Just for grins and to see what my body would do, I tried a ketogenic diet for a few days (for various reasons that I don’t want to go into here). Well, for about three days I ate a high-fat, medium-protein, and low-carb diet. I ran two times–four miles on the first day and five miles on the last day–just to make sure all my glycogen was gone.
I crashed late at night the last day. I couldn’t get to sleep because my heart was pounding and I had started to wonder what I had done to myself. So at 11pm I got up and “carbed up” a bit with a banana, some corn syrup (for that extra kick of carbs), and some garbanzo beans. I could feel my heart doing less pounding but still wasn’t able to get to sleep. The carb-kick lasted for a a few hours and then I was back to a pounding heart and a sleepless night. I slept maybe 2 hours and got up at 5am to eat a big bowl of steel cut oats and to start my recovery from too few carbohydrates.
For any of you who do want to try a ketogenic diet (there are some benefits from a low blood glucose level), you might want to check into cyclic ketogenic diet (CKD) as you get to replenish weekly (even mid-week!) so it might be more maintainable!