Dieting Osteogenesis Imperfecta and Keto Muscle Building
But the idea that the body is burning tons and tons of protein, which was the real gist of your question, isn’t correct due to the overall shift in metabolism from glucose to fatty acids/ketones over about 3 weeks of adaptation. I still don’t think ketogenic diets are OPTIMAL for building muscle growth. They can work (especially if they are used cyclicall) but even moderate carb diets tend to produce a better/more anabolic hormonal response in this regard.
Hyperplasia vs. Hypertrophy in Skeletal Muscle
Perhaps more importantly, the impact of hyperplasia on overall muscle size is still fairly small. Most of the growth we get from training occurs through hypertrophy no matter how you cut it.
Which is a very, very long way of saying that, yes, hyperplasia probably occurs in humans but don’t worry about it. If it happens it happens and you’re still getting most growth through increases in muscle cell size.
Protein Amount and Post Workout Protein Synthesis – Research Review
Certainly some of this is just due to the fact that you can only put enough intense training into so many things at once. A runner only runs, a triathlete has to spread their training across three events (and many are starting to focus on a single event while maintaining the others to bring them up). But I’ve theorized that the body has limited adaptational capacities, you can only adapt so many things at once. And this study, very obliquely supports that. The protein synthesis response (which was only measured in the quads) was lower when the full body was trained compared to earlier studies that only used leg training.
The Transition Phase Between Dieting and Gaining
So way back in the early days of bodybuilding you would hear physique athletes talk about a “hardening phase” which was meant as a transition from their off-season bulking to their contest diet. Now, in hindsight, it probably had as much to do with switching out their drugs from heavy androgens to more anabolic compounds to reduce water retention but it basically entailed “cleaning up the diet” to prepare for the actual contest prep. This was always kind of ill defined but probably had to do with food choices, taking out most of the junk and eating “cleaner” whatever that actually means. Guys would report losing a bit of fat while still gaining a bit of muscle (perhaps the LTDGE which I really need to write about sometime although the switch in drugs was probably part of it too) and, well, hardening up.
