I’ve noticed that the amount of carbs that our pro athletes and elite age-groupers have been stuffing into their bodies is amazing. 120g of carbs per hour is quite the mouthful. Given that they are performing at an elite level, I have no doubt the carbs are being utilised efficiently.
My question is simple: are there any long term repercussions or side effects, if any? For one, I’ve seen swimmers who take in thousands of calories per day put on a lot of weight after they stop training.
Also, is there any merit to training your body the other way? To be as efficient as possible with as little carbs.
I would draw an example to driving a car with a large engine vs a smaller one. (Eg. A 500hp engine which can go really fast but guzzles gas and has poor mileage versus a 150hp engine which with great mileage.)
My question is simple: are there any long term repercussions or side effects, if any? For one, I’ve seen swimmers who take in thousands of calories per day put on a lot of weight after they stop training.
The main reason they put on weight when they stop competing is because they are used to eating thousands of calories and continue to do so but aren’t burning them any more.
My question is simple: are there any long term repercussions or side effects, if any? For one, I’ve seen swimmers who take in thousands of calories per day put on a lot of weight after they stop training.
The main reason they put on weight when they stop competing is because they are used to eating thousands of calories and continue to do so but aren’t burning them any more.
As a swimmer myself, I can attest to this. I gained weight after I stopped swimming competitively. Most because I did not change my eating habits. It’s still something I struggle with today anytime I’m not training or injured.
I would draw an example to driving a car with a large engine vs a smaller one. (Eg. A 500hp engine which can go really fast but guzzles gas and has poor mileage versus a 150hp engine which with great mileage.)
What do you think?
If you can keep that 500 hp engine supplied with enough fuel to maintain its output, won’t you be able to do more work and do it faster than with the 150 hp engine?
I don’t think professional athletes are looking for more efficient output - they want more output. They want to be able to do more work.
Engines can be made to different designs with different architecture that can alter both their output and their efficiency. Human bodies, OTOH, are fairly fixed in their design and their efficiency is fairly strictly limited.
Swimmers, in your example, gain weight because they don’t change their eating habits but don’t exercise as much anymore:
Long term consequences of staying long term on high carbs are unknown. Same for long term consequences of high fat. Dietary studies are very difficult to run, isolate and guaranty no bias. What’s clear is that the mechanism of using carbs when burning immediately is much different than the unhealthy mechanism of carbs in combination with sedentary lifestyle.
David Tilbury Davies explained to me recently, on this forum, that you need to adjust the max carbs consumed during the race. Since most pros ride the IM at around 4W/kg, some of them push 320W, some push 280W, some 240W. 120g carbs per hour might be top end for heavier pros, while 80g might be top end of carbs for lighter pros, ceteris paribus.
Anne Haug is an interesting case. She’s developed diabetes due to Covid-19 / vaccination. She has completely changed her nutrition plan for races, including last year’s Kona. She’s relying primarily on fat oxidation.
The more carbs the better as far as I’m concerned. I’ve noticed I can maintain performance for 6+ hours considerably better at 100+g/hr than 60g/hr. Additionally, I don’t feel the need to binge eat constantly. I used to want to pound a bag or chips or oreos or pizza at the end of the day when I was fueling less.
Yes, pro athletes burn more calories because they produce more energy. However, if given the choice, they’d probably want to fuel way more than 120g/hr if they could stomach it. Even an endurance ride of 200w and fueling high carb I still have a massive caloric deficit on long rides.
I’m not a doctor but on the face of it there seems to be some obvious things.
-100+g/h isn’t used for easy training rides, it’s pretty exclusive to races and hard training, so at the very most 50% of the days, and at most 25% of the hours those individual days. It’s a huge influx of carbs but it’s in the context of a huge output, see next:
-Even at 200w the body is using ~750kcal/h, with somewhere around half from fat depending on a lot of factors. I can’t see a mechanism by which burning through ~400kcal/h of sugars while intaking 400kcal/h of sugar would cause the same deleterious effects as eating that much sugar while watching netflix.
-There’s known long-term repercussions of very high level athletics (injuries, heart stuff). Most would argue that these are more than offset by the benefits. I’d suggest there may be a similar trade-off between the benefits of being able to go long and hard with high carb vs being able to go less with a more classically healthy diet.
-It’s also possible (I have no idea) that high carb mitigates the less desirable fatiguing effects of hard training. It’s well established that with high volume training that one of the reasons to fuel mid-training isn’t just for the current workout, but for the next work as well. If a little fuel is good, maybe more (to a point) is better.
Without question when I increased my carb intake to 120g/hour for longer training and racing I felt MUCH better. I’m also not starving post training like I used to be when consuming less.
I’ve noticed that the amount of carbs that our pro athletes and elite age-groupers have been stuffing into their bodies is amazing. 120g of carbs per hour is quite the mouthful. Given that they are performing at an elite level, I have no doubt the carbs are being utilised efficiently.
My question is simple: are there any long term repercussions or side effects, if any? For one, I’ve seen swimmers who take in thousands of calories per day put on a lot of weight after they stop training.
Also, is there any merit to training your body the other way? To be as efficient as possible with as little carbs.
I would draw an example to driving a car with a large engine vs a smaller one. (Eg. A 500hp engine which can go really fast but guzzles gas and has poor mileage versus a 150hp engine which with great mileage.)
What do you think?
If we’re talking about consumption during activity, it depends on the workload.
For the most part athletes are working at a caloric deficit, even at 120g per hour.
When I work with athletes, I calculate what I believe there stores are, what their expenditure is, then what an intake ought to be. This gets us in the ball-park to then adjust based on their performance and feeling.
No one is recommending that anyone consumes 120g per hour while on a leisurely walk, this would be unhealthy and unnecessary.
Without question when I increased my carb intake to 120g/hour for longer training and racing I felt MUCH better. I’m also not starving post training like I used to be when consuming less.
This is actually an interesting point and I’ve both felt it and heard it from others.
When you train depleted, you end famished and can often over-consume following training.
Without question when I increased my carb intake to 120g/hour for longer training and racing I felt MUCH better. I’m also not starving post training like I used to be when consuming less.
This is actually an interesting point and I’ve both felt it and heard it from others.
When you train depleted, you end famished and can often over-consume following training.
I completely agree, but to be honest, it’s a little annoying to not feel like you can to eat whatever you want after a race with reckless abandon. Now when I race with more carbs I just want a salad which feels so unsatisfying!
Totally
My wife is a born endurance person… she LOVES long rides. I had always capped out around 85. On 85, I always have a fine day.
But when we’d bump up to 105-115… ods were, I was gonna blow up… like before this year, I Think I’d successfully done NYC->Bear Mountain and back without feeling terrible 1x
This year, I’ve bumped up to 80-100g carb an hour… and boom , suddenly, 105 is just a weekend ride. It has made long distance so much more enjoyable.
I also agree, I dont get home and need to eat everything in the pantry
Most people underfuel their workouts and raid the fridge afterwards. It creates a habit of eating too much which is hard to eliminate after you no longer work out 2-3h a day. So it’s fine to take 120g of carbs or whatever during a long workout because that’s just what’s required to fuel a quality session. You burn that stuff and keep your glicogen stores from getting depleted which helps with recovery and allows you to perform the next day and so on…
I just finished Endure by Hutchinson and the subject of carbs is discussed extensively as well as the two experiments run by the AIS on LCHF diets and their impact on endurance
There’s interesting research that simply washing a carb mouthwash has impacts on endurance and you do not need to even drink it as the brain can detect carbs in a liquid without even having to swallow so the mechanism for carbs improving performance is not entirely related to ingesting them
The amount of carbs we can absorb per hour is limited but different types of carbs are absorbed different ways so if you can take more on board it is probably a helpful thing
That said, the outputs of the AIS experiments on fat burning were astonishing
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The carb mouthwash thing is because that tricks your body into thinking carbs are coming on board, allowing you to use more of your reserves. The practical utility of this is questionable though, because it means you’ll then need to replace those carbs still and potentially will increase recovery time. Maybe useful for a 5k race, not sure why you wouldn’t just eat the carbs otherwise.
Reality check on the relevance of all this for your typical triathlete. Most are training 5 to 8 times a week, averaging one-hour sessions, have average metabolic health and low fatmax, yet are hoping to stretch their glycogen and fuelling over 10-15 hours of racing.
Most people should go in the opposite direction, and leave the sugar for racing.
I understand that, it’s just a curiosity in that the belief was previously you needed to take them on board to realise the benefit, but it’s more complex.
I am sure there is a upper limit to the amount that cam be adsorbed.
Equally, I think given the relative speeds and durations over which long distance tris are done there’s a lot to be said for the evidence around training your body to burn fat - see Hutchinson’s book and the Nova experiments
Self proclaimed “ultra cyclist” here. Defined by 5+ consecutive years at 20K+ miles. Defined by sustained CTL of 160-170. I hope I never go back to that!
2 big take aways that others have stated above.
I have noticed the more carbs I consume during exercise the better I can perform during exersize and the better I feel after (not so hungry and not so tired).
I have noticed that it’s insanely hard to adjust eating if I take time off. Extremely challenging.
I personally have not gone to the world of 120g. Yet. I just came off Gravel Worlds 300 and at roughly 200 watt average did about 90g per hour for just under 16 hours. Had it been 8 hours I’d have targeted a full 100g.
For what it’s worth I carried the entirety of my fuel with me from the start. 7# of food plus 4 pounds of water 30 ounces of that maple syrup. Ha!
30 ounces of that maple syrup. Ha!