The carb loading will not increase your fat stores unless you eat so food that you are in a calorie surplus. To avoid fat gain, do not eat more calories than you need to maintain your current weight during your carb load.

Does that make sense? If you have any other questions, please let me know.

We went a bit deeper into this in our article on Keto and Exercise:

https://www.ruled.me/complete-guide-exercise-ketogenic-diet/

There you will find plenty of information and sources for further reading.

If your goal is to re-enter ketosis as quickly as possible while also getting the most out of your refeed, then you would use that approach. However, this is not necessary.

Your approach depends on your training schedule. In general, I recommend planning to do your most intense workouts or competitions during your refeeds or on the following day or two after your refeeds to get the most performance boost.

Does that make sense? If you have any other questions, please let me know.

I understand that the quote from this article can be understood in many different ways, so here is some more detail on the physiology behind what I wrote:

In general, as the intensity of the exercise increases so will the demand on anaerobic glycolysis (until the intensity is so high that only your creatine/ATP stores can fuel that short burst of activity). Anaerobic glycolysis cannot be fueled by fats or ketones.

Only once the intensity of the activity decreases to the point where you can sustain the effort for longer than a couple of minutes will your body start using more fat and/or ketones for fuel. Typically, at this point, the exercise bout can be defined as moderate or moderate-high intensity.

To answer your first question: a calorie deficit of 25% should work well for you. (However, you might be able to decrease the amount of muscle mass you lose by using a smaller deficit like 15%.)

Regarding CKD, You’re going to have to experiment to see if that works well for you. After a month of normal keto dieting, you might be keto-adapted enough to replenish your glycogen without adding carbs in, but it’s hard to tell if this will be the case for you. I recommend training on the SKD first to see how your body handles it. If you need the help of carbs, you can either try a CKD (with 2 day refeed) or a TKD to see what worst best for you from a lifestyle and exercise performance perspective.

When it comes to increasing your muscle mass, simply eat 1 to 1.2 grams of protein per pound of LBM, maintain a 10-15% calorie surplus, and use a CKD or TKD if you need the help from carbs to fuel your workouts. If you don’t need the extra carbs, just stick to the SKD.

Does all of this make sense for you? If you have any other questions, please let me know.

Thanks for the referrals!

You are correct. Just follow the CKD as is. No need for pre workout carbs.

If you have any other questions, please let me know.

It’s really up to you how you approach this. If your goal is to get into a deeper ketosis and be Keto adapted enough to sustain high-intensity activity without carbs, then you’ll need to stick to the SKD — and if you are trying to build muscle on top of that, I suggest following the workout strategies from this article:
https://www.ruled.me/comprehensive-guide-bodybuilding-ketogenic-diet/

On the other hand, if you want to keep your performance up for what you are doing now, then follow the CKD. You will get into ketosis, but whether or not it’ll be a deeper ketosis or lead to becoming fully Keto adapted depends on the person. (My apologies for the vagueness of my answer — there isn’t much research on this topic for me to draw upon.)

Do this make sense to you now? If you have any questions, please let me know.

Basically, the CKD allows you to get the benefits of carbs for high-intensity exercise performance without missing out on the benefits of keto. If you’d like to take a deeper look at why we need carbs for high-intensity exercise performance, check out this article:
https://www.ruled.me/complete-guide-exercise-ketogenic-diet/

When it comes to carb loading, it doesn’t matter what you eat as long as you have low GI and high GI foods at the right times based on what we recommend in this CKD article.

Whole grains tend to be lower in GI and a good source of carbs, so if you aren’t sensitive to any grains, there is no reason to exclude them from the carb loading portion of the CKD.

Thanks for the great question.

Stick with the keto calculator and adjust from there. This will provide you with much more accurate estimates.

If you want to find out more info about how to build muscle on keto, check out our keto guide to bodybuilding:
https://www.ruled.me/comprehensive-guide-bodybuilding-ketogenic-diet/