A 3-Week Keto Experiment Helped This Guy Go From Lean to Shredded

For , living a healthy lifestyle is second nature. The YouTube trainer has made a career out of documenting his various fitness challenges and workouts for his more than 2 million followers. This week, he’s at it again, experimenting with a low-fat version of the keto diet.

In previous videos, DeLauer has already demonstrated how he uses keto to maintain his ripped physique. In the new video, DeLauer outlines a few additional restrictions that he followed:

1. He chose to double up on his protein intake while decreasing his fat intake by half.
2. He added a 150g protein shake (because one person can’t just eat meat constantly).
3. He ate two to three times as many veggies as he would on a normal day, stocking up on double the amounts of baby broccolini and brussels sprouts than he would normally consume on any given day.
4. In between his days of low-fat keto, he chose to intermittent fast the day after.

Keto Experiment….. Just for 3 Weeks

The most interesting part of this experiment? He only did this two times a week for a total of three weeks (and yes–he’s aware that the timeframe is too short for it to be a complete experiment. He was just trying it out). Part of the reason he hoped to try it was to see a) what would happen to a person’s ketones if protein intake was increased, b) fasting during the day would have a positive impact on the keto diet.

Once the experiment concluded, DeLauer was surprised to see that not only did his sugar levels stay the same (despite higher intake of proteins throughout the week), but all the extra protein he ingested didn’t throw him out of ketosis. In fact, he found that after his workouts, his ketone levels were higher than they were when not.

DeLauer shares a theory as to why this might be happening. When your body is in gluconeogenesis (in simple terms–it’s the process of proteins or extra fats in the body converting into sugar), only 10 percent of the process occurs with proteins. Since he was doubling his protein intake and decreasing his fat intake, DeLauer posits that that the protein was being sent to the muscles to be converted into sugar molecules, called glycogen. Therefore, he may have been burning off the glycogen in his body made from the proteins, and not from the stored fats.

And the results? Well, let’s just say that the low fat keto experiment over the course of three weeks caused a 1% drop in body fat and 2 1/2 pound muscle gain.