Am I allowed (are we allowed!) extra carbs when working out in a day? If I jog for thirty minutes, can I have more carbs that day? How many? I know it may depend on personal metabolism, but generally...curious. THANKS.

Hey Purr. I saw your other post and thought I would share what I could about this. Let me start off by saying that I truly do not know the official answer to your question.

HOWEVER...

I can't recall if you have been following the threads with the Athletic Protocol or not, but the official Athletic Protocol calls for a minimum of 5 packets. They recommend:
* (2) Omelette packets at bfast (14 total carbs for 2 packets) or (1) oatmeal packet (roughly the same amount of carbs)
* (1) packet at lunch. I think the most amount of carbs in a non-restricted packet is 9 g. in the chocolate drink packet. So, let's figure 9. Plus your veggies which is probably around 8-10 carbs.
* Dinner is carbs in veggies, so another 8-10
* Snack is recommended as pudding, 1-2 envelopes. The thing with pudding is they vary wildly on their carb content. Lemon & butterscotch have like 1-2, vanilla has 4-5 and chocolate has 7. So let's say you have (1) chocolate and (1) butterscotch- you are looking at approx. 8 carbs for 2 packets.
* Finally, post w/o you are to consume 2 packets of Peach Mango, Pineapple banana or cocoa drink. Unfortunately I only have the RTD chocolate to look at, and that has 4 carbs. My guess is the other packets are right in there. So you are looking at another 8 carbs.

So by my count, on the Athletic Protocol you are getting roughly 40-50 carbs a day, including all of your veggies, salad etc... depending on which packets you choose. Which I believe is at the high end of what you can have and still remain in ketosis.

This week I have been having 5 packets a day to see if I might boost my losses. I won't know until Wed. if it worked, but I will certainly post how it worked out. My doc (who also does the same kind of workout as me) kind of mentioned to me that I could have 2 restricted on w/o days if I wanted. I have not done this yet because I didn't want to get too used to having 2 restricted, since they are the yummiest food options we have. If all goes well this week, maybe I will try that next week as an experiment.

If you haven't yet, check out the thread with the Athletic Protocol sheet and print it for yourself if you have access to a printer.

Hope this helps!

I am interested to know how you make out on wednesday too, Jennydoodle!

Thanks for all the careful detail, Jenn. We will look forward to Wed. I weigh in tomorrow, hopful it's good. Will let you know. All the new help has kept me OP, and confident I can stay OP. Went to a big 50th party for a friend with all kinds of food, and I had some turkey and a big salad and brought my WF dressing packet. It felt GREAT to focus on all the people, and not the food!!!!!

The longer you are OP the easier it gets. This the first weekend since starting IP that was not as "struggle-some" so I guess that means I am making improvments I am also a lot less stressed about eating out or going out. I know I can make the right choices and I feel good about staying on OP. More so than being tempted by off plan foods. I am hoping that means I am over the hump and starting to change my mindset.

Good luck tomorrow! But seeing as how you stayed on plan, you probably don't need it

Thanks...we'll see. i feel like i have lost but because my weigh in is in the afternoon, I'm concerned that the water consumption and having eaten lunch will alter the results. Well, it will be what it will be and I won't let one scale measure throw me off track.
I'll let you all know tomorrow night!! have a great monday...
oh, yes, also hope that the weekends get easier. It is harder when you are surrounded by more time and more people eating!

Hi all. Well as promised, I wanted to update you on my week on Athletic Protocol. The bottom line is that I gained 0.4# and am back to 4 packets this week. Now for the deets:

There is definitely something weird with the gain because 1). I REALLY felt like I lost. I felt thinner and I think I looked thinner. So it was really a shocker to see the scale go up. And 2). My scale showed a 0.6 LOSS while the scale at my Dr. showed a 0.4 GAIN. The strange thing about it is that my scale and my Dr. scale are usually right on the money and this week was such a big discrepancy. I WI in the morning, so I never eat or drink anything before I go and I always wear the same outfit. But I consider my official WI from my doc's scale, so that is why I am going with the gain.

Regardless of the gain, I felt really good on the 5 packets. I was doubling up on breakfast and it really kept me full until lunch.

But, this week I am back to my standard 4 packets and hoping for a big loss this week. Unfortunately I am off to a bad start because I had a really off day of eating and I am hoping it won't throw me off too much. I was stuck in a meeting and didn't eat lunch until 3:30 and then from 3:30 to 6:30 I ate lunch and 2 snacks because I was so hungry and now I am all kinds of full and bloated. At least I didn't eat anything off plan, but still I am hoping it doesn't mess things up too much. Tomorrow is a new day and should be no problem with scheduling.

So there you have it. My week on the athletic protocol was not a success. But I am ok with it. I knew it could go either way and when my doc asked me to try I said yes. And overall, I have had some very good losses and it is more than I have lost on any other diet. I also took measurements and in the month of July, I lost 12" so seriously, I can't be down at all!

Just curious if you think you worked out harder in light of the extra packets/fuel and perhaps that led to more glycogen storaeg, thus the slight gain?

Great job on staying OP today despite the mix up. I was not so strong (yes, again) :/

Honestly, I think it may have been several things: you have been down every week at WI, and it does appear that virtually everyone OP hits a stall or a gain along the road regardless. Maybe it was just your week for that and it was a coincidence it was the Athletic Protocol week.
Or, it was just a fluke. The body fluctuates so much with retaining fluid or eliminating fat/waste. It is odd about the scales, why this week for such a difference to show up?

Maybe that extra packet was the culprit in creating a bump in the road. Thank goodness it was not a large difference, altho any gain can be discouraging, and I think the fact you felt thinner is the important thing. Were your clothes a bit looser? Don't know if you take measurements or not each week.

I was truly surprised to see a drop for myself but I also had an extra day working in my favor. It is a challenge not to get hung up on the scale numbers; when I went to WI my slacks were slipping down where they were just fine the week before. Yet I was in a slump because I was expecting the NUMBER to be bad. Stupid, ugh...

You sound positive and I expect that next week you will have that exceptionally big loss...you seem quite capable of maintaining the plan so I will be excited to see how next week turns out. Hang in there!!!!!!!

Jennydoodle - so this was actually keeping me up tonight! You really could not have gained any weight. It just isn't possible! Now, I get perhaps having a slightly slowed loss but, given your workouts (crossfit, right?) and you calorie count, somewhere around 1400 I am guessing, you would still have a caloric deficit that would yield a 2lb loss on average, plus an "extras" the IP fat burning would do for you. It must be calibration or water retention thing!

Anyway, sad that even in my almost sleep I think of these things!

Thanks ladies. I also agree that it is probably not real weight gain. Rooster actually mentioned something to in another thread that because of the extra packet that there could have been muscle gain and fat loss therefore essentially evening each other out. The main purpose of IP is to just maintain your muscle mass and lose fat, you are not supposed to really have any muscle gains, unless that is your goal.

Coliep sorry to keep you up! But I definitely appreciate both of your guys support. Today is finally a normal day and I back to my 4 packets. And yes, I do Crossfit and I am trying to find the motivation to start running again...

I walk for an hour everyday. what is considered working out?

For me, working out is breaking a sweat and not really being able to carry on a conversation with someone. But it is all subjective. I have been exercising for years so I am at a level that I am running, lifting weights etc... and to me that is working out.

Oh my, how could I forget that? Muscle...weight is 3x that of fat. That certainly could account for the scale!

I didn't think about that either until Rooster brought it up. And now the more I think about it, the more I think I probably added muscle last week. I am back on day 2 of 4 packets and I feel fine. I felt fine before. I knew going into IP that I would be working out to lose fat and maintain muscle mass, not gain it like before. I am not partaking in the "stay off the scale" challenge this week because I want to monitor what is going on and make sure the scale gets moving downward again. I kind of think that if I had been following last week and didn't see any downward movement, I would have dropped back to 4. But hindsight is 20/20.