For you, probably not. I think I have already achieved the pinnacle of uselessness.

avg run pace per week is not a useful performance metric. A useful measure would be FTP watts/kg for biking, and pace:HR for running - which I'm not going to see an increase or decrease within 10 days so I will do that maybe once every 6 weeks or so. What I do take note of in each phase is how I feel in my workouts, whether power or pace is dropping. During the burger phase I was doing the 9 day tour of Sufferlandria, which is much harder riding than I'm used to (every workout is pretty much at or above threshold). I managed to get through it, and I know I will get an FTP bump from that, regardless of what my diet was. But I'm sure that with my regular diet I would have been able to nail the workouts better.

But your question does raise an important point, that I for sure (in regular life) am guilty of:
- if your goal is to improve performance output (such as power), then your focus should be on how you fuel your workout efforts and recovery. Ideally you should be in slight caloric surplus. Me, and many others, are guilty of trying to improve performance without actually eating enough high quality food to fuel that process.
- if your goal is to lose weight (which will ultimately also lead to improved performance, indirectly through the watts/kg ratio) then accept the fact that your workouts are going to not be optimal in terms of output. This is the case even with "good" foods. The "bad" foods just make your workouts suck a bit more.

For those reasons, I periodize my diet to coincide with my training goals.
- During a weight loss phase, I'm NOT going to try and kill it in all my workouts. Which for Ironman type of training can actually be ok since a lot of the training is not actually super high on the RPE scale.
- But then in a key build phase of training, I'm going to ignore any weight loss effort, and focus on being in a slight surplus. Food becomes quite utilitarian in that i'm focusing on glycogen repletion and adequate nutrient intake.

Ok thanks, I'm going to go and do some 200m sprints to improve the key metric of average run pace per week.

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Are you ready to do an Ultraman? | How I calculate Ironman race fueling | Strength Training for Athletes |

the 2 most critical parts of that article:

>>>>



But on a serious note, this junk food diet of mine is a terrible idea if your goals are health and wellbeing. But for pure unhealthy weight loss it could work, and is probably more fun than what Shelby Killion R.D. will advise

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and this is the attractive feature to long distance racing to the masses... you just need to finish. which if anything diminishes the sport

yes let's hope I can finish my next Ironman under 17 hours - do you think I will make it?

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Are you ready to do an Ultraman? | How I calculate Ironman race fueling | Strength Training for Athletes |

poutine. you may only need one per day :-)

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run well, run happy
george

No kidding! I bet it would be pretty easy to get 4000 calories in one sitting

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Are you ready to do an Ultraman? | How I calculate Ironman race fueling | Strength Training for Athletes |

you know, the sad thing is many people will view your blog who are these 11+ hour pedestrians, and say "look he eats like shit, finishes ironmans (not knowing your times), so he is fit... thus eating this way means I am fit as he is, as long as i do his race distances too"

I usually like reading projects like this but I think reading this one would be like torture for me!

Can you give us a quick "Phase 1" summary? How have the energy levels been, working out on a diet of mostly burgers? As someone mentioned early on, burgers can be fairly healthy and satisfying hunger-wise, so I'm not surprised you ploughed through that phase reasonably quickly.

Doing the same with ice-cream and milkshakes is going to be a fair bit tougher I'd imagine!

The burger phase was pretty fun. I got to experience a lot of great burgers in a short space of time, which I wouldn't normally have done. I agree that on the whole the burgers are not too unhealthy. I tried to have fries with every burger, and those generally made me feel like crap. I noticed that I felt a lot better if I didn't eat fries, or if I made "healthy fries" by grilling hand cut sweet potatoes on the BBQ. But deep fried stuff... just gives me some nasty feelings. I could get through the days with not very much breakfast or lunch, then 1500+ calories at night. I found it easier to ignore hunger / cravings during the day than at night. So for me that actually worked out well, since it's kind of impractical (or a lot of work) to get or make a burger for breakfast.

The ice cream phase started as a disaster. I got through 2100 calories of ice cream by 4pm and then my wife made some roast lamb, and I had to sit there and be tortured by that amazing aroma, unable to eat anything since I was at my calorie limit for the day. Day 2 was much better because I trained after lunch, and backloaded the majority of the calories at the end of the day, so I wasn't really hungry at all. And it was fun to try out several new ice creams, mostly based on recommendations from fellow STers. So although ice cream phase got off to a very bad start, day 2 was a lot better.

Surprisingly, training energy has been great on both phases so far. Significantly better than something like a carb (and calorie) restricted diet, for example.

The number one thing I've learned so far, is around mindset. For weight loss, I used to have the mindset of trying to get away with as few calories as possible. This project has changed my mindset to try and get in as many calories as I can while still losing weight. The difference is remarkable just in terms of daily energy and workout energy, even though I'm eating terribly.

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I managed to find some. Wow you were not kidding - that stuff is awesome! Thanks for the great suggestion

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we just got snow in CO, so even though I'm on the pizza phase now, I've had this 2 days in a row. You're right this is legit!... Awesome post-workout! Thanks for the great recommendation - I'd never heard of it before

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glad you're enjoying it!

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

Chicago Mix popcorn = cheese + caramel at the same time

unbelievably delicious while you're eating it but basically a food hangover in a bag

Rob,

How are the beers treating you? Sounds miserable.

I took to your method and decided to eat a bunch of ice cream over the weekend (2 pints of Ben & Jerry's, and 5 Ben & Jerry's Pint Slices -- the new chocolate covered ice cream "bars"). Rode my highest ever 2x20 on the bike the day after a 15 miler. Ice cream is fuel for the soul.

Beer is a total FAIL. Today I'm modifying this phase to include brewed, but low or non alcoholic beverages. So stuff like Kombucha and Ginger Beer will be in - purely to get me through. It's actually been pretty eye-opening since usually I am just an occasional drinker - maybe a glass of red wine at dinner time and the occasional beer. But even just 3 beers at night totally screws me over. I wake up feeling terrible, most workouts suck (although I've had a few good ones), and in general my mood is not great at all. So beer was a bit of an outlier for this experiment - I knew it would be bad but I didn't think it would be THAT bad! I am REALLY REALLY looking forward to moving on to some donuts and cake...

I'm with you on the ice cream! For my next race I'm going to eat a pint (or two) of Ben and Jerry's the day before. And maybe a burger.

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Give B&J's "Oat of this Swirled" a try. It's very similar to my personal favorite flavor at Baskin Robbins, Mama's Makin' Cookies.

Also, Sunday I had an affogato after seeing you do it during the ice cream phase. Life changing. Definitely going to be a regular post-workout reward now.

Doughnut phase would break me--I'd eat too many and never lose weight. Good luck!

Do you think a different drink (e.g. the red wine) would leave you feeling as bad or is it the effect of alcohol in general (specially if you don't really drink much)?

I think the main problem is the cumulative effect of the alcohol and the "rule" that I need to get most of my calories from that thing. So on a 2500 calorie day, even 1500 calories of red wine would be about 10-12 x 5oz glasses! I would struggle with anything above about 1200 calories, just because of the alcohol accumulation. What I should have done is just include alcohol with one of the other foods eg Burgers and red wine, pizza and beer etc.

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Brownies do it for me.

Especially if they have a bag of chocolate chips mixed into them in the batter! get them when they are nice warm and soft right out of the oven and then put the rest in the fridge and the chocolate chunks harden again and become little nuggets of goodness the next time you eat them!

Brownies are for sure in, once I unlock the next phase. All the good stuff: brownies, cakes, donuts, muffins, any random desserts too.

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Are you ready to do an Ultraman? | How I calculate Ironman race fueling | Strength Training for Athletes |

I'm finally done with beer - what a cluster that was. Today is day 2 of cake/donuts/dessert. Yesterday was simply 6 donuts and a protein shake . Surprisingly today's workouts felt good. Maybe it's because I'm comparing them to a beer-fueled haze! Breakfast was two cheesecakes, which for me are about 7 x tastier than yesterday's donuts. Dinner will be another cheesecake and a red velvet bundt cake. In this phase (cakes/donuts/desserts) I have the flexibility to include some ice cream too (since it's a dessert), so I'll definitely try out the B&J you suggested!

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Are you ready to do an Ultraman? | How I calculate Ironman race fueling | Strength Training for Athletes |

uhhhh.....cookies and icecream.....

Ingredients:
-White Bread (wheat just kills the entire flavor experiene here...)
-Tillimook Medium cheddar cheese (has to be the real thing...Lucerene cheese is --pretty decent too)
-Any kind of margarine or butter
-Lay's Sour Cream & Onion chips

Steps:
1) Make a grilled cheese sandwich with lots of cheese (more than you normally would if making one for your kid.
2) Upon pulling it from the pan, place on a plate, grab the 2 slices bread & pull apart exposing the cheese.
3) Pack in as many Frito Lay Sour Cream & Onion chips as you can (about 15 will do).
4) Put the sandwich back together, place spatula on top of sandwich & squish it down to compress the sandwich.

Enjoy!
No shortage of salt, carbs or fat in that one. But it's soooo yummy!

Are you one of those guys who can eat 800 cal and just got out on a run? Maybe its in the post somewhere but I didn't want to read all 6 pages. We have that guy on our masters group. The guy actually gained weight on a deca. You certainly have the iron stomach.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

lol - no: me, food and running don't mix well. I can get in about 400-500 calories an hour during an IM as long as it's liquid and it's on the bike. On the run it's not much more than 200. I think it was Gordo or one of those guys who said they down a protein shake before a run just to get used to that crappy bloated sloshy feeling

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Are you ready to do an Ultraman? | How I calculate Ironman race fueling | Strength Training for Athletes |