thin application of metronidazole gel is a common treatment. A dermatologist can examine, diagnose, and prescribe if necessary.

Thx.

I think what you're feeling after a ride like that is liver glycogen exhaustion, rather than muscle. Two things going on here: not replacing liver glycogen lost during sleep and the ride, etc. Mostly goes toward fueling your brain and other organs, so you feel really bad when it's gone. The other thing is that you're also not truly ketogenic because you still use carbs. Apparently you have to really do the ultra low carb thing for force your brain to switch over from using glucose to using ketones to operate. Our bodies do that naturally during starvation so we can keep going, hence the adaptation and thus we can imitate that state by eating only fats and protein. I don't remember the max carb level to truly be in ketosis, but it's like 10g/day total IIRC. Someone here will know.

I've been at the Keto diet for about a month and am maintaining a pretty deep ketotonic state with 20-30 grams of carbs a day. It's nearly impossible to avoid all together. Even your vitamins have carbs. I'm still working on fat adaptation for riding. I can go quite long in zone 2. Zone 3 I notice something is off. Zone 4 & 5, forget about it. I can't see straight after some hill climbs in zone 4. I'll slowly keep working on an endurance base and see how it goes. Down 11 pounds in under 4 weeks!