What's up Genetic CHallenge,
Not trying to give you hell, but....
1: You need more than 20g of carbs for lifting , no ifs ands or buts about it!
2: You need a lot more protein!, at least as many grams in protein as you have in pounds of bodyweight (you weigh 100lbs, you take in 100g of protein)
3: KEtosis is inevitable when loosing fat; its not such a terrible thing
4. You need more protein!
#1 explained: 20grams of carbs as the keto diet lays out would be okay for fat loss if you weren't sedentary and sat at a desk all day, but when one lifts with so few carbs, glycogen(name for glucose stored in the muscle) will be used up(marked by the inability to get that pumped feeling in the weight room). When glycogen levels get to low your intensity will drop next to nothing dramatically decreasing the fat burning that occurs when muscle repairs itself, an inevitable catobolic condition will occur resulting in muscle atrophy.
#'s 2,and 4 explained:
Unfortunately when fat is broken down to be sent to the liver, to be be converted into glucose for use, so is protein. Protein's most important purpose is to repair and maintian every cell in our body, which includes muscle. As your diet goes right now you might have enough protein to sustain this vital bodily maintenance if you were not burning fat. However consider that when fat is broken down, as already mentioned, so is protein. When blood sugar gets low protein is broken up into into amino acids, which are then sent to the liver via blood stream to be converted into glucose(process called gluconeogenisis). With your current diet, when your body breaks down protein when blood sugar is low its going to tap into the protein that makes up your most powerful fat-burning tool, MUSCLE.
In lamen's terms here's a better illustration of what should be happening. By consuming an excess amount of protein, at least 1gram of protein for every pound of body weight, your body has at its disposal a pool of excess amino acids to use when blood sugar is low. Your body will tap into this extra pool of amino acids to be converted to glucose not having to resort to tearing down your hard earned, fat-burning muscle.
#3Explained: REally quick, Ideally what happens: fat is sent to the liver to be changed into glucose for enegry during times of low blood sugar. However, sometimes this conversion is not always complete, and instead of glucose being released, the incompleted product of this fat transformation, ketone bodies, are released into the blood stream. This will invetibaly happen when the body burns large amounts of fat. Ketones in excess might only be a problem if your liver is already under a lot of stress from other things like drinking or drugs (try milk thistle if this is the case), and if a person is type 1 diabetic in which the body, despite already having enough blood sugar to be used for energy, chooses to still tap into fat stores for energy. In these cases with Type 1 diabetics a very extreme ketosis can occur, from the extreme breakdown of fats, called ketoacidosis which can be toxic to the liver.
I Hope I could Help,
BEBOTZ
