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http://180degreehealth.com/2013/06/marathon-training-diet-performance-and-protection-2
To be a successful endurance athlete and experience big breakthroughs in performance, it requires a reduced heart rate (so you can go faster at lower heart rates and sustain an elevated heart rate for longer periods), a reduced body temperature (so you can exercise for hours without your body temperature going too high), reduced muscle and bone mass (lighter load to carry mile after mile – also less wear and tear), and a reduction in energy allocated to other functions (such as sex, immunity, wound healing, blood circulation, and so forth).
No you can’t have it all. You’ll never see someone wake up and win a powerlifting competition, have a snack, and then go and win a marathon later that day. They are two totally different types of skills, and are the result of two totally different types of physical adaptations to a training stimulus.
Having said that, most, myself included, would like to believe that there is a happy middle ground where your endurance performance goes up and your metabolic rate, while downregulating itself to compensate somewhat for the task, does so with minimal negative symptoms (such as chronic coldness, infertility, osteopenia, hair loss, sarcopenia/muscle wasting, and so on). And there probably is. It involves eating unfathomable amounts of calories and carbohydrates.
Yesterday I asked CJ of http://www.couch2ultra.com (Couch 2 Ultra | Quit being a bitch and take control of your life!) – former low-carber and Paleophile, if he could share some of his insights as he is one of the only endurance athletes I’m aware of that is very metabolism-conscious. Here is what he had to share, and a recent photo as he prepares for the upcoming Kona Marathon on June 23rd (I think that’s what he’s running in next).
“Yes I eat between 700-1,500 [grams of] carbs per day. I average probably around 1,000, but would eat more if I had enough time to do so. Just for kicks after you tweeted me this morning, I decided to get a fasting (about 10 hours) blood glucose reading. 92 mg/dL immediately upon getting out of bed. Guess I haven’t gotten the beetus after doing this for 3 years now
My dinner was maybe 350g carbs mostly from bananas and non-fat milk.
The last time I checked my BG was a few months ago after like a 10 banana smoothie with a 1/2 cup of brown sugar. 90 minutes post smoothie I believe the reading was 78 mg/dL. My body must have released too much of that pesky insulin in anticipation of a 15 banana smoothie Insulin release does happen pre-ingestion. I have tested this as well, but that’s a whole other topic.
So, I was so effective at speeding my metabolism, that I actually got too hot. So, here’s the thing… I’m an endurance athlete. Admittedly I’m not a chronic temp checker, but most of the morning checks I did do were somewhere around 97.5. Yes I know that’s still low, but I live in Kona, Hawaii brah. It’s hot here, and I was always a ball of sweat. I sleep with nothing (or at the most 1 sheet), and am still sweaty. I also raised my resting heart rate from around 54bpm to always over 70bpm, and if I even thought about so much as walking, it went to 80-100. My max heart rate seemed to increase in step. I saw it hit as high as 219 during workouts.
Eating for metabolism did affect performance and weight. I did get stronger and did gain weight. Roughly 20lbs. The high heart rate and hot body had me feeling a little on the fatigued side during exercise, despite a lower training load.
While trying to raise my heart rate and temps, I ate a lot of semi-processed sugars like cane/brown sugar, molasses and honey. More coconut oil. Haagen Dazs was a love, and I also did more starches. Corn masa for baking, sweet potatoes, rice, cooked bananas, and even daily footlongs from Subway with cookies and soda. I knew starches would put weight on me, because starches always do. Didn’t much care. I knew the heavy cals would pack on some strong beef too
Race time…. I had a couple 1/2 Ironman races on the horizon, so I had to make some changes. I needed my body to run cooler (because the races are in 100+ degree temps) and I also needed my heart to come down so I don’t burn up so quickly. The exercise already increases my metabolic rate and I wasn’t going to stop doing the workouts, so I had to go back to what I know.
Veggies and fruit. Anyone who knows me, already knows I preach the superiority of fruit over starch for energy. They don’t even compare as far as I’m concerned. But the switch to only fruit based carbs weren’t pulling the heart or temps back down. Enter veggies. More specifically uncooked greens. Three benefits to these… they’re anti-thyroid (bringing it back to normal LOL), they lower the glycemic load of the fruits even lower (burning fat like a blowtorch), and energy increases. I suspect that since I blend most of the greens into oblivion with a Vitamix, my gut may be able to produce butyric acid (short chain fats) for energy not unlike our gorilla buddies who have longer digestive tracks. Of course I’ve not looked into this at all, it just seemed like something plausible I cooked up in my pea brain.
Anyway, in just a matter of a few months, this food palette shift has dropped my HR back down into the high 50s. I’m breaking PBs at will, not sweating like a hog, still using only one sheet, and easily continuing to lean up eating as much fruits and veggies as I can The 20lbs came off and still falling. I’m not vegan or anything. I still eat eggs, gelatin, a little seafood, and some dairy. I’m actually going to have to start increasing my fats again and drinking a gallon of milk every day probably starting next month so I don’t whittle away to a toothpick.
http://180degreehealth.com/2013/04/how-many-carbohydrates-should-you-eat
Carbohydrates have received a thorough lashing of late with the explosion of self-proclaimed nutrition experts on the internet, of which I was guilty of being one myself when I first started doing this (and bashed carbohydrates in favor of fat in delusional hopes that fat was some undiscovered ideal fuel source…. uh, not so much as it turns out). But carbs still rule, and will always rule, especially when looking at the whole spectrum of generally healthy diet and lifestyle practices.
Although I do believe there are a few rare cases of people who may do better obtaining their dietary energy primarily from fat rather than carbohydrates, temporarily or permanently, those are anomalies that don’t really enter into a conversation about general food consumption. I consider the minimum carbohydrate consumption, for most, is roughly 50% of dietary calories. Thus, if you need 3200 calories per day, 1600 of those calories should come from carbohydrates – about 400 grams.
However, the minimum increases any time you consider doing physical activity. Again, there are many individuals in poor enough physical condition that exercise will only make their health worse, not better. But from a general perspective, being physically active has far more benefits than drawbacks. Taking exercise into consideration, the logic then follows on this trajectory…
The more carbohydrates you eat before exercise, the more liver and muscle glycogen (stored carbohydrate) you have.
The more stored glycogen you have, the harder you can exercise and the longer you can exercise.
The more carbohydrates you eat after exercise, the faster and more fully you will replenish glycogen stores.
The faster you replenish glycogen stores, the more often you can exercise.
Carbohydrates and full glycogen stores do other things as well, such as lower cortisol, increase metabolic rate, and improve sleep – other very potent ingredients in the overall health formula. Thus, carbohydrates are the primary substance allowing you to exercise more vigorously and more frequently due to their recovery-expediting effect. Combined with the metabolic effects of carbohydrates on cortisol, muscle fiber type (more fast twitch), amount of glycogen storage in muscles and liver, and so on – carbohydrates provide everything from enhanced insulin sensitivity and glucose clearance to improved fitness and body composition (changes in body composition are most influenced by long-term, cumulative adaptations to exercise of which carbohydrates determine how your body performs and responds to exercise stimuli).
Consider the following – from Ellen Coleman’s thorough review of carbohydrate requirements for exercise…
“A mixed diet (50 percent calories from carbohydrate) produced a muscle glycogen content of 106 mmoL/ kg and enabled the subjects to exercise 115 minutes. A low-carbohydrate diet (less than 5 percent of calories from carbohydrate) produced a muscle glycogen content of 38 mmoL/kg and supported only one hour of exercise. However, a high-carbohydrate diet (more than 82 percent of calories from carbohydrate) provided 204 mmoL/kg of muscle glycogen and enabled the subjects to exercise for 170 minutes.”
In other words, feeling and looking better boils down to getting in good physical condition. And getting in good physical condition is not maximally possible without lots of carbohydrates. The more the better in fact – at least up to the point in the diet where so much fat is displaced that the diet is no longer palatable enough to foster adequate calorie intake.
The minimum carbohydrate intake for anyone engaging in pretty regular physical activity (say, an hour of moderate exercise per day on average), is considered to be 5 grams per kg of lean body weight. For someone like me with a lean weight around 85-90 kg, that’s over 400 grams per day. But with my extensive exercise experience with a wide range of exercise volumes, frequency, and intensities talking - most people will feel an immediate improvement in performance and recovery, as well as a stronger desire to be physically active (and enjoy doing stuff physically more in general), in the range recommended for much harder training athletes – 7-12 grams per kg of lean body weight each day.
I would be more than happy to donate a portion of my genitalia to have had a firmer grasp on this back in the peak of my hiking and cycling days. Once I ate a measly 150-ish grams of carbs per day all summer while hiking 700 very slow, painful miles. Back then I had trouble putting things together, even when I had trouble keeping up with a sedentary, potbellied fish biologist on one trip. Lack of carbs must starve the brain of considerable glucose as well!
How hard you exercise is also a big factor. The higher your heart rate while exercising, the faster you rip through glycogen supplies. Even 15 minutes of very intense exercise is enough to reduce glycogen stores by half – perhaps even more if you are really going at your maximum threshold. Easy, light exercise spares glycogen and takes a lot less carbohydrate to recover from. But even if you are doing fairly light endurance exercise like hiking, you’ll notice you go much faster and much farther without breathing so hard if you eat more carbohydrates as opposed to less.
But, like anything else in the world of nutrition, exercise, and health in general, there is nothing that compares to personal experimentation as long as it is intelligently-guided (you are paying attention to the appropriate markers to determine success that is). Play around with your diet and see for yourself if this holds true. Pay close attention to:
Your desire to exercise.
How hard or easy it feels when you are exercising.
How long it takes you to recover.
http://www.nutrition411.com/ce_pdf/CarbohydrateRequirementsforExercise.pdf
To be a successful endurance athlete and experience big breakthroughs in performance, it requires a reduced heart rate (so you can go faster at lower heart rates and sustain an elevated heart rate for longer periods), a reduced body temperature (so you can exercise for hours without your body temperature going too high), reduced muscle and bone mass (lighter load to carry mile after mile – also less wear and tear), and a reduction in energy allocated to other functions (such as sex, immunity, wound healing, blood circulation, and so forth).
No you can’t have it all. You’ll never see someone wake up and win a powerlifting competition, have a snack, and then go and win a marathon later that day. They are two totally different types of skills, and are the result of two totally different types of physical adaptations to a training stimulus.
Having said that, most, myself included, would like to believe that there is a happy middle ground where your endurance performance goes up and your metabolic rate, while downregulating itself to compensate somewhat for the task, does so with minimal negative symptoms (such as chronic coldness, infertility, osteopenia, hair loss, sarcopenia/muscle wasting, and so on). And there probably is. It involves eating unfathomable amounts of calories and carbohydrates.
Yesterday I asked CJ of http://www.couch2ultra.com (Couch 2 Ultra | Quit being a bitch and take control of your life!) – former low-carber and Paleophile, if he could share some of his insights as he is one of the only endurance athletes I’m aware of that is very metabolism-conscious. Here is what he had to share, and a recent photo as he prepares for the upcoming Kona Marathon on June 23rd (I think that’s what he’s running in next).
“Yes I eat between 700-1,500 [grams of] carbs per day. I average probably around 1,000, but would eat more if I had enough time to do so. Just for kicks after you tweeted me this morning, I decided to get a fasting (about 10 hours) blood glucose reading. 92 mg/dL immediately upon getting out of bed. Guess I haven’t gotten the beetus after doing this for 3 years now
My dinner was maybe 350g carbs mostly from bananas and non-fat milk.The last time I checked my BG was a few months ago after like a 10 banana smoothie with a 1/2 cup of brown sugar. 90 minutes post smoothie I believe the reading was 78 mg/dL. My body must have released too much of that pesky insulin in anticipation of a 15 banana smoothie
Insulin release does happen pre-ingestion. I have tested this as well, but that’s a whole other topic.So, I was so effective at speeding my metabolism, that I actually got too hot. So, here’s the thing… I’m an endurance athlete. Admittedly I’m not a chronic temp checker, but most of the morning checks I did do were somewhere around 97.5. Yes I know that’s still low, but I live in Kona, Hawaii brah. It’s hot here, and I was always a ball of sweat. I sleep with nothing (or at the most 1 sheet), and am still sweaty. I also raised my resting heart rate from around 54bpm to always over 70bpm, and if I even thought about so much as walking, it went to 80-100. My max heart rate seemed to increase in step. I saw it hit as high as 219 during workouts.
Eating for metabolism did affect performance and weight. I did get stronger and did gain weight. Roughly 20lbs. The high heart rate and hot body had me feeling a little on the fatigued side during exercise, despite a lower training load.
While trying to raise my heart rate and temps, I ate a lot of semi-processed sugars like cane/brown sugar, molasses and honey. More coconut oil. Haagen Dazs was a love, and I also did more starches. Corn masa for baking, sweet potatoes, rice, cooked bananas, and even daily footlongs from Subway with cookies and soda. I knew starches would put weight on me, because starches always do. Didn’t much care. I knew the heavy cals would pack on some strong beef too
Race time…. I had a couple 1/2 Ironman races on the horizon, so I had to make some changes. I needed my body to run cooler (because the races are in 100+ degree temps) and I also needed my heart to come down so I don’t burn up so quickly. The exercise already increases my metabolic rate and I wasn’t going to stop doing the workouts, so I had to go back to what I know.
Veggies and fruit. Anyone who knows me, already knows I preach the superiority of fruit over starch for energy. They don’t even compare as far as I’m concerned. But the switch to only fruit based carbs weren’t pulling the heart or temps back down. Enter veggies. More specifically uncooked greens. Three benefits to these… they’re anti-thyroid (bringing it back to normal LOL), they lower the glycemic load of the fruits even lower (burning fat like a blowtorch), and energy increases. I suspect that since I blend most of the greens into oblivion with a Vitamix, my gut may be able to produce butyric acid (short chain fats) for energy not unlike our gorilla buddies who have longer digestive tracks. Of course I’ve not looked into this at all, it just seemed like something plausible I cooked up in my pea brain.
Anyway, in just a matter of a few months, this food palette shift has dropped my HR back down into the high 50s. I’m breaking PBs at will, not sweating like a hog, still using only one sheet, and easily continuing to lean up eating as much fruits and veggies as I can
The 20lbs came off and still falling. I’m not vegan or anything. I still eat eggs, gelatin, a little seafood, and some dairy. I’m actually going to have to start increasing my fats again and drinking a gallon of milk every day probably starting next month so I don’t whittle away to a toothpick.http://180degreehealth.com/2013/04/how-many-carbohydrates-should-you-eat
Carbohydrates have received a thorough lashing of late with the explosion of self-proclaimed nutrition experts on the internet, of which I was guilty of being one myself when I first started doing this (and bashed carbohydrates in favor of fat in delusional hopes that fat was some undiscovered ideal fuel source…. uh, not so much as it turns out). But carbs still rule, and will always rule, especially when looking at the whole spectrum of generally healthy diet and lifestyle practices.
Although I do believe there are a few rare cases of people who may do better obtaining their dietary energy primarily from fat rather than carbohydrates, temporarily or permanently, those are anomalies that don’t really enter into a conversation about general food consumption. I consider the minimum carbohydrate consumption, for most, is roughly 50% of dietary calories. Thus, if you need 3200 calories per day, 1600 of those calories should come from carbohydrates – about 400 grams.
However, the minimum increases any time you consider doing physical activity. Again, there are many individuals in poor enough physical condition that exercise will only make their health worse, not better. But from a general perspective, being physically active has far more benefits than drawbacks. Taking exercise into consideration, the logic then follows on this trajectory…
The more carbohydrates you eat before exercise, the more liver and muscle glycogen (stored carbohydrate) you have.
The more stored glycogen you have, the harder you can exercise and the longer you can exercise.
The more carbohydrates you eat after exercise, the faster and more fully you will replenish glycogen stores.
The faster you replenish glycogen stores, the more often you can exercise.
Carbohydrates and full glycogen stores do other things as well, such as lower cortisol, increase metabolic rate, and improve sleep – other very potent ingredients in the overall health formula. Thus, carbohydrates are the primary substance allowing you to exercise more vigorously and more frequently due to their recovery-expediting effect. Combined with the metabolic effects of carbohydrates on cortisol, muscle fiber type (more fast twitch), amount of glycogen storage in muscles and liver, and so on – carbohydrates provide everything from enhanced insulin sensitivity and glucose clearance to improved fitness and body composition (changes in body composition are most influenced by long-term, cumulative adaptations to exercise of which carbohydrates determine how your body performs and responds to exercise stimuli).
Consider the following – from Ellen Coleman’s thorough review of carbohydrate requirements for exercise…
“A mixed diet (50 percent calories from carbohydrate) produced a muscle glycogen content of 106 mmoL/ kg and enabled the subjects to exercise 115 minutes. A low-carbohydrate diet (less than 5 percent of calories from carbohydrate) produced a muscle glycogen content of 38 mmoL/kg and supported only one hour of exercise. However, a high-carbohydrate diet (more than 82 percent of calories from carbohydrate) provided 204 mmoL/kg of muscle glycogen and enabled the subjects to exercise for 170 minutes.”
In other words, feeling and looking better boils down to getting in good physical condition. And getting in good physical condition is not maximally possible without lots of carbohydrates. The more the better in fact – at least up to the point in the diet where so much fat is displaced that the diet is no longer palatable enough to foster adequate calorie intake.
The minimum carbohydrate intake for anyone engaging in pretty regular physical activity (say, an hour of moderate exercise per day on average), is considered to be 5 grams per kg of lean body weight. For someone like me with a lean weight around 85-90 kg, that’s over 400 grams per day. But with my extensive exercise experience with a wide range of exercise volumes, frequency, and intensities talking - most people will feel an immediate improvement in performance and recovery, as well as a stronger desire to be physically active (and enjoy doing stuff physically more in general), in the range recommended for much harder training athletes – 7-12 grams per kg of lean body weight each day.
I would be more than happy to donate a portion of my genitalia to have had a firmer grasp on this back in the peak of my hiking and cycling days. Once I ate a measly 150-ish grams of carbs per day all summer while hiking 700 very slow, painful miles. Back then I had trouble putting things together, even when I had trouble keeping up with a sedentary, potbellied fish biologist on one trip. Lack of carbs must starve the brain of considerable glucose as well!
How hard you exercise is also a big factor. The higher your heart rate while exercising, the faster you rip through glycogen supplies. Even 15 minutes of very intense exercise is enough to reduce glycogen stores by half – perhaps even more if you are really going at your maximum threshold. Easy, light exercise spares glycogen and takes a lot less carbohydrate to recover from. But even if you are doing fairly light endurance exercise like hiking, you’ll notice you go much faster and much farther without breathing so hard if you eat more carbohydrates as opposed to less.
But, like anything else in the world of nutrition, exercise, and health in general, there is nothing that compares to personal experimentation as long as it is intelligently-guided (you are paying attention to the appropriate markers to determine success that is). Play around with your diet and see for yourself if this holds true. Pay close attention to:
Your desire to exercise.
How hard or easy it feels when you are exercising.
How long it takes you to recover.
http://www.nutrition411.com/ce_pdf/CarbohydrateRequirementsforExercise.pdf
