this is great for the typical AG doing long course... but for a pro with very low bodyfat carbs will be needed here and there. i always feel like slamming my head on desk when i hear of 25% bf AG completitors doing a pasta carb up all you can eat buffet night before, then so many gels loaded on the bike for a 70.3

Dave has always been up on the latest science. The problem with nutritional science is that it is relatively new and all biological science have that damn genetic variable.
I see more athletes going to low carb diets. It will be interesting to follow. We know carbs work, the long term health issues is more concerning now-excess processed sugars.
Did he discuss electrolytes?

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Team Zoot So Cal

I think "carb-loading" before a race for anyone, fit or fat, is not very useful if you are tapered and rested going into it. You should be topped up on muscle and liver glycogen with regular meals and eating more wont help you store more. Someone tell me if I am wrong here. But even the fattest guy is going to bonk without eating carbs during an ironman. In fact he will probably bonk faster than the well trained guy who will be able to burn a higher percentage of fat at IM effort than the fat guy.

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

I've been looking into this a lot for a couple of years now and it's a very complicated issue. Because of what you've been doing, you can be anywhere on a huge sliding scale of "fat adapted". So trying it out can lead to results all over the map. If you're really carb-dependent and then try to go low carb, high fat, you're just asking for a meltdown. And if you're used to getting your carbs in via a drink and then quit taking them, you will have a major dehydration crisis. How to get where you want to be is littered with landmines for a lot of people.

On the other hand, the testing results of people's fat metabolism rate that have successfully "transitioned" are incredible. To go from needing 400 calories of sugar per hour (pretty unsustainable) to just 100 because your body is now getting the other 300 from body fat is amazing. But it's the how that the trick that people want a simple fix for.

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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

hasn't Mark Allen been an advocate of keto for many many years

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http://www.thetrinerd.com

Even the most slender adult has enough calories in fat to complete the race. 70kg adult with 5% body fat has 3.5 kg of fat. That is almost 100,00 Calories (kcal). That person wouldn't even use 25% of that. Whether they could WIN, I don't know.

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Dick

Take everything I say with a grain of salt. I know nothing.

Tim Noakes says he is running better than he has in years with his Banting diet. He also says that others who have adopted it for ultra events, are running better than ever.

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_________________
Dick

Take everything I say with a grain of salt. I know nothing.

science is not on the side of high-fat diets for endurance exercise.. no improvement in performance on long events, and at the same time it impairs performance when high intensity is required. Note the date on the first article is 2006.


http://jap.physiology.org/content/100/1/7
"It is tempting to classify endurance and ultraendurance sports as submaximal exercise, which might benefit from increased fat utilization and a conservation of limited endogenous carbohydrate stores. However, the strategic activities that occur in such sports, the breakaway, the surge during an uphill stage, or the sprint to the finish line, are all dependent on the athlete's ability to work at high intensities. With growing evidence that this critical ability is impaired by dietary fat adaptation strategies and a failure to find clear evidence of benefits to prolonged exercise involving self-pacing, it seems that we are near to closing the door on one application of this dietary protocol. Scientists may remain interested in the body's response to different dietary stimuli and may hunt for the mechanisms that underpin the observed changes in metabolism and function. However, those at the coal-face of sports nutrition can delete fat loading and high-fat diets from their list of genuine ergogenic aids for conventional endurance and ultra-endurance sports."

http://www.inigomujika.com/...it/3026#.Vv6W3kZcj0Y

"Over a series of studies we refined the program to 5 days of high-fat low-carbohydrate eating while still training with some high intensity sessions, followed by 1 day of rest and a carbohydrate loading diet, and the usual race day strategies of a pre-event carbohydrate-rich meal and plenty of carbohydrate during the race. We found clear proof that this protocol led to an increased capacity to burn fat, despite plenty of glycogen and good fuel support from blood glucose supplies. It was intriguing!

The problem was that this “glycogen sparing” didn’t appear to improve performance —and we tried it many times over exercise protocols lasting from 2 hours to 5 hours. Finally, the results from two studies explained what was going on. The first study came from our collaboration with Trent Stellingwerff and Lawrence Spriet in Canada. They looked at some of the muscle we collected from our fat-adapted athletes and found that although we had up-regulated fat burning, we had interfered with carbohydrate utilisation at the same time. The activity of a key enzyme that helps the muscle shepherd carbohydrate into fuel pathways was reduced. The bottom line was that we hadn’t “spared” muscle glycogen use, but rather, we had “impaired” it. The second study, from Lize Havemann and Tim Noakes Lab in South Africa showed more clearly why this was important. They examined the ability of cyclists to do a 100 km time trial after the fat adaptation/carbohydrate restoration program —a protocol that was more similar to real life performance than what we had been examining in our studies. Overall the differences in 100 km race time between the two different dietary preparations were not statistically significant (although the high carbohydrate trial was actually several minutes faster than the fat-adapted/carbohydrate-restored trial). But during the 100 km, the cyclists were asked to do some sprints —over 1 km and 4 km distances. When intensity was increased, the fat adapted cyclists performed worse. In fact, their times and power outputs for the 1 km sprints were significantly impaired. This showed clearly that lower intensity exercise is preserved in the fat adapted athlete, but “when the going gets tough” and the muscle needs to burn carbohydrate to support higher exercise intensity, the impairment of carbohydrate metabolism interferes with performance. At that point, we stopped being interested in our fat adaptation protocol, because with all the events we work with, athletes need to have “a top gear” or an ability to surge up a hill or sprint to the line."

I am the only adult in my family not following a ketogenic diet. They're all non-athletes, but the results have been eye opening. My father-in-law dealt with neurological/nerve issues for years, even had brain surgery to no effect, and was desperate for solutions. When he switched to this diet, his issues went away completely within a couple of months. My father had several other long term health issues disappear after going this route. My wife is the most recent convert and she says she feels better than she has in years, both mentally and from an energy standpoint.

I've been tempted to try it, but with my training I've always considered carbs too convenient of a fuel source.

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-Andrew

It is amazing we still have so little clue about the human body but then again it is full of complex systems and no two people are the same. I think most people consume too much sugar (in American for sure) but consuming less than 50g of carbs a day on a normal basis is not good for everyone. Plus if you do any high intensity work (think springs, olympics) you will need more carbs. Why not just try to eat real food in a balanced manner?

He briefly touched on electrolytes but we ran out of time and I did not really absorb his point there as we were rushing to get out of the room.

I think he is buying in to some very poorly done research in this particular area. I think a clear look at it shows ketogenic diets are terrible for athletic performance. Noakes, Volek and Phinney have done much of this reasearch.

A study was just published this month: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26892521 From the abstract, it looks like they took two groups of ultra-runners and ironman triathletes - some had been following a low carb diet for a long time, some had not. They tested these individuals and found that at 64% VO2 max, the low carb people burned more fat. But it did not test any of the subjects BEFORE they went on the low-carb diet so there is no evidence that their fat burning improved because of the diet. Second, is performance at such a low effort level relevant? Also, since the diets were not controlled by the investigators, I assume they relied on what they athletes told them they had been eating for the last 20 months.

An earlier study took subjects, some were put on a low carb diet, some not and they were given regular cycling performance tests. The low-carb group quickly had a 50% reduction of endurance at 75% VO2 max while the high-carb group had no reduction in performance.

An earlier study was untrained overweight individuals. They were tested by walking on a treadmill to exhaustion - with a mean effort of 76% VO2 max. Then they were put on a ketogenic diet for 6 weeks and repeatedly tested, walking at the same pace. By the end of 7 weeks, they had lost an average of 23 pounds each and could walk at that speed for more time, at only 60% VO2 max. There was no control group. Does this prove that ketogenic diets improve performance, or that if you lose 20 pounds and work out for 6 weeks you will improve performance?

Fat burning capacity can be improved. But ketogenic diets are not good for athletic performance.

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

I'm not 100% sure of this (please let me be wrong), but in the early 1990's Dave Scott sponsored some sort of magic elixir of glacial meltwater. All the minerals from the snowmelt made Nepal lifespans longer and you could buy some meltwater or other mineral potion he sponsored. There was a cassette tape with his talk I received in the mail.

I shut my mouth because he is "6-time", but that respect gets diluted everytime I see stuff like this. People listen to you Dave Scott - don't sell us magic solutions.

That's a great article.

Another interesting story he told us right at the very beginning was supposed to emphasize the importance of our immune system - and the fact that carbs and fructose damage our immune system. He singled out one of his athletes in the audience as going through a period of significant chronic fatigue/malaise. Despite this person being a great athlete, their immune system is surely compromised which is why he feels this way. As the talk went on and it became clear he was headed in the ketogenic diet direction I was thinking, he's not chronically fatigued because of his immune system, it's because he's on a low-carb diet!

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

Suppose I said I knew a 5 time Kona winner who basically ate fried ants and grasshoppers and provided some quack study showing that ants and grasshoppers are vastly better to eat than anything else. Would we all run out and find our own supply of ants and grasshoppers? I can just see it now, a "Ant Crunch Bar" for your next ironman.

There is no substitute for working closely with a registered dietician or nutritionist to look at your current diet and tailor a sound plan to meet your unique training and racing requirements. Too many people are totally gullible to quack diets that have no solid research supporting supposed performance improvements.

Why are triathletes so gullible to this?
BrokenSpoke

Also, Dave has been known to burn out more than a few athletes in my times as a viewer. This who can deal with his massive training do well, but I have witnessed a tendency to fry more than those that flourish. It reminds me of the training popular back in the days of no pain no gain. I saw many a swimmer crash at the end of the season due to such a workload. I agree with a previous poster that he is quite a marketer and I have seen some pretty odd things he has promoted.

Is he selling something? Coz sometimes you just need to follow the $$$$$$$$ to see what's really going on.....

I don't think so. I think he is trying to be helpful. He briefly mentioned a product he was working on with EAS (2 seconds in the course of a 90 minute talk), but I really did not get the sales-pitch vibe.

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

Exactly.

Your best bet if long term health is your priority IMO:
- Avoid too much of any one thing, especially processed food.
- Get a reasonable mixture of protein, carbs and fats from a range of sources.
- Ignore anyone telling you some extreme formula is the answer.
- Ignore anecdotal "evidence" or you'll end up deceiving yourself.

The fact that someone is interested in something, talks enthusiastically about it and has been personally successful at something indirectly related does not mean they are necessarily correct nor incorrect. Always get the opposite side of the argument too and see if it's equally convincing. It's easy to be persuaded if you only listen to one perspective. (I have to assume this is where catastrophes like Trump come from!)

To be fair, nobody is racing an Ironman in 5 hours, so that test is no good. Especially because the whole point is that you start becoming unable to consume enough carbohydrates to meet demand starting around 7 hours. (Storage +Max consumption rate - burn rate).

Also, the experience of fat-adapted athletes is different in racing versus training. During an actual race, they'll take a rare gel or two to cover the surges on the bike, and voila, that problem is solved. No reason to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

I'm not advocating either way, just pointing out some issues with the conclusions. Humans always want to overdo things or jump in entire camps, when what works in reality is some mix-and-match of a middle path.

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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

This whole Ketogenic thing sounds really logical. But I think carbs are still the way to go for endurance athletes. Look back to the nineties and eighties. Those guys were really fast and always mostly followed a high (or at least adequte) carb diet. Their Kona times would be still competitive today despite the better technology.
Or look at the Kenian runners with their emphasis on starch, they can't be too wrong with that.

Don't understand me wrong, it could be that Keto is superb. I don't know. But it is an extreme diet and extremes usually turn out to be not exactly as good as believed.
I mean, there are not too many ketogenic pros out there. As long as they are not doing it, I don't think that I, as an AG, should think I was smarter and do something extreme.

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10k - 30:48 / half - 1:06:40

Play with your nutrition during training and B/C races and find out what YOU need. Do the same for your daily nutrition. I went low carb and did okay, started eating whatever I felt like and got faster. So now if I feel like pasta I eat pasta, if I want low carb like a salad I have a salad. When race week comes I just make sure to have a carb source with most meals, not any more than normal just making sure I am fueled.

Our local club's top competitor (I think he ranks as elite), talked to our group last night and he actually carries Bacon on his half and full events. That got everyone in our group excited.

No wonder Drew Scott doesn't have any muscle mass.

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blog

There is one very good reason why a Ketogenic diet is just dumb.
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Chocolate.

/thread

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