I tried searching the forums and couldn't really find much..

I workout 7 days a week, cardio && weight training. According to my heart rate monitor I'm burning roughly 550-650 calories per work out.

I tried emailing my dr but she's out of state having surgery. The lady covering for her is just selling the food and Im not too sure if she knows much about the actual diet. I told her I've been feeling weak and extremely fatigued and she said to add two extra restricted items daily since I'm burning so many calories?

I'm scared of the idea of adding the restricteds.. Unless I'm deathly weak (like yesterday, I did eat two restricteds through out the day and it did definitely help). Can I just add extra protein && veggies?

Yeah, sure, why not just add more protein & veg if it has the calories required. Or maybe you can add one restricted item .

If you do intense cardio on a ketogenic low calorie diet like IP, you should be scared about your heart (your biggest muscle) to be broken down for gluconeogenesis. Feeling weak and fatigued is your body telling you that you are doing something very unhealthy. But it is your body.

There is a thread about Exercise in the sticky post at the top of this forum. There is a lot of good information and explanations in there.

I agree with this statement absolutely! If you insist on exercising at this rate, then Ideal Protein is probably NOT the diet you should be using. I am very concerned about the health implications...you could be doing irreparable damage to your body by exercising at this level while on this diet.

Intense exercise + PSMF diet = bad idea.

Even if you weren't dieting one cannot exercise intensely seven days a week for long. Our bodies need rest. Add a PSMF like the IP diet? Your body does not have the energy it needs to recover. You're headed for disaster of epic proportions.**

If you want to work out hard you need to lose weight very slowly. (Besides taking days off) A small deficit is what you need. On IP you're consuming 700-900 calories and if you're burning 500 on your workout that means you're netting 200-400 calories a day.

Adding packets is stupid. You need a different dietary plan if you want to keep working out like this.

**Epic means the following possible things could occur:

A) Serious injury - surgury required and you'll never be the same again.
B) Overtraining - even after a month of not dieting and no exercise you're still fatigued and not feeling normal.
C) Hormonal disaster - amenorrhea is the least of your problems. How about all your hair falls out over the course of a week?

I know you won't listen to me. People who are pushing themselves 7 days a week on a program that tells you not to exercise never listen to practical advice.

Goodluck - you're going to need it.

Wow are stats are similar! I too workout intensly but Im obviously having a hard time with energy on phase 1. My Ideal Protein program is run by a totally untrained medical person, with no provider overseeing anything and she tells me that I can exercise as much as I want as long as I eat 5 packets a day. My heart rate monitor also shows at least a 400-500 cal loss when I workout. Not sure what the answer is, but from years of being a competetive athlete Im pretty sure its not the best idea to keep on the diet for too long and working out hard, however I then am confused about why my diet coach keeps telling me that this program was designed for athletes.

Heed John's advice.

Lay off the cardio & keep the strength training until at least Phase 3--but not 7 days per week.
Pick the higher calorie nonrestricted/restricted in general (mango premade drink, strawberry wafers, chocolate drink mix, etc) and have something before and something after the workout.
You can substitute a couple of hardboiled eggs, 120-150 calories of protein (chicken, turkey, beef, etc) for any packet.

If you keep it up (and the bad things mentioned don't happen to you) you'll hit goal, but you will lose actual muscle and I bet that is not what you are after.

Not sure what your current weekly losses are. My experience with adding at least one packet at about your current weight was that I still saw a fairly steady loss of about 1.5lbs/wk until I hit goal. (Every body is different, I am over 50, I am taller--so that is just my experience).

I ended up wondering if I had taken my goal down too low because of how I looked at the end. Under different circumstances, I would have waited until I was at least thru Phase 1 before starting up what I did.

As to the question regarding the diet starting out as being for athletes--it did start out that way BUT if you read that protocol it has extra packets and extra food and specifies the amount of training.

i would say you're fine to be on a ketogenic diet while working out as hard as you want...just NOT IP.

IP phase 1 is to restrictive in calories to work out as heavy as you are (light walking, yoga, light resistance training is about what you wanna be doing to be safe on IP).....

If you truly wanna follow IP...then i would ask your coach about the athlete protocol...which has been listed on these forums a few times (oh snap see above post for a link to it )....im not 100% how the program is modified for someone who wants to or needs to work out as much as you are....but im certain it would be a better fit than for someone who isn't exercising hard.

best of luck

My guess is ignorance.

The marketing is that the IP protocol was designed for French athletes by Dr Tran. There is probably some truth to this however the IP diet is a PSMF diet. Dr Tran did not invent the PSMF model.

Bottom line is even if he did invent it for athletes we know today that you can either lose fat fast with low to moderate exercise or you can lose weight slowly with more intense exercise but a steep deficit combined with intense workouts will screw you up unless you have a lot of fat to lose.

The biggest loser contestants are a great example of how when you have 100+ lbs of fat to lose that you can really push the body into steep deficits. This is because most of the body can be run on fat. Still, even those people take days off from exercise to recover.

IP protocol was designed for athletes, but it was for off season, injured ones...not ppl who are exercising everyday.

if you read Dr.Tran's books/website you will see he started the "protocol" from working with athletes...

http://www.trantiendiet.com/site/IMG...re_Dr_Tran.pdf

It was designed for athletes in their OFF season, not when they are working out intensely... AND there IS an athletes protocol version of IP that I am pretty sure Lisa provided the link to just a day or so ago... Maybe in this thread??

Burning off 500 calories when taking in less than 1000 is extremely counterproductive and I don't think a serious athlete would want to do that to their body. Please consider this and either change your diet or change your workout. We don't want to see you harmed!

Here is the link again
http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/3950642-post19.html

MY COACH TOLD ME TO HAVE A PROTEIN DRINK BEFORE AND AFTER INTENSE WORKOUTS. IT'S MADE A HUGE DIFFERNCE IN HOW I FEEL.

I got a reply back from my coach, and she just told me to add extra egg whites into my diet. I told her my stats, my workouts and what im burning and she insists im doing fine. What if I take one day off and just do yoga/pilates? I have an event coming up at the end of the month and i NEED to lose 15 pounds by then..