I had a tremendous amount of success on this diet a few years ago when I was about 40 pounds overweight. Everyday it seemed as though I was melting away. I have been training for about four months now, first sprint will be on 7/10, and I thought that I would lean out a lot more than I have with all of the training that I have been doing. I have been following Don Fink’s competetive program with a goal of doing the Miami Man Half in Nov. My question is, does anybody follow this diet or anything close to it while training? It seems as though the limited amount of carbs would be a detriment on your long days. Do you make any modifications to it to make it work for an endurance athlete? (extra carbs before, during, or after training?) I didn’t workout once when I lost the 40 pounds just by following this diet, so if I can follow it in addition to all of the training that I am doing I am thinking that I could be single digits in body fat in 2 or 3 more months or at least make a significant improvement. Any thoughts or suggestions?
it would be VERY unreasonable for an endurance athlete to follow this program…
I know it was endorsed more or less by pigg and allen some years back, but I doubt very much either one of them was following it other than eat PrBars etc.
At the core of this diet is nothing other than calorie control. Keep it simple - watch the junk, watch the alcohol, eat good carbos and watch the amounts. I would think if you limited the carbs as closely as called for in the Zone, you would have siginifcant energy problems if you are training hard.
I think that it is more than calories in versus calories out. I believe this diet works because of the hormonal response of controlling insulin. It also advocates low glycemic carbs and does allow 40 % of calories to come from these low GI carbs. People often confuse or associate this diet with Atkins, which is carb restrictive. I really wanted to hear from those who follow these principles in their eating. Don Fink recommends this way of eating in Ironfit. I know that this diet is almost as controversial as LSD versus high intensity training ala Michael McCormack. Some will say you are crazy for doing xyz while others say that xyz is the only way to go, etc.
so…assume you have a 5000kcal training day…you don’t want to create too much of a gap between calories in and out…so you go for 4000kcal for the day.
1600kcal from carbs (400g), 1200kcal from proteins (300g), 1200kcal from fat (about 150g)…
Assume you’re 75kg (165lbs), that 4g of protein per kg of bodyweight…
your kidneys are not going to thank you…
I know it’s not the atkins diet, but for an endurance athlete, it leads to high intake of proteins which will be nearly as bad as atkins for your kidneys.
but then, you ask about the diet, and seem to have already made up your mind as to how effective it is…
If you look at the research on the fad diets, and I don’t know if they looked at yours specifically, the research shows the diets work not because of a certain way you eat or do not eat. The diets work because the dieters actually restrict calorie intake to below their normal caloric intake levels. It boils down to the very simple premise of: calories consumed being less than your caloric needs = weight loss. Calories consumed above your caloric needs = weight gain.
FWIW there was an older study down in the early 90’s that did show sedentary people losing weight who eat the same number of calories per day. Dinner had the least amount of calories and breakfast consisted of the majority of their calories. These individuals lost right about 2kg for the year with this being the only modification to their life over the group that kept dinner as the largest meal.
I understand the theory - I did the diet once and I did lose weight. But they do control calories and that is why you lose weight. I have lost 20 lbs fromt he start of the year on the triathlon diet. Eat everything I want but sensibly and workout like a sombich.
Ahh, that zany eat less and exercise diet.
The Zone diet? Is that by Barry Sears? I do recall talking about that in an exercise physiology class I took when I was in college. My instructors seem to think that it was all BS and that Barry’s theory wasn’t really backed up by anything…at least at that point in time…