Q: I am dieting low carb and am looking for fat burners. A friend suggested ALA and I don’t know what it is or how it works. Is it good for me on this diet or not?

A: It’s a great question and always good to examine supplements that work best based on the diet or training regimen you do at any given time. In your case, ALA - Alpha Lipoic Acid - would be a tremendous way to get your body into ketosis rapidly. Whereas for an average person it takes about 2 days for the body to go into ketosis, eating less than 20 grams of carbs per day, and takes longer for a true “glycogen hoarder” (a lot of hard losers of fat hoard glycogen) at about 3 to 4 days, it rapidly pushes the body into ketosis by acting as a powerful temper to glucose.

The great thing for dieters - using any diet - is that it ALA will also push muscle-building nutrients into your muscles faster. But ALA also helps a dieter making a transition from low carb to maintenance carb diets because it tempers the ill-effects of a higher carb meal, fast. That means that it clears glucose before insulin can spike and store those extra carbs as fat. You need to break up doses into two or four 200 mg doses daily though, to more closely mirror real eating and meals. Otherwise, it’s a waste. Large single doses also make some people sick. It can also drop blood sugar RAPIDLY for low carb dieters and make them feel a little bit like they are in insulin shock (not particularly fun, trust me). So definitely, for you, on a low carb diet, you’ll need to take small doses more frequently. Use ketostix to monitor yourself. ALA also has the benefit of making your skin a lot nicer. So AAS users will benefit from it during dieting.

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