Since the off-season is a good time to try different things with your diet, my boyfriend and I are going to start the South Beach Diet. It’s done good things for me in the past, but at the time I wasn’t training during the hard-core first two weeks when you eat no grains, no carbs, no sweetener.
So what do I eat during the long bike rides during those first two weeks? Should I say bars/bananas/etc are ok on the bike? Or if I stick to the diet, what the heck do you eat on a 6-hour+ bike ride during the first two weeks of the SB Diet? Or is it best to do those two weeks during a break from long training rides?
You mentioned you did the South Beach diet in the past. Were you training at that time as well?
Before you get going I would definitely recommend checking in with your doctor and a competent dietitian. I usually do a quick test and ask their thoughts on the the USDA Food Pyramid. Some are more opinionated than other but as long as they say that it is some degree backward or overemphasizes carbs, grains and cereals then they pass.
Important piece to your question is that the South Beach diet or may others like it were not designed for endurance athletes or people engaging in endurance activities. In short you want to limit your intake of processed foods, bad carbs, sugars to elicit a metabolic change to burn bodyfat and facilitate muscle growth and repair. People have written volumes on the topic but I can only use my experience as a guide. I eat no white bread, rice or processed grains. When I do consume them it typically is in the form of low carb flax seed tortillas for breakfast buritos and wrap sandwiches. I do consume some carbohydrates - probably 150-300 grams per day. This supports 1-2 training sessions per day 6-7 days a week. Key piece here is that it took me a while to get to this point where I can figure out how much I need - there were definitely some training runs where I bonked and came in the house and slaughtered a package of fig newtons before I finally figured out where I needed to be. It took me about three weeks of modifying my diet to get it all figured out. For the carbohydrates I do eat I get them from spinach, broccoli, peas, flax seed wraps, greek yogurt, blueberries, lettuce peppers and others. I also like BNRG’s Power Crunch as a meal replacement or snack when I need it. When I am training a long run (13+ miles) or bike ride (60+ miles) I break my routine and sub in a natural whole grain english muffin with sugar free jelly, almond butter and some apple slices. This is also my pre race meal three hours out from start time. Once I am on the run or on the bike I will eat one Hammer Gels about every 45 minutes to an hour - that’s it. I have found that this is just enough fuel maintain my energy level without compromising longer term fat metabolism. Keep in mind that everyone is different but this works for me. I also avoid dairy with the exception of Greek yogurt, a small splash of natural cream from my local dairy in the occasional cup of coffee and shredded cheese in my breakfast burritos.
I recommend keeping your regular diet for seven days and maintaining a food log. At the end of the week figure what your daily caloric and nutrient intake is. When you are ready to transition to the South Beach or South Beach-like diet do the same thing paying special attention to your training schedule as well. You will probably have headaches and feel sluggish about three days into it. For most people this is when their metabilism starts shifting to more fat burning versus carbs. This is where you will need to avoid the bonk and keep your metabolism dialed in. As the off season progresses and you start spending more time in the gym also make sure to up your protein intake to facilitate muscle growth and repair. Some people advocate 1g per pound of lean body mass per day. Again, everyone is different and a smart sports dietitian can help you dial this in. As you begin to develop next years racing and training plan your diet will need to change where you will reduce the amount of lean proteins and quality fats and start integrating quality carbohydrates. Check out Bob Seebohar’s http://www.fuel4mance.com/ site. He is a leader in study of periodizing diet and has done extensive research on fat burning metabolism in endurance athletes as well as coaching elite and olympic triathletes.
Good luck with your diet and training and hopefully you find this helpful. I’m glad you posted this topic as the carb/protien debate is a lightning rod for discussion just like tubulars/clinchers or any of the other hot topics. We’ll see where it goes.
so basically you are considering jeopordizing your training, i.e. fueling, for an aesthetic specific diet?
The south beach diet is not an athletes diet. But hey who cares if you look fit.
I think the official stance from South beach is that if you are active, skip the first two weeks of the diet and go directly to phase two. In phase 1, you are basically just losing water weight anyway. I have done phase 1, both when I was active and inactive, and I have to say it is very tough either way. It honestly gave me a new sympathy for addicts. Just curious…do you need to lose weight or just interested in trying something new?
Thanks for the tips, they are appreciated; good food for thought, so to speak. In reply to your question: when I did the South Beach Diet, I was not training at the time.
Interesting about the official stance of skipping the first two weeks. Any chance you can point me to a reference on that? In response to your question, I seem to have a carb-related weight distribution (weight around the middle), even when I’m really thin. Except that time I did the SB diet before - I lost the cravings for carbs, and had a flat stomach for the only time in my life. Trying to figure out if it’s an approach that makes sense with training, which maybe it doesn’t.
Personally I think that there are some components to the diet that are perfect for an enduance athlete.
Having a metabolism that is addicted to an constant intake of carbs and will quite working if it doesn’t get that constant inflow of carbs isn’t a good thing,w hcih is what most endurance athletes have. It’s no wonder that so many people doing Ironmans need to be taking in 300+ calories per hour, they have never taught their body to tap into a nearly endless energy source that already exisits from within. Of course the also sabatoge that by going too hard and screwing up their stomach but that is another thread topic all to it’s own.
I was in a smiliar position a couple of years ago and my sports nutritionist recommended the SB Diet. I was slowly gaining weight and was a good 12 pounds over race weight and no amount of training was taking off the extra weight. So I gave it a shot. The first two weeks were hell, not just in the radical change of my eating habits, but in my energy levels. I was bonking on 30 mile easy rides. But gradually things started to change. Physically the first thing I noticed was the change that the OP mentioned. Even thougn I am relatively trim, I had the start of a “beer belly”. That disappeared. Secondly as my metabolism changed, the energy levels returned and the need to constantly be taking in carbs to fuel everything I did decreased. I found I was doing moderate intensity long rides and runs on very little intake. Doing weekly 100 mile rides on nothing but Gatorade and a Clif Bar, about 400 - 500 intake for a 5.5 hour ride.
Over the eyars I have gradually shifted back to my old eating habits but for the most part the metabolism has remained the same. I don’t need to gorge myself to get through long training efforts.
In phase 1, you are basically just losing water weight anyway.
It boggles my mind that people think this is a desirable thing.
-Jot
I don’t think most people on the diet realize that is what’s happening, it’s just a side effect of phase 1. Perhaps more sad though, is that I imagine a lot of people think they are losing 8 pounds of body fat in two weeks, when it’s really a gallon of water.
Phase 1 of this diet (first 2 weeks) seems to be like a ketogenic diet, i.e. no substantial carbs. I was on a ketogenic diet a few times when I was weightlifting. It takes two OR MORE weeks for a normal person’s body to adjust to it, during those first two weeks you’ll still crave carbs until your body goes into ketosis at which stage it will burn fat as the primary source of fuel. I don’t have any experience in long cardio sessions on a low carb diet like this, but I know for certain you want to keep to low HR level exercise (fat burning zone). You body will have no carbs and if you do intense cardio sessions your body cannot metabolise fat that fast + no carbs = your body will use protein for fuel i.e. you will loose muscle (BAD). So either keep your HR in the fat burning zones on these long cardio sessions or eat enough carbs that you will burn through them in the session.
Ketogenic diets (which this diet starts off as) are pretty complicated things. I personally think that the first two weeks are useless, also women take on general a week or more longer than men to go into ketosis, although if you are doing alot of cardio it might put you into ketosis faster with all the carbs being burned, intense exercise during first couple of days will help this. You will definitely stop craving carbs during these first 2 weeks and you will drop ALOT of weight, although it will be mostly water weight as carbs store alot of water, and as your body depletes this due to exercise you will loose weight. It leads me to beleive that this diet just dips you into ketosis so that you think the weight is flying off. Once you start the phase 2 you will gain back about half or more of what you lost. Fad diet imo.
Edit: Just read the whole page and I agree with rexcoltrain, skip the first 2 weeks of the diet. You will gain no benefit from it other than gaining false hope.
