I cut the sugar at all times except long workouts over an hour.

for drinks you can try nuun tablets, but i need my gels on longer rides

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Yellowfin Endurance Coaching and Bike Fits
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Do you find that you still have cravings for sugar outside of training? That's my biggest concern, that if I keep it in my diet at all I will still crave it outside of training.

If you are running a calorie deficit, which you pretty much have to do to lose serious weight, being hungry/craving sugar is pretty much part of the game, so ya just need to suck it up. I feel your pain, by the way, as I ended up shattering my foot, then right as I got well enough to train, got knocked down with an unrelated injury and surgery so I put on a bunch of weight being off my feet for a year. I've dropped 25# in the last 3 months, but it has been a constant struggle with craving sweets.. and beer. Delicious, delicious beer.... mmmmm

If you are only cutting down 5 - 10 pounds, simply eating a lot of slow burn foods (quinoa paired with shredded chicken and spinach is a good start) will go a long way to cut cravings.

Ha - so basically it is what it is. Fun stuff. I would like to be in the 35-50lb weight loss range. That would leave at an ideal racing weight and body comp (I think) so we'll see. I'm sure I'm going to open up the "a calorie is a calorie" debate, but it's truly not my intention. While it may not make a difference with regards to running a deficit, i.e. burn more than you consumer, regardless of make-up will create weight loss, it's important to me that I kick my sugar problem and still maintain energy for training by maintaining a proper diet all the way around. So in an absolutely perfect world, I'd love to find a proper training snack that doesn't have added sugars.

I'm sure some experts here will chime in with different opinions than my n=1 experience, but all I can say is what worked for me.

I did some googling after about the first month of being hungry all the time and most of the articles I read pretty much said being hungry is part of losing weight.

Hang in there, being able to look in the mirror and see a 25 or 30# lighter you is so effing worth it.

Agreed. Been trying to figure this out for a long time.

I've experimented with UCAN - 1 serving has 0g sugar and no weird pseudo sugars. Does UCAN actually work and what exactly superstarch??? That's up for debate.

I love Skratch but 1 serving contains 20g of sugar and last I read the WHO says our max daily sugar intake should be 25g so.... not sure what to do there... at least it's cane sugar and not corn syrup?

I think you can cut added sugar in your regular diet no problem, but for workouts lasting much more than an hour, unless you stick to really easy efforts, you are going to need to replenish carbs, which means sugars that you can absorb quickly, or else you will bonk.

Many options are available that really do not taste sweet. I am not sure if sweetness is a factor in craving/addiction or not. I use a custom blend of infinit with the flavor dialed all the way down. Mostly it tastes salty. Not sweet at all. It's not particularly delicious but not bad either. It's just fuel. I use this for training and racing.

If you are running a low-carb diet as well, you may have trouble replacing glycogen after workouts, which will probably lead to bonking even if you use something like infinit, so keep that in mind.

You can run a caloric deficit and still replace the glycogen you need. Do not cut out any nutrients. Eat carbs fat and proteins. Just don't eat as much as you burn (but don't go nuts and run a huge deficit). You should lose fat, but still have the energy to complete your workouts! You will feel hungry though. A lot of the time. It goes with the territory.

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Ed O'Malley
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WHO recommendations are not for people doing endurance training 2 hours a day.

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Ed O'Malley
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Thanks Ed. Are there any recommendations for those of us training 2 hours+ a day? I'm, perhaps stupidly, hung up on that WHO info and obviously would rather operate with all the facts.

I think I take in too much sugar but weight is not really a problem for me. I only really crave it when I workout a bunch, then its impact is minimal given the calorie burn. What's weird is I don't train with it (sodas, bars, etc). Just after. In my opinion lots of running will fix or offset any bad cravings you may have now and then.

See my post above. For longer training sessions and races supplemental sugars are a necessity! I'm not a nutritionist, but I used to be a lightweight rower so have some experience in training at a high level while losing weight at the same time. Others may be able to come in with even better info than me.

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So what do you train with for 1+ hr workouts?

I certainly don't disagree with this and in theory, so long as I continue to operate at a deficit, my body should use fat stores for fuel and weight loss will be inevitable. The other side of the coin is simply - is sugar addicting? If the answer is yes, then does cutting sugar out of the diet totally with the exception of training enough; or, does one need to completely eradicate sugar from the diet at all times in order to beat the addiction.

Point we have sorted - hunger is inevitable during a deficit. I am cool with that, well as cool as I can be. My concern is when hungry, smart decisions are already a tightrope walk, so if I can find a way not to crave sugar and be able to stick some turkey in my mouth instead, I'd find that to be an additional win as far as nutritional value of my calories goes.

When you say "sugar", do you mean only refined sucrose (table sugar) or do you mean all carbs?

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Ed O'Malley
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Refined. So added sugars. Natural sugars - fruit, whole grains, etc are totally fine. I want to get rid of all of the "crose's" basically and high sugar items like natural honeys and maple syrups.

I eat what I would call meals before most workouts (and races). As a result I don't consume as much while working out.

Adding to this, sugar with the fibre intact should be fine, it's when the sugar is separated from the fibre that it becomes problematic. Minus my obviously limited understanding appropriate sugar intake for endurance athletes.

Can you break that statement down? My nutritional knowledge is as basic as it comes. Maybe examples?

This notion that "natural sugar" is fine and whatever unnatural sugar is isn't doesn't make any sense. Your calories are all going to come from fat, protein, or carbs. Some carbs hit you harder than others, and what else they're consumed with also affects that. But during workouts, you're going to need some fast-acting fuel. And otherwise, minimizing fast-burn carbs is a pretty good idea, and yes, that includes fruit (also known as "candy that happens to grow on trees," though obviously some more so that others).

It makes great sense when discussing fruit or other "whole" items, where the overall value of the item outweighs the negativity of the sugar. As I said earlier, this isn't meant to be a debate of the "calorie is a calorie" conversation. But I digress. The intention of the entire thread is not whether or not I should eat sugar. I've done enough research to know I should limit it and in limiting, when consuming sugar, it's best to come from a natural source. The question is, for those who try to limit their sugar intake, what do they consumer during long workouts. The answer, as one poster stated above, may very well be that there is no way to avoid added sugars during training. If that is true, then the concern is how that consumption of sugar impacts someone who has a "sugar addiction".

It's not hard to avoid sugars while training. Dates are an excellent fuel that I like. If you want more variety get Alan Lim's 'Feed Zone Portables' filled with recipes that don't include sugar.

Check out Phil Maffetone's website. He is one of the world's leading authorities of incorporating a low carm, low sugar diet, including for elite endurance athletes. Dr Amanda Steven's put down a life time best 8:52 IM race at IM Arizona 2015 on a ultra low carb high fat diet, and just barely over 100 calories an hour on race day, non of which were sugars. Many have had great success with these types of diets, and Maffetone has a super easy 2 week test to get any one started. Highly recommended.

That's a really really interesting read. At least just running through the two week test. I wonder how badly my training will suffer during those two week. Pretty badly? Or is body fat sufficient to fuel workouts?

If you keep your HR in an aerobic zone, 180- age or based on testing, you will not have a problem. I rode 200 miles a week, ran 40 miles a week, and swam 3 X per week, plus daily strength training, and had no problems. I did the two week test the first 2 weeks of the year, and after transitioned to what Maffetone terms a ultra low carb diet. During 4-6 hour rides, I have been eating seeds, nuts and cheese- doesn't take much and I have always felt great from start to finish. Last week I did a brick with 67 miles on bike, 4700 ft of climbing, then a 12 mile run with 1400 ft climbing- total fuel about 500 calories sunflower seeds, walnuts and crumbled blue cheese- not a moment of lack of energy. BTW- check out trehalose- it is a fantastic sugar replacement

I've gone through a process over the last 6-9 months of drastically reducing my sugar intake both while training and while not. My n+1 was that I fond good results when I transitioned gradually over time. I.e I didn't try to make a big change all at once. I also found that reducing sugars in my regular diet greatly impacted my need for them while training. Although I do still take some maltodextrin on long rides, and during a long race (greater than 90 min) I do take carbs, either in the form of maltodextrin or Vitargo.

I haven't eliminated them completely though, but have found extremely good results switching from refined sugar to complex carbs in meals following workouts. Real foods like brown rice, sweet potato etc. the other thing I found really help control the sugar cravings at the start was eating lots of salad and green vegetables. Stock up on those in a big way, I found they made a huge difference.

In my opinion you need to cut refined sugars first and foremost from your regular diet, that is most important.

This is super interesting and really pretty exciting, for someone like myself who has always been very over weight and always a huge consumer of carbs. I guess my only other concern would be that I did start following MAF method last summer, but as a result of my weight and the summer heat, working under 148 (i'm 32) was almost impossible. My heart rate just gets up there quickly. And actually, the slower running meant a much prolonged amount of time in contact with the ground and actually caused my joints to hurt more than I had experienced in the past. I suppose if I see some weight loss out of the gate and continue to experience weight loss, that might get into check pretty quickly, but I'll find it hard to buy into a borderline walk for months when I have serious mileage to log.

Dates are almost pure sugar!

I have helped several gravity challenged athletes with low HR training. In regard to running, you will be slower, at first, but you should see significant improvement in 3-4 weeks. One key thing is too not change your natural gait, just the effort. What I have people do is first try running in place, with proper foot lift but easy enough effort to keep you HR in your zone. After you get a feel for that, just starting running forward at the correct effort. If you reduce carbs and sugars in your diet, your body will get better at fat burning, so low HR work will be easier and you will start loosing permanent fat :-)

why would you eat fats (walnuts, cheese etc..) during workouts anyway if you rely on body fat as energy source ?
You have stored plenty of body fat so why eating anything during workouts at all?

Dates are mostly simple sugars such as the fructose and glucose found in sports drinks.

http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/...fits-dates-4120.html

That's why they're a good fuel. The OP specifically asked about reducing refined sugar intake. I eat dates as a snack during the day sometimes and, unlike sugar laced products, they seem to satiate me better. I never crave dates though, I just keep some in my office at work.

If they work for you, that's great, but don't kid yourself that you're avoiding sugar by eating dates rather than jelly babies.

For the OP, what about trying nuts and seeds to snack on? Chia seeds seem popular at the moment. For a short hard session you don't need anything, but for the longer sessions, they should be at a lower intensity and so you should have no problem digesting the more complex combination of fat/protein/carb

Don't kid yourself that jelly babies are the same as dates. Dates are full of fibre and potassium that help keep your bowls and blood pressure in check. Dates are also know to cut sugar cravings dead. Part of the issue with eating something like jelly babies is that they are nutririon-less so they give you energy but nothing for your body to feed from. Eating dates will still provide the sugar, but will also provide the nutrition and satisfy your body's nutritional needs so the sugar cravings will go away. Jelly babies are also full of colourings and chemicals some of which are known to change behaviors and possible cause sleep disorders.

Don't kid yourself that you are avoiding sugar by eating dates, but don't kid yourself you should avoid eating dates either.

Changing from jelly babies to dates is a great idea to help out.

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Where have I said you should avoid dates? Of course they cut sugar cravings dead - they're full of sugar! Where have I said you should eat Jellybabies? I'm just pointing out that they're both full of sugar, which if you're trying to avoid sugar during training like the OP ( remember them?) then best to avoid. I don't think extra fibre during training is a great benefit, you should get plenty of that in your regular meals.

Aren't you the guy that got sacked by his coach? Kind of understand why now ;-)

Until you eat too many and shart yourself. It all depends on your training and goals. If you are 30+ pounds overweight you probably are not doing workouts hard enough to make you fuel with 300 calories an hour of simple sugars. I would stick to real foods or something like Larabars if that. Nuts/nut butter is an option.

Sugar is sugar, simple as that. Some digest easier than others while real foods often have things like fiber and fat. Just depends on your goals and how much you are training.

I've been very happy avoiding anything with added sugar (mainly sugar, HFCS, rice syrup, etc) listed within its first three ingredients. This does not hold true for sports nutrition and one day a month I have a cheat day which usually involves ice cream, maybe a cinnamon roll at breakfast. Nothing extreme.

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Don't think you need to really worry about replenishing carbs during training until you're quite a bit over an hour. As I get up to around two hours I definitely feel the need for carbs, but it's just to maintain optimum performance, and I've got to go longer than that at a hard intensity to truly "bonk." I think some of us are overly worried about bonking on workouts that aren't really that long.

I'n not advocating neglecting nutrition during training but over-consuming calories during workouts definitely isn't going to help achieve weight loss.

See I have never had a problem with craving sugar...my problem is craving salty foods

I was just at CU Boulder Sports Medicine getting a metabolic/VO2 test and they were railing against ketogenic diets. And they were highly against them for everyone but especially athletes. I think this is a very terrible idea.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
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I guess I told you I lost a ton of weight but not how I fuel.

Before long workouts, if its a morning ride, I eat a big breakfast that is usually kale, scrambled egg whites, and sauteed mushrooms and some sort of dairy: usually greek yogurt or cottage cheese.

If mid day, I eat a bunch of almonds, cashews, or sunflower seeds about half an hour before heading out, then refuel on home made nut bars every 45 to an hour so far. Once in a long while I mix in a bottle of skratch. Been good up to 5 hrs on the bike like this so far.

There seems to be a lot of research being done lately that suggests a lower Carb / High Fat diet may have some benefits to Endurance racers (The FASTER study) by Phinney and Volek for example....Ironman champ Sami Inkinen for example follows that approach as do a lot of Elite Ultra runners..

I have cut out all sugars except those that are naturally occurring and have felt better than I have in years....still learning new ways to fuel myself during longer efforts, but my N=1 experience so far has been positive.

Yes, except they are a whole food so the way our body deals with them is not the same as say corn syrup...

So even running Zone 1 for me at 8:34 pace I am burning 428 kcal/hr or carbs and 471 kcal/hr of fat. This is recovery run territory. At my long run pace for 13-15 mile easy training runs I burn 559 kcal/hr carbs, 457 kcal/hr fat. A less fit person running at their respective easy pace will burn more carbs vs. fat than a well-trained person, but even if that person is overweight, I do not believe their body has the ability to store more glycogen than the well trained person. Maybe even less if they have less muscle mass. So you would be burning even more carbs while having the same or less storage. You need to not only be able to get through a single workout without getting low on stored glycogen, but also be able to replenish all that you used before your next workout. Otherwise you will start to feel very tired and your training will go down the toilet and it can be very hard to dig yourself out of that hole. You do that by eating cabs, but not necessarily sucrose. I think you can easily cut out added sugar in your regular diet, but please please eat enough carbohydrates from rice, bread, pasta, etc. to replace your glycogen.

If I'm running a half marathon, I'm burning 1124 kcal/hr carbs and 224 kcal/hr from fat! I *might* be able to get through that without eating any sugars depending on how topped off I am before hand, but I'd say it's 50/50 on whether I would bonk at the end and that's less than 1.5 hours, fully rested and fueled. There is no way someone is getting through a fast half iron or ironman (or probably even a slow one) without supplementing sugars (but it can be all maltodextrin and dextrose, you do not need sucrose necessarily) I don't care what that other guy says.

Like I said earlier, the folks at CU Sports Medicine the other week strongly warned me against ketogenic diets like Maffetone. I did not even bring it up, it's just part of their general advice. They said that it is terrible for people.

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I tend to think that the sport drink companies kind of lead us astray. They tell us, if we want to perform then we’d better consumer their product. The way I see it, if I don’t bonk during a 6 hour 70.3, then why would I need to worry about bonking during a 10 hour training week? Pretty much the only time I ever fuel is during long training sessions and that’s only to test my fueling plan.

I just did the Maffetone two week test to start the year. On the website, they address that any workouts should really be SLOW workouts to try to train your body to use fat for fuel. In my case, I found that no matter how slow I went, the workouts were still a huge struggle. On the other hand, it was a great way to drop the 12 off season pounds I put on during the holidays to get closer to what I expect to race.

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Correct. Not eating enough carbs can definitely be bad for you. But you can change over to being a lower carb burner over time with your daily diet. Then you don't need as many carbs, so then eating fewer carbs than a high-carb burner isn't bad for you. So yes, the Boulder medicine people are correct - not eating enough carbs for what your body needs is bad. But what your body needs can be vastly different based on your long term diet.

Here's a link to Sami Inkinen's metabolism tests going from being high carb and pre-diabetic from all the carbs to a much lower carb dependency by changing his daily diet. And he was first or second overall AG champ at Kona, along with plenty of other races.

http://www.samiinkinen.com/post/86875777832/becoming-a-bonk-proof-triathlete-fat-chance


So yeah, If you're used to being high-carb, low carb is bad. But if you come around the long way and slowly up the ratio of your overall calories coming from fat, you gradually need fewer and fewer carbs and don't shock your body. Everybody wants a fast solution, so that's where they run into problems. As you can see from the write up, Sami took 6 months to a year to gradually adjust his metabolism.

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All of the replies so far are missing something. One of the main reasons sugar/HFCS/refined high GI carbs are so addictive is their effect on your neurotransmitters.

However, sugar/HFCS/high GI carbs have a completely altered neurotransmitter response if consumed during exercise.

Additionally, if you are underfueling by even *a little,* you are potentially missing out on a higher quality/intensity workout, and 100's of additional calories burned (therefore hampering weight loss).

This is coming from someone with a MAJOR swet tooth btw, and I completely understand eliminating processed carbs to eliminate cravings, but I'm telling you that I fuel my 2-3+ hour rides with gu, sports drink, etc and it does not make me want anything sweet post-workout whatsoever. And yes, I'm still able to make race weight (down 13 lbs since Dec 1st).

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-Physiojoe
Instagram: @thephysiojoe
Cycling coach, Elite racer on Wooster Bikewerks p/b Wootown Bagels

I ran a half marathon without drinking any water and did a full with ONLY water - no sugar, no gels, no fuel, just water. Walled it hard at mile 22ish though

I train regularly with nothing but water - sometimes if it is epic hot (Florida) I will even add ice....but that is mainly to throw on my head.



All the gatorade, gels, etc make my stomach hurt like hell when working out. Sports drinks dont even quench my thirst, just make me more thirsty for water

It should make you thirsty for more, that’s part of the point of the salt. Think about salty chips, when you eat them you get thirsty.

Just a terrible misunderstanding really Nobbie - please don't hold it against me..............


Yes I know you did not say he should avoid dates. But you should have also said he should avoid Jelly Babies if he is wanting to loose weight. Dates are better than jelly babies, I guess this is the point I was making. I think the OP has asked the question about avoiding sugar, I think he should be asking a slightly different question about what he should be eating when training?? I think dates, or fruit generally is a much better solution for food while training than jelly babies. Jelly babies should be used when checking race nutrition and for racing.

Happy to be proven wrong - but I do believe natural foods with sugar content are the way to go for training food, rather than processed foods which have zero nutritional value, can contain bad chemicals/colourings and are much better when racing.

You are right though, they do both contain sugar.

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I feel more confused now than anything I think. I can understand why Maffetone works, assuming their is truth in your bodies ability to adapt to different fuel sources over time. IF the training methods have to also be Maffetone, I struggle a bit more with this concept because I cannot handle only steady state cycling and running. I need some degree of variety. I still do this to have fun! I can also appreciate needing carbs to perform, but this is counter intuitive to Maffetone OR is a shortcut for fueling rather than optimizing your bodies ability to perform at its most efficient. But this all assumes the Maf theory is true. If we assume it's not true, then what is the best nutrition plan to cut sugar cravings AND see a large weight loss while also making performance gains?

Maybe it just my not understanding the processes going on in the body, but my understanding has always been that the sugar doesn’t help you performance better, but it helps you spare glycogen so that you can maintain that level of performance longer. I’m not suggesting to under fuel long intense workouts, but it seems to me that most other times carbs during a workout aren’t really needed.

Being hungry is part of the game, but I allow myself a little bit of sugar just to satisfy my cravings. For example, I make ice cream at home every week (one of my hobbies) but when I eat it I make sure I measure 1/2 cup or less, that way I don't mess up and it is part of my regular diet. I also keep "healthier" sweet stuff for cravings. So dark chocolate covered almonds for example, and I only allow myself 2 after lunch or dinner.

Also, let yourself enjoy a big dessert once a week.

Those are the only times I allow myself to consume sugar thought. The rest of my diet is extremely healthy.

Check out Racing Weight -- no affiliation, but here's a link: http://www.amazon.com/...Series/dp/1934030996

Maybe this is well-known around here. I found it a useful and reasonable guide. It doesn't make you commit to unsustainable practices.

Even outside of glycogen depletion, it is relatively agreed upon that the salivary presence of carbohydrate increases performance (and reduces PE at a given intensity): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...articles/PMC3916844/

Additionally, I think you would be hard pressed to find someone who doesn't recover faster from a given workout with carbohydrates ingested vs. no carbohydrate ingestion during exercise.

If you can recover faster, you can train harder/longer the next day, therefore leading to increased performance with greater potential for weight loss.

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-Physiojoe
Instagram: @thephysiojoe
Cycling coach, Elite racer on Wooster Bikewerks p/b Wootown Bagels

I actually didn't know any of that. I just learned something new today, thanks.

Yeah - "bonking" happens a little before you actually run out of glycogen. Your body goes into conservation mode when you get low and denies you access to it. But when it gets a signal that more glycogen is on its way - i.e. it senses sugar on the tongue - it immediately releases the existing glycogen for use! I experienced this on my very first 70.3. I bonked with about .75 miles to go. Luckily I was only about 50 feet from an aid station. I felt just awful and walked that 50 feet to the table, grabbed one tiny cup of perform and boom! instantly I had enough in me to run that 3/4 mile.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
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A lot of info here in this thread. Keep it simple, cut out processed sugar except pre, during(workouts > 90 minutes), and post workout. This way you have energy for your workouts and can refuel after. Drink water before meals and eat more fruits & veggies. Cut out junk food & drinks, especially calorie dense ones(soda, juice).

As a physiology nerd, I would love to see an MRI image of your brain's dopamine activity in those few minutes...I'd wager it was cocaine-esque :)

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-Physiojoe
Instagram: @thephysiojoe
Cycling coach, Elite racer on Wooster Bikewerks p/b Wootown Bagels

Not sure how you know how many calories you are burning as well as their specific make up, what type of equipment are you hooked up to while you are running?
In regard to the "advise" from your helpers at CU, I would suggest you may want to be very careful in use of their advise, as it could be harmful to your health :-)
Some actual FACTS you may want to consider:
Many Elite endurance athletes are doing quite well on low carb, or ultra low carb diets with high fat diets, including Dr (yes DOCTOR) Amanda Stevens, who recently did a lifetime best 8:52 IM, at IMAZ 2015, at age 39! The overall amateur winner of the 1st IM Maryland spoke about his use of this type of diet in his Slowtwitch interview. There are certainly hundreds, quite possibly thousands successfully using this type of diet.
Additionally, the human species progressed through well over 99% of their existence on this type of diet. The addition of high carbs and sugars is relatively recent, as in the last few hundred years.
AND- all of the following diseases have been strongly correlated to the cultural change to high carb diets- Alzheimer's, diabetes, and many cancers. Look up Dr Johannes Coy, and you will find that for over a decade many cancer patients in Germany have been put on no sugar diets, with a complete cure rate over 5x higher than Chemo and radiation therapy. The science behind this is well documented and easy to find. I also recommend you actually read Maffetone's work and his published case studies, they are well done and quite compelling, and, oh yea, he is not selling ANYTHING.
For better or worse, humans make a lot of unhealthy choices, such as drinking, drug use, AND sugar addiction. You are welcome to your choices, but please do not attempt to rationalize it by ignoring and denying readily available facts :-) :-)

Physiojoe925- While I agree with most of what you are saying, I do not agree with your implied conclusion that glycogen depletion is enevitable in endurance training/racing. There is no question that humans have far more slowtwitch fibers then fast twitch fibers. Biopsies on LA showed conclusively that his success was from his ability to utilize a unusually high number of these fibers. Slowtwitch fibers also work more effectively on fats. If you commit to low carbs, your body quickly develops very high efficiency at fat utilization, which avoids glycogen depletion and the subsequent need to restore them- a loosing battle.
In summary- if you fuel with carbs and sugars, your body will utilize those until depletion, even if you slow down.
If you fuel with fats, your body will utilize those, which are virtually impossible to deplete, even when you speed up.
I prefer to fuel from the tank with 40,000 plus calories as opposed to the one with 2000 calories.
My recovery from high work efforts has been at least as good as when I was doing the typical carb routine, and I know many others who report the same.
The mistake people make is thinking just bu going slow you will burn fats, even if you fuel with sugars. That will NOT work. You will tend to utilize what you fuel with.
Hope this helps, and encourage you to try it. Good luck

I hesitate to beat this horse to death, but this "natural" thing really drives me crazy.

The sugars which are the primary ingredient of those dates are effectively identical to the sugars in the jelly beans.

The dates also have a little bit of a few other things: some fiber (which will slightly extend the absorption time of those carbs, which has some other helpful health consequences but of which you should be getting plenty elsewhere in your diet, and which has the unfortunate side effect of stimulating bowel movements, not optimal during workouts), and small quantities of other nutrients (which you are likely also able to get elsewhere in your diet).

You could eat yourself to gross obesity just by eating dates, and the inflammatory responses and other downsides of sugar (and especially fructose) are absolutely caused by date sugar, too. Think about it this way: what if sugar manufacturers switched from beets to dates, do you think that would make it okay to consume significant quantities of that sugar? Or is your notion that something about the refining process tranforms good "natural" sugar to bad less-natural sugar? Or is the only difference between the dates and the candy some very small additional amounts of fiber and micronutrients?

Personally, the reason I'm happy to eat apples is that they contain modest sugars, in a discrete portion with lots of fiber and some micronutrients as a bonus. It's not because I think "natural" apple sugar is somehow better than any other sugar (and in some key respects I think it's probably worse).

 (Quote) "I do not agree with your implied conclusion that glycogen depletion is inevitable in endurance training/racing."

If glycogen depletion were not inevitable, then we could all run our IM mary at our stand-alone mary pace. Clearly, this never happens which leads me to conclude that the reason our iron marys are at least 20-30 min slower than our open mary times is b/c we have depleted a fair amount of our glycogen during the S and B segments. If glycogen depletion did not occur, we could always run at race pace, every day, with no degradation from many days in a row of running. I'm not aware of anyone, regardless of what he/she eats, who can do this:)

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

As I stated, glycogen depletion will of course occur IF you fuel with carbs/sugars. It can be avoided if you fuel with fats and train properly to become efficient in fat utilization.
You might want to consider muscle fatigue as a factor in IM vs stand alone marathons. It is well established that the stronger the athletes core strength is, the less the differential between IM and stand alone times. There are many examples of pro and amateur athletes where this is closer to 10 minutes. It is also worth noting that the vast majority of IM athletes attempt to fuel on sugar, and they will, of course end up with depleted Glycogen stores and compromised performance.

IntenseOne wrote:

Not sure how you know how many calories you are burning as well as their specific make up, what type of equipment are you hooked up to while you are running?

If you do not know how this data is obtained you are lacking basic understanding of how any of this kind of research is done. Here are my test results: http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...olic%20test;#5841283

[/font]


They test and develop nutrition and race nutrition plans for the best cyclists runners and triathletes in the world. Including world champions and Tour de France GC contenders and stage winners. and you think I should disregard their advice in favor of yours? You think they are more likely to be hazardous to my health than you?


There is no way she did this without supplementing sugars during the race.

IntenseOne wrote:

There is no question that humans have far more slowtwitch fibers then fast twitch fibers.

Completely false. http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...post=5847205#5847205

IntenseOne wrote:

You are welcome to your choices, but please do not attempt to rationalize it by ignoring and denying readily available facts :-) :-)

You've been drinking a lot of kool-aid.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

RowToTri- you did not note in your original post that your numbers were from a metabolic testing session, you seemed to imply a training run, which is why I asked how the numbers were derived.
Take whatever advise you want, but when someone tells be something that is clearly false- i.e. Racing and training per Maffetone's method's is dangerous, should be challenged for several reasons.
You, are completely wrong about Dr Amanda Steven's and her diet and specifics of her race fuel are well documented as part of a detailed study. Just because you don't understand basic physiology does not mean it is not true.
In regard to slowtwitch fibers, this is far from an absolute science, but here is a summary of the widest accepted theory
"Those are your three different types of muscles fibers. You’re born with these fibers in certain proportions, and they will affect how successful you are at either developing as a long distance guy, or a sprinter guy. Most bodies have 50% of Type 1 and 50% of Type 2 (A and B), but many elite athletes (world class marathon runners, Olympic sprinters) can have up to 80% of one or the other. Obviously a sprinter with 80% fast twitch fibers will have a better chance of being fast than somebody with only 30% fast twitch fibers."
I don't drink kook-aid, it contains too much sugar!
While I know it is easier for you to snipe at anything that challenges your preconceived notions, you may actually want to read a few of the things I referenced, or try dramandastevens.com, but lighten up, read some of the many other posts from SUCCESFUL low carb, high fat athletes- and good luck to you

This article may clear up a few things in this discussion: http://jap.physiology.org/content/102/1/183


You are assuming slow twitch (type I) fibers are primarily responsible for the performance of an endurance athlete (incorrect). "both type I and type IIa fibers are recruited from the start of exercise at 75% maximal oxygen uptake in the fasted state. However, there are also data to indicate that in the later stages of a high-intensity endurance exercise bout, additional type IIa motor units are progressively recruited to compensate for fatigue in glycogen-depleted type I fibers (19)."


Notice they mention "glycogen depleted type I fibers." This indicates type I fibers work on more than just fat.


Also, since glycogen is a major fuel of type IIa fibers, and the paper indicates "The data show that carbohydrate intake resulted in glycogen sparing in type IIa fibers," this shows that consuming carbohydrate during exercise increases performance.


Keep in mind the study was at 75% VO2- an intensity very applicable for triathletes. The benefits of carb consumption during exercise are even more pronounced at road/mtb racing intensities (which inevitably includes much time at VO2 max and above).

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-Physiojoe
Instagram: @thephysiojoe
Cycling coach, Elite racer on Wooster Bikewerks p/b Wootown Bagels

Another untrue statement! http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...post=5856008#5856008



Between you, an internet fad and world-renowned professionals at CU Boulder Sports Medicine and Performance center who worked with me 1-on-1... I'll go with the latter.



There is no race report I can find on her site. Where is the information that says she raced an IM in 8:59 while intaking no sugars during the race? I do not believe it.



I sent you to a statement from one of the most respected sports physiologists that untrained individuals have between 40% and 60% fast twitch fibers to refute your claim that "There is no question that humans have far more slow twitch fibers than fast twitch fibers". You respond with an unattributed quote that actually confirms Dr. Coggins' statement, and then you try to move the goal post that highly trained endurance or anaerobic athletes can alter their proportion of fibers. Yes, that is true.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

So all of this great information, and honestly I appreciate all of your time in providing your thoughts, what is the best way for me to maximize both weight loss and training efficiencies. I know they cannot both occur at their optimum, as the needs for one canabalize the needs for the other. But since I'm not going to podium at worlds this summer, what should I focus on to maximize my results in both weight loss and performance?

I would suggest talking to a real nutritionist, which I am not! But in general, I think you need to eat a wide variety of foods, including protein, fat and carbs. After long workouts make sure you get some carbs and protein in immediately after to help recover quickly (replenishment of glycogen slows down significantly if you wait more than 20 minutes after a long workout to re-fuel.

You can definitely cut out all supplemental sugar outside of long training sessions and races.

Make sure at meals, eat slowly, and stop when you stop feeling hungry. You will get hungry between meals. But it should not be awful. You should just be a little hungry a lot of the time. When I was a lightweight rower I used to tell myself that feeling was my body making progress towards race weight. If you get really ravenous between meals, eat some healthy small snacks. It could be fatty or protein rich snacks that are very filling like nuts or avocado, but make sure you are getting enough carbs in to fuel the training. Doing this, and making sure you eat just enough at meals but don't over-do it (and don't under-do it) and you fuel during and post exercise properly, you should be good! The goal is to run a slight caloric deficit, but not too much or your training will suffer too much.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

Dude- I am done with you and your defensive negativism.
Please re-read the original post. The question was for help on reducing sugars, not for an unbased rant on sugar addiction.
Your statements that Maffetone's work work is an Internet fad is so ridiculous it is beyond comprehension.
ANYONE who states that a low carb, high fat approach cannot work for endurance athletes is at best ignorant, and if it was actually stated by officials at CU, very unfortunate and unprofessional, as it ignores clearly documented facts to the contrary.
A sugar based approach can also clearly work, but the potential side effects of such an approach put into question the sustainability and overall wisdom of doing this.
Try to be open minded, you may be surprised how helpful it can be.
If you want more specifics on Dr Amanda Stevens, you can look up her results, you can go to Maffetone's website and see the 12 month study that she was the subject of, and you could listen to some of her podcasts on the subject. FYI- she is far from the only one who has done this, but your ignorance does not make this untrue, sorry.
As you seem to have no idea who Maffetone is, you may want to know that Mark Allen gives him significant credit for his IM success, as do MANY other highly successful athletes and coaches.

Physiojoe125- no argument with the data or study, however both are based on the assumption that you have to fuel on cho, and certainly if you do the results of the study apply.
But you do not have to fuel on cho. Check out Maffetone's website and look at his 12 month study on an elite professional IM athlete. The subject of this study was Dr. Amanda Stevens, and it clearly proves there are alternative choices. While switching to a low cho approach may not necessarily provide faster race results (they did for Steven's but there certainly could have been other factors), this approach certainly does not inhibit race potential, and likely has important benefits to overall health, significantly reducing risk of Alzheimer's, type 2 diabetes, and several common forms of cancer. There are many studies showing these health benefits from Maffetone, Johannes Coy, and many others- not hard to find on google
Excellent posts, but there is indeed more than 1 way to skin this cat 😀

Do you have a link to the study? I looked on the website you mentioned and only saw a brief article on treatment of Stevens muscle imbalance. Nothing on her fueling strategy during a race. Suspect she likely ate some carbs while racing even if she trained herself to be fat adapted.

Maybe the OP should have been just been Sugar; the good, bad and ugly. We have dramatically reduced it across the board and seen a huge benefit in the whole family; 3 young sons very athletic and the two of us.

The adults have lost a combined 30 lbs in 6 months and boys are way better behaved.

Just convinced an employer friend to remove the soda machines from his office. He was blown away by the feedback from supervisors.

Totally agree with many of the comments. White death it is.

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STIndiana
America Multi-Sport, Inc.
America's Half June 10, 2017
USAT RD Century Club
http://www.americamultisport.com

I second the request for this study, I also was unable to find it on Maffetone's site, or elsewhere. IntenseOne needs to pony up a link.

From the ST interview with Stevens, she says this: "At IM Arizona I only had 1100 TOTAL calories, 36oz of water on the bike, a few sips of water on the run and no salt. Yes, it can be done!"

Figuring 8 hours for the bike & run, that works out to be 137 calories/hour. So she didn't do the race on no nutrition, but that is a very low intake. The interview doesn't specify what those calories came from.

Let's see that link for the Dr. Stevens study. We're not finding it.

I've not thought about the in training bit but cut added sugars out of my normal diet best I can. You've got me thinking though about checking my Gatorade Endurance concentrate I use.

Separate food from fuel. The sugars in your drinks, as long as they are taken during training, are unlikely to have any detrimental impact on your diet. You need fuel, worry about the sugars and other food you may be eating outside of training.

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On the internet, you can be anything you want. It is a pity so many people choose to be stupid.

Coming off an injury that has more or less sidelined me for a year (and added some lbs), this is what worked for me getting me back to race weight. I agree largely with the advice that RowToTri has given you. Before anyone can properly address the general question of "should I eliminate sugar in workouts", we would need to see what you normally eat during the course of a day.

Almost--I start off day with 4-6 ounces of baked sweet potato, 2 eggs and hemp seeds. Coffee with unsweetened coconut milk (full fat) and a little stevia. Having eaten this, I get my carbohydrate intake that I need to get me through morning. I also eat this just before a long bike ride and therefore don't have to start fueling with normal training nutrition (bars, dates) until an hour thirty or so into the ride. I typically take in 250 calories of nutrition after that. I'm 5'3" and 110 lbs.

At night--I rarely eat carbohydrates--just a ton of non-starchy veggies, some fat and protein. I usually eat a HUGE Salad as my main meal post workout. I almost always top off a long workout with a 4:1 Protein:Carb snack of about 200-300 calories

Alcohol (including more than one glass of wine at night) makes me FAT.

"Sugars"-- Take them just before workouts, and if long workouts, take during. I never restrict here. My training and performance has never suffered and I when I need to drop weight, I adhere to timing my "sugars" aka "simple carbs" for just before and during your workout. I eat tons of non starchy vegetables with lunch and dinner. I cook most meals and stay away from processed food. Watch the alcohol intake and limit carbs at night. The rest (the weight drop) should take care of itself. I think your question is a little more complicated because in order to reach your optimal weight, you need to look at what you are eating outside of training.

I don't think that in order to lose weight, you have to overcomplicate or do something as radical as cutting out sugar during moderate-hard training.

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leslie myers
http://www.foodsensenow.com

I also find it funny that they are bragging about low water intake. If I were one of her competitors I would think "thanks for giving up 20-30+ minutes because you chose to under fuel and under hydrate" :)

A quote from the site...I guess I'll tell the pro/1/2 fields I race in that we need to stay at the fat burning pace for the 80 miles. No need to attack and risk a sugar craving.
You should exercise regularly at or below your MAF HR – this can be walking, running, cycling, or swimming. The closer you exercise to your MAF HR, the more body fat you will burn. When you go above this zone and your body is over worked, it requires fast-burn fuel (carbs) leading to more sugar cravings and overtraining risks.

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-Physiojoe
Instagram: @thephysiojoe
Cycling coach, Elite racer on Wooster Bikewerks p/b Wootown Bagels

checked out nuun tablets - they look expensive. Right now, I just mix gatorade with water (its very cheap) for my rides and runs. I know gatorade has a lot of sugar. What are folks' thoughts on gatorade?...any recommendations for a better (still relatively inexpensive) drink to use?

SO just for the sake of starting an argument, are we then to assume that fat burning is better at a lower HR? When we say "fat burning" are we talking actual use of excess body fat, thus lowering BMI, or are we talking about what the body uses for fuel, which may or may not be one in the same? Because that would directly contradict the calorie in vs calorie out theory, which I thought we have decided here on ST to be an absolute.

You do burn more fat at low Z1-Z2 intensities than you do at harder efforts. As effort levels go up, the amount of carbs you burn goes up and the amounts of fats you burn goes down because you cannot burn fats fast enough to fuel the amount of energy you are demanding. At very hard efforts fat burning goes down to 0. As a triathlete, the majority of your training should be done at Z2, so you should be burning fat and at the same time, training your fat burning system so that it can become even more efficient and burn fat faster as you get fitter, allowing you to rely on a higher % of fat at the same pace, or go faster on the same amount of fat.

The calorie in, calorie out thing is true, but for the sake of feeling ok, and particularly for athletes who want to perform well in training and races, you cannot rely on that alone. If you were to burn all of your stored glycogen doing high-intensity training, and not replace it, at first you would be burning little fat. Soon you would "bonk". If you do not replace that glycogen, you will remain in a glycogen-depleted state, and the energy, even for just daily activities and brain function. Your blood-glucose levels will drop. A couple things start happening at this point. One is your body will start converting fat into glucose. It is theoretically possible that your body can then turn that glucose into muscle glycogen, but it is unlikely because that only happens when blood glucose is too high, which is unlikely to occur in this situation. More likely is that blood glucose levels will remain far too low, especially if you attempt to continue training, which will feel very very terrible at this point. Within a few days, your body will start to use fats to produce ketone bodies in your blood to use for energy. This state is called ketosis and is typically associated with fasting, starvation or diabetes, but is becoming popular as an intentional state with people such as IntenseOne (this is the diet he is advocating). In this state, since glycogen is not available to you, and you have very limited glucose which your brain needs to function, most of your energy will come from processing these ketone bodies. As soon as your body has access to glycogen again (because you started eating carbohydrates again such as bread, rice, sweet potatoes, whatever), it will convert back to glycolysis again.

That is a long-winded way of saying running a caloric deficit will end up with weight loss, but how you do it matters a great deal, particularly if you are concerned with athletic results.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

Makes sense. 1000 calories of broccoli is not the same as 1000 calories of soda for example.

I've come to the conclusion that added sugars for the most part are not necessary. If I cut added sugars it's likely because I'm cutting a lot of the garbage that I currently eat and probably means I'm having a better diet of lean proteins, healthy fats and veggies. I don't plan to totally eliminate carbs, but if I get most of my carbs from fruits and sweet potatoes, I should be better off than getting my carbs from white breads, pasta's and cookies, which have tons of sugar. I will track calories and work at a deficit of net calories, so making sure that I still properly refuel from calories utilized in workouts. Hopefully this plan will help me see some serious weight loss, but also an increase in performance simultaneously.

Also, the Phinney study that someone on here mentioned as research that shows ketogenic diets are good for athletes was this:

6 untrained, overweight subjects. At the beginning they were tested, walking on a treadmill to exhaustion. The walking on the treadmill was at 76% VO2 max, which is about the effort level than what a well-trained ironman triathlete races at and is already burning a high percentage of fat vs. carbs. Yet this was just walking for these subjects and average time to exhaustion was 168 minutes. They were restricted to 50 to 750 calories per day of meat and fat and provided vitamin supplements. After 6 weeks they had lost an average of about 23 pounds each. Walking on the treadmill at the same pace was now only 60% of VO2 max for them, so super-easy effort and time to exhaustion was extended to 249 minutes.

There was no control group that ate carbs, which means there is no way to scientifically attribute causes to the results.

So how do we know what contributed to the extended time to exhaustion? Could it be that because they lost massive amounts of weight from calorie restriction that mild walking became a lot easier than it was before?? Could it be attributed to the training effect over 6 weeks starting with untrained individuals? These would also contribute to a higher % of fat utilization because of reduced effort on the second test. There is no reason to believe that ketosis was just a magic fuel that made things easier and made them go longer.

Starting out with people who are at 76% VO2 max is hardly relevant to even mildly trained athletes. These are people who are MASSIVELY out of shape.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

Sounds like a smart plan

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

Here you go

http://36iusc2tb88y2g492si2bqd1.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/...Poster-Autosaved.pdf

Name of athlete not mentioned, but there is only one elite female athlete who concluded her season with a 8:52 IM, you can check the 2015 IMAZ results to confirm

While the specific make up of the 130 calories is not noted, it is reasonable to assume it would not be far from the 12% ratio of cho she was training with, based on consistency of Maffetone's methodology and purpose of the study. If you want to see the detailed paper, just email him :-)

If your skeptical, that is a good thing. If you are open minded, give it a try- you have nothing to loose. If you decide to try it, do it right, Maffetone has a lot of good info on what is needed

She's not running out of fat reserves during the course of a race so why would the 130 cal/hr be of the same makeup of her normal diet of 12%CHO, 13%protein and 75% fat? It was almost certainly close to 100% CHO as that is what you run out of during races. It would not make sense to eat fat during an ironman, much less mostly fat! You would be replacing what you already have plenty of and ignoring what you have run out of.

And 130kcal/hr is not absurdly low for a lightweight female triathlete. Her previous number is unbelievably high - 450/hr after the swim - probably higher on the bike. This is more than a large professional male triathlete can handle without gastric distress. No wonder she had severe gastro issues! Just eliminating all the gastro issues from excessive over-fueling during the race could account for her performance increase, but because this is not a controlled study there is no way to know. At IMAZ she consumed 0 calories on the swim. If we divide up the remaining calories at a constant rate/hr on the bike and run, that means 144 kcal/hr. It's more likely that the calories are a little skewed towards the bike. That IS pretty low, but it is not absurd for a small, light, female who is highly trained at ironman intensity so she is highly efficient at burning fat at 70%-75% VO2max and is able to get the race over with quite quickly compared to slower, heavier, under-trained, inefficient amateurs.

And as I mentioned this is not controlled study. This is an anecdote with lots of complicating factors. It's also hard for me to believe that a pro triathlete can put in 15-25 hours of training per week on 2700 kcal per day. Say she does 3 hours per day of relatively low intensity training at 650 kcal/hr and all other caloric needs add up to 1500 kcal/day that is 3,450 kcal/day just to maintain weight. This even sounds like an underestimate to me. Something is fishy. Maybe he is not including fueling during training and recovery food after training...

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

Speaking to recovery meals after training, something I always suck at, what are folks typically eating immediately after a session? Say a 60-90 minute run or a pretty tough bike with intervals at near FTP for 60-90 minutes?

the forum is not an appropriate place to give you a detailed education so that you can understand why the specifics of calorie intake are critical in what your body will metabolize for muscle contractions. The study summary I provided has an excellent bibliography- if you are not just trolling, and actually are interested in this subject, I suggest you read some of the referenced materials.
Ultimately, if this will, or will not work for you is a very simple process of testing. 40 years ago the type of communication we are now enjoying was hardly imaginable, yet here we are! Ironically, the physiology and principles involved in low carb/high fat are not new- but were the norm for the majority of time our species has existed! Have fun!

I just have a glass of chocolate milk

From all your posts, I think you're just eating too much outside of training. Less crap food, more clean food. KISS

I'm both openminded and skeptical at the same time. I think it's possible that something real is going on here, and I'm intrigued by the Sami Inkinen story as well.

What you've referenced is not a study, it's a case report from a poster session. So an interesting anecdote but far from a real study. I am openminded enough to have listened to the entire podcast with Maffetone and Dr. Stevens. FYI, she mentioned that she fueled on the bike with honey and on the run with flat coke. So essentially sugar, and a bit of caffeine from the Coke. She mentioned she also took in some fat but didn't specify what or how much.

I think it's interesting that Sami didn't change his training, and it wasn't all low intensity low HR stuff, and he appears to have also gotten the same fat burning effect. I do find the Maffetone HR stuff a but cultish. As a 62 year old male with a relatively high max HR for my age of ~190, I'd end up with a training ceiling of 123 bpm, factoring in my age and putting back 5 bpm for being well trained and healthy. For perspective, I might average a HR of 135-150 for long endurance rides & runs. I like to be competitive in my performance, but mostly training and racing is about having fun and staying fit. All I can say is if Iimited my training to that HR ceiling it would be incredibly tedious, slow, and unenjoyable, so don't think I'll be trying that anytime soon even if it does have long term benefits.

A clear takeaway of the podcast with Dr. Stevens is that she had been chronically overtrained, and for her a bout of low intensity training might have been just what the doctor ordered to restore her body and her motivation.

I'm not too nitpicky about recovery drinks/meals. I make sure it has both carbs and protein. I often add some powdered L-glutamine to it, an amino acid to help with muscle recovery. I pick whatever I have around. Might be orange juice with the l-glutamine and some nuts. Might be milk and crackers and hummus. The amount I eat is dictated by how hungry I feel.

You can definitely be more scientific about it, but this works for me.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

This is not an appropriate place to talk about what you should eat during the race and why? Seems to me this is exactly the place! If you think I am a troll, you do not know the definition. It is more likely that you are a troll, but I believe you are instead just in a bubble. I am familiar with Phinney's work on this subject which is referenced on the poster. Most of his studies have been uncontrolled and he draws erroneous and unsupported conclusions to support his prior biases. His one controlled study of trained cyclist he claims as support that ketogenic diets are a benefit for competitive cyclists, touting that at 60% to 65% VO2max average performance was not adversely affected, however he ignores the fact that that effort level is way below race intensity and that in his study the ketogenic athletes had deteriorated performance at higher intensities while the "high" carb athletes had no deterioration in high-effort performance, but even THEY were restricted from eating as much carbs as they should and might have done even better if allowed to supplement even more carbs. Also the standard deviation of the change in performance of the ketogenic athletes was so high as to make the results unbelievable, even at low effort levels.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

LOL- I am 61, and also have an HR profile that does not fit the 180-age, although in fairness to Maffetone he designed it to be safely in the aerobic zone, meaning for some it will be in the very low aerobic zone, for others at the high end. You can perform blood lactate testing with a Lactate Pro to determine the specific point when your metabolism transitions to dominate sugar burning.
In my personal use of this protocol (low carb/high fat), I have had very similar results to those noted by Sami. Most of the year I train easier, in my case an HR of about 135, running or riding. 4 weeks before a big event I do a 3 week "over reach" block, in which I only observe HR for reference, but train to PE, pace and speed- followed by a taper week. I have also noted that since switching to low carb, high fat- my respiratory rate stays lower even when I push harder, which is a indicator that I am not moving into sugar metabolism. I started this diet change (training and meals) last October, and have not yet raced, but have done a couple of 8 hour bike-run bricks at 70.3 effort- (HR 155ish), eating only a mix of sunflower seeds, walnuts and blue cheese (about 600-700 kcal), and have had no drop off in energy- and my recovery has been in line with when I used sugar based nutrition.
The referenced material is indeed a case report from a poster session, but it is in fact a summary from a detailed study done by Maffetone. I have not asked for the study detail, but he may share, depending on his agreement with the study subject :-)

That's not exactly what is going on. As an athlete piles on more and more carbs in their daily diet, they become less and less sensitive to insulin. And then they need more carbs for insulin to extract the same amount of energy out of the food. It's the same process as a kid becoming diabetic from drinking cokes all day. The body becomes numb to insulin, because there's so much insulin being created in response to all the sugar coming in. Stevens wasn't choosing to eat 450 sugar cals per hour, she was having to eat 450 sugar cals per hour to generate the same energy to move forward at the same speed as her competition.

Since that is way too much fuel to digest hour after hour, high-carb dependent athletes like Stevens (and many of us) blow up a while into the run. We either get sick from trying to eat all the sugar we need, or we bonk from our stomachs shutting down right before getting sick and now we can't make the energy to keep going.

The trick that is proposed here is to eat way less sugar and simple carbs in your daily diet, get those calories from fat and slow carbs instead, which in turn increases your body's sensitivity to insulin, which in turn makes your body able to keep running on less carbs coming in.

There's also the problem that carbs coming in signals your body to turn off fat burning, because you don't need fat because you have carbs. So again, less sugar coming down the pipe turns the fat burning furnace on more and more.

In Steven's case, she swapped out the carbs in her daily diet for fat, which raised her insulin sensitivity, which in turn lowered her need for carbs and upped her internal fat usage for fuel at the same time.

The quoted statement above doesn't pan out exactly how you'd think. If she just cut the carbs during the race before fixing her metabolism, she'd bonk. At her past metabolic state, she had to have those carbs to race at all. It's fixing the underlying metabolic issues by adjusting the daily diet that worked and shifted her carb needs to where they are now.

People can go get tested to see how high of a carb burner they are. The Tri Shop in Dallas did it for me a while back and I came back super high, and also recently came back from blood testing as nearly pre-diabetic. All this while being super fit and low body fat from training for Ironmans. The big giveaway is not being able to have a strong workout without gatorade or other sugary stuff. I didn't understand the impact of the high sugar burn rate at the time, because I was way more focused on FTP. But FTP is useless if you've bonked because you can't feed the engine fast enough.

A mistake people make trying to fix themselves is removing too many carbs too soon and/or not replacing their calories with fat. Go slow and enjoy the process.

BTW, "1000 calories from soda is not the same as 1000 calories from broccoli" is definitely true, but if it took as long to digest those soda calories as it took to digest the broccoli ones, they'd be a hell of a lot more alike. :)

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Zen and the Art of Triathlon. Strava Workout Log
Interviews with Chris McCormack, Helle Frederikson, Angela Naeth, and many more.
http://www.zentriathlon.com

+1

These threads tend to end up in the weeds, there is some nice grass in there as well:)

My food for thought:


Fat burns in a glucose flame; taking availability out of the equation it is largely an intensity dependent relationship


Fuel workouts in line with the proportional demand and supply, but be ready to accommodate for your ability to assimilate

Although not mutual exclusive: separate fitness/session/performance goals, health, and weight loss in dietary considerations. You may be able to envelop all of them, but at the price of dilution.

Translating and generalizing research in terms of diet/performance is problematic at best; there are massive subjective variables

Cheers!

Regarding insulin sensitivity, it appears the opposite to what you say is true. High carb, low fat diets actually increase insulin sensitivity.

http://www.rice.edu/~jenky/sports/Insulin.athlete.html


and


http://www.ajconline.org/article/0002-9149(92)90981-4/abstract?cc=y=


I eat all the carbs I want. And I want a lot. And I burn a lot of fat. In Zone 1 I burn 0.87 g/min of fat and in Zone 2 0.86 g/min. This is comparable to the amount of fat burned by some grand tour cyclists they tested and shared the results with me (anonymously of course). The biggest difference was those cyclists kept it level into zone 3 and I dropped to 0.71. Still not terrible, and improvable with the right training. So obviously my high-carb diet has not ruined my ability to burn fat and made me "carb dependent". Inkinen's results of something like 750kcal/hr (if memory serves) from fat translates to 1.39g/min. I think that is pretty un-precedented. I would love to see an expert physiologist's analysis of his results and methodology.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

So what actually does increase one's ability to burn fat then? A bigger aerobic engine? Sorry, it's tough to keep up with a lot of the more scientific discussion here and I'm trying to understand it as someone newer to endurance sports and nutrition.

Yep, the consumption of fat unequivocally (temporarily) increases insulin resistance (as well as noticeably slowing down how quickly carbs are digested). The suggestion to the contrary earlier in this thread belongs in the category of interesting (and ultimately incorrect) speculation rather than an empirical observation. The notion that one would want to eat a high-fat snack while working out/racing kind of blows my mind. (I've eaten plenty of high-fat fuel while alpine climbing and winter camping, but those are far longer duration, lesser intensity activities, i.e. you're trying to fuel multi-day efforts.)

As for what (if anything) increases one's ability to burn fat, I don't have any particular insight there.

And I would be careful throwing around stats such as "complete cure rate over 5x higher than chemo." Don't get me wrong I am all for low/no sugar but to say it can cure cancer is ridiculous. There are also many documented cases of people who had rather slow-grown low grade cancer who refused chemo and conventional medicine in place of "no sugar diet" and are no longer alive. I believe there was a well documented case of a woman Oprah Winfrey interviewed a few years ago with breast cancer she refused conventional treatment and died soon after. Oprah practically begged her, "who not try both etc etc.

...to clarify "complete cure rate" in the context intended are the number of treated patient who are found to be completely clear and free of the specific cancer 5 years after conclusion of treatment. The data in Germany, where ultra low (zero) sugar diets (not intended to be used while fully healthy and active) as a treatment for certain specific cancers are used, has shown to be 5x greater than chemo or radiation therapy. The reason for this is actually quite simple (although technically very detailed) and explained in detail if you do a google search on Dr Johannes Coy anti cancer diet. To be careful, and clear, this is NOT a cure for ALL cancers, but is very effective with cancers of a specific cell type. While it will in fact kill 100% of the cancer cells, something chemo and radiation therapies often do not do, none of these treatments restore already damaged organs and cells, that takes time, something some patients may not have. The main point here, is that while our bodies certainly need sugars, our genetically preferred diet was in the 15-30% cho range, not the 50-70% that has become quite common today. So while sugar/cho is essential, too much can be very harmful.
Thank you for pointing out the need for clarification.
BTW- I had no idea how high my sugar intake was until I did a food log and the math. I thought I was closer to 30, but was much closer to 70. The eye opener and accounting was due to being diagnosed pre-diabetic! Three months after overhauling my diet, my blood tests were back well within the normal range :-)

Spend a lot of time training in the zone where you are burning a lot of fat. The more you use and stress your fat burning system, the more efficient it will become. It would be particulary good if you can pinpoint the spot where your fat burning drops off and spend a lot of time just barely below that, but absent a metabolic test, use Coggin's methods to calculate your training zones and spend a lot of time mid zone 2. It should feel quite easy, which causes a lot of people to do their longer workouts too fast much of the time and it's easy to convince yourself that if your working harder your training will make you faster, but you actually end up not effectively targeting any particular energy system or neuro system... which is why easy should be easy and hard should be hard! Too many people do easy too hard and hard too easy.

For instance last night I did a 90 minute run. My open half marathon pace is 6:40, but my fat burning starts to drop some as I get faster than 8:00 pace, so I did the whole run last night at 8:00/mile. I used to do these runs at 7:15-7:20 which ironically is less effective!

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

So how do you determine your Coggan zones for running considering they are power based and designed for cycling it appears? Just assimilate an avg heart rate to each power zone and transfer to running? My FTP on bike is a measly 248 currently and my open 1/2 mary pace is around 8:45/mi. I am assuming that for long runs I need to be somewhere in the 10-11:00/mi pace then?

How did you determine where your fat burning drops off? Is there a physical change that allows you feel the change?

They were the norm UNTIL people became obsessed with going as fast as possible for as long as possible. Then a different diet was required.

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-Physiojoe
Instagram: @thephysiojoe
Cycling coach, Elite racer on Wooster Bikewerks p/b Wootown Bagels

You can use this - It's Friel, not Coggan -

http://home.trainingpeaks.com/blog/article/joe-friel-s-quick-guide-to-setting-zones


But I do it a bit differently. Instead of a 30 minute time trial to determine threshold pace, for my run FTP I use a pace a little slower than 10k pace. Like 10k + 9 seconds. Works well for me. YMMV.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

For my next race I think I'll fill my bottles with clarified butter and bacon bits. I'm sure to set a PR by 30 minutes!

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

Some general thoughts and ideas:

Adopt a healthy diet that is sustainable for you.

If you’re looking for a diet, I would recommend checking out Racing Weight as a resource. There’s nothing magical/novel about this diet (ie: vegetables, fruits, lean proteins, whole grains and essential fats). The DQS that this diet uses is a simple and effective tool.

The best time to lose weight seems to be in the general period (ie: off season, base, winter, etc) but it can also be done in the specific period (ie: build, race, spring/summer, etc)

The 500 calorie daily deficit seems to work well.

Create this deficit at night (ie: go to bed a bit hungry).

In terms of training nutrition, it seems that a lot of people over-estimate their nutritional needs (ie: too many calories) before, during and after workouts. However, do not try and create your calorie deficit around your training. You want your nutrition to be optimal to optimize the actual workout. But once again, do not over-estimate your need for calories.

With your training zones, do the appropriate intensity/duration to optimize performance and don’t worry about “fat burning” zones. Your weight loss is going to come via going to bed slightly hungry.

In terms of fueling your workouts and races, there's a reason that the overwhelming majority of triathletes of all abilities have their best performances incorporating “sugar” in their training and racing.

Lastly and respectfully, I get that body composition is hard but this seems to be the classic forest/trees scenario. It really is pretty much as simple as all of the above.

Good luck with your training and racing.

This.

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Human Person

First let me give you my background. I have a B.S. in Exercise Science, and I'm a certified Personal Trainer working towards my CSCS. So now that my shameless chest puffing is done..

It's tricky and shades of grey. Sugar is almost everywhere, especially in fruit which is good for you. Cutting out added sugars is a good start. Secondly since you're training for something you actually need more carbs in general. Carbs are the bodies primary source of fuel, as everything you use gets converted into simple sugar (mostly glucose) in order to be broken down into energy. Without going into finite details... The closer it is to glucose, the faster its available for your body to use. Now here's the catch. A lot of that is just empty calories, and since you're trying to lose weight you are going to have to run a calorie deficit. That comes at a trade-off as now you'll have to tap into fat stores, and non carb foods such as protein to get your energy. This process is called beteoxication and gluconeogenisus respectively. Those take time and will make your workouts less effective. So while we all know losing weight is helpful, if your workouts suck, your're not stressing your aerobic system enough and not getting any physiological adaptation.

What do you do? Hell I can't tell you what to do. Unless you were my client... And even then I don't have any freelance insurance and as a trainer I personally hate not doing things in person where I can actually monitor you and make sure you're doing things right. But I will tell you this. Lose weight now while it's too cold to race. Once racing time comes along (maybe about 6 weeks before your first race) then start focusing more on performance. You can lose about 1-2lbs a week. You can lose weight during the season, and the weight loss may get you better results, but as far as physiological adaptation goes best results are well fed results.

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I still lapped everyone on the couch!

At the risk of reopening this can of worms, upon some reflection I think muscle fatigue is mainly caused by glycogen depletion. Also, you need to give some examples where the IM mary and open mary delta is 10 minutes; I mean even Mark Allen had around a 15-20 min delta, as his fastest IM mary was around 2:40 and his fastest open around 2:20-2:25.

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."