Is It Possible to Build Muscle on Keto?

It’s not an easy path to build muscle on keto.

It’s not easy to build muscle regardless of your diet. It takes a lot of commitment to lift, eat and sleep consistently. However, are you making it impossible by deciding to follow a keto diet?

I tried out a keto diet while looking to build muscle and gain mass quickly. Here’s what I’ve found.

What is Keto?

The basic idea of a keto diet is to get your body into a state of ketosis. This means that your body stops using glucose (from carbohydrates) for energy, because you have restricted the supply.

Instead, your body relies on using fat for energy, which then starts to deplete your body’s stored fat. That use of fat at a high rate means people following a keto diet quickly lose weight, mostly from fat. This is why the keto diet has gained popularity.

To get into a state of ketosis, you have to restrict your carbohydrates. The recommendation is to consume less than 50 grams of carbs per day, and make it as low as 5% of your caloric intake. For context, a single apple can have 25 grams of carbs and a single bagel can exceed the 50 gram mark for a full day.

Carbs, fats, and proteins all play vital roles for your body.

Check out my post about bulking to gain muscle to get more details about the role of each macronutrient in your diet and recommended intake when you are trying to gain mass.

Are there any benefits?

Studies have shown signs of benefits to the keto diet, ranging from loss of stomach fat to treatment of diseases like diabetes.

In this post, I’m focused on what I learned by trying out the keto diet myself while training to build muscle. The diet does help relieve the bloated look and feel. When bulking, especially if you take in a large amount of carbs, it is common to get a round look with a bloated midsection.

I did appreciate the lean feeling and definition in my muscles.

Also, keto diets are low in sugar, which is a good thing. Sugary foods are not a great foundation for anyone trying to build muscle. There are even arguments that excess sugars can contribute to a variety of health concerns, including skin conditions.

What are the problems with a keto diet?

If you are a skinny person trying to gain mass quickly, it will be difficult to do this on a keto diet. It’s already difficult to eat enough to grow. Now your options for high calorie meals will be restricted. Keto diets call for high fat and low carb intake. That’s not necessarily bad, as increasing the ratio of protein and fat to carbohydrates can help build lean muscle. However, keto takes this to an extreme by restricting carbs to as little as 5% of total calories.

Keto can make it more difficult to build muscle simply by limiting your options.

Carbohydrates provide your body with its main source of energy. By giving your body less energy, you cut into the fuel that it uses to push through each intense training exercise.

The trinity to gain mass quickly is training, fuel, recovery. A low carb diet impacts both the fuel and recovery, which means the training is also potentially at risk. I personally found it more tiring to get through a workout without a sufficient carb intake.

However, I also don’t have a ton of fat, and I have heard from other people’s experiences that once they get used to working out on keto, their energy levels bounce back and they feel as good as they did before.

Does keto kill gains?

If you are interested in how to build muscle on keto, then it’s likely that you really want to build lean muscle.

Studies have found that keto diets do not make you lose muscle, but they do make you lose fat. At the same time, it is possible to gain muscle while on a keto diet, although there’s not much evidence that you will gain a lot of muscle. So overall, keto will not take away your gains, but it may not help you get gains either.

It is possible to build muscle on keto, but it will not be a fast path. This is why many people who are on a mission to gain mass prefer to bulk with a high carb intake and cut later.

How should you approach keto while building muscle?

If you decide you’d like to try a keto diet while you strive to gain mass quickly and build muscle, remember that the fundamentals don’t change. You still need to take in a lot of protein to support repairing your muscles after training and you want a diet that gives you a surplus of consumed calories every single day.

It is also important that you discuss your plans with your doctor. A keto diet can cause changes to your body that you want to make sure are understood and considered by your doctor before you jump in.

There are still a variety of options for you to get in a lot of calories without the carbs. For example, eggs, salmon, steak, cheese, broccoli, and avocados are great for anyone bulking and are friendly to keto diets.

My Final Thoughts

I do not recommend any skinny people who want to build muscle and gain mass follow a keto diet.

However, there are parts of it that I like. The keto diet can help you achieve a more shredded look. Before heading to a beach vacation, for example, the principles can help you reduce a bloated look in your stomach. I don’t exactly follow the keto diet for this purpose, but reducing carbohydrates does help. This is especially true for plain carbohydrates that are low in fiber.

Another great part of the keto diet, as mentioned above, is that sugars are discouraged. So, there is less intake of candy and other sweets, which may be great for high calories, but do not add value to building muscle mass.

Thoughts or questions? Let me know in the comments!