Riding on Low (zero) carb diet

the main meals of the day are, in order, breakfast, dinner, and tea

if that makes me a northern thicko I can live with that 🙂

it makes you a thicko, certainly. Nothing to do with being northern 😉

Tea is a drink, made by steeping certain leaves to hot water. Not a meal.

Solo, I don’t eat before I train in the mornings, and only eat during training if it’s a long one. Immediately after I have carbs and protein.

I may well do the half Ironman without breakfast. Not sure it’s necessary as I can’t see glycogen being depleted while I’m asleep and I don’t want to switch on carb burning until half way through the bike leg.

I may well be proved wrong.

and only eat during training if it’s a long one

Right, that sounds good. I don’t ride for as long a you will.
I ride 1 – 2 hours maximum duration.
I will certainly feel a bit peckish at the end.

Rightly or wrongly, I have ignored this for a while after the ride, before I eat a low GI choice.

Immediately after I have carbs and protein.

I’m seeing more and more referrances to some carbs post exercise in relation to recovery ?.
I think, some may refer to this type of thing as carb-refeeding ???.

Am I to believe that its a quicker remedy for the body to convert post exercise carbs to muscle glycogen, than to use body fat ?.

Thats for anyone to have a bash at answering, doesn’t have to be just iDave.
🙂

iDave.
Will your blog be recording your findings on these different ideas you appear to be demonstrating, ref the half Ironman.

I may well do the half Ironman without breakfast. Not sure it’s necessary as I can’t see glycogen being depleted while I’m asleep

Can you tell that to all the pro-wannabes leaving gel wrapper litter on a racecourse during a one hour short course XC race 😉

What strikes me most about this whole business is the whole ‘sports nutrition’ market is heading for a wake up call.
My personal interest has been the association of electrolytes and cramp; a pervasive, pretty much ubiquitous idea that is beginning to look wrong. If the use of sugars and/or ‘energy’ products OS going to be revisited, I wonder what will happen to the market.

Solo – remember the iDave diet was for biffers. Having simple carbs during and after exercise is fine if the goal is quality of training and subsequent performance rather than body fat loss.

The athletes I work with eat carbs and I encourage it, but the right carbs at the right time.

Solo – remember the iDave diet was for biffers. Having simple carbs during and after exercise is fine if the goal is quality of training and subsequent performance rather than body fat loss.

The athletes I work with eat carbs and I encourage it, but the right carbs at the right time.

Right you are, I had kinda left that behind, in my tiny mind.
I am more focused on reducing and maintaining a reduced Body Fat percentage.
So I don’t think I need fast carbs after a ride.

Thank you.

crikey – I work with a sports nutrition co, often my advice to our sponsored athletes is to use less of our product. Use them at the right time in the right dose and they work and we’re all happy.

nick – Totally agree on the gels at short events too.

So now you do iDave plus an apple – that’s how it appears from your description?

Kinda, I still;

*milk in tea/coffee (but no sugar)

*biscuits with tea/coffee

*sandwich/crisps/drink deal from the canteen if I forget my lunch

*eat a chinese/indian teakaway once in a while, which invariably involves rice/nann/popadom/baji/prawn crackers and very sweet sauces etc

*the previously mentioned apples/bannana etc.

*don’t have day’s off, but do have big portions (well, ~75g) of simple carbs imediately after excercising to exaustion so probably not depleating muscle glycogen levels like I would on idave style diets.

But I do try an put some thought into when I eat carbs, so my evenings are pretty much carb free, breakfast is appart from milky coffee and I make an effort to ride into work and have fruit before/after rather than mid morning/afternoon.

Usualy I find it quite hard to lose weight, it would ‘fluctuate’ up then plateau, then go up again, then plateau, probably gaining about 2kg a year since I was 15 (25 now), but since putting more thought into it it now fluctuates up and down, just need to make a concerted effort to get more ‘downs’ than ‘ups’.

Can you tell that to all the pro-wannabes leaving gel wrapper litter on a racecourse during a one hour short course XC race

Yes, if they read this thread, they can probably save money not eating so much sugar, for such a short ride.

Solo,
Yes I have carbs and protein post exercise. The amount of carbs is based on how long the training was and how often I went into the red etc.
Sorry, I think there have been some crossed wires and in my despiration to refute the comments of the some of the ‘fat haters’ I may have misled you and the OP.
As idave states carbs are very important for athletes, they are no essential if you define essential in the same way you have ‘essential fats, or essential amino acids’ But they aid recovery etc. If you did not have carbs post training you would repair your muscles and you would re-charge your glycogen it would just take much longer and you would be at risk of further damaging muscle when it has not fully recovered.

This has turned very interesting.
Will this ever become public knowledge? So to say as it will require a huge u-turn in public health policy?

Exactly legspin, can you see why I get frustrated? At work I feel like I’m fighting a tide on non-believers.
I will shortly be putting on a lecture to all the cardiological consultants at the Glenfield hospital(The leading cardiac hospital in the country). Invites will also be sent to the top cardiologists in the country. The aim will be to present the current evidence in an aim to get some of the most influential people on our side.
Then we will take it to the government/nhs in an effort to change the awful advice given out on how to be healthy and try and destory the demonisation of fats.

Not as large as the U turn in food processing, food marketing and food purchasing.

The main issue is though that if I tell joe bloggs to eat fat he WILL get fat, he WILL probably get heart disease. But thats not the fat to blame its his carbs. If he cut the carbs and ate the fat he’d be fine. This advice is dangerous in the wrong hands. Which is why I am annoyed at myself for being so open on a public forum, at the end of the day my comments may do more harm than good, which is deeply upsetting.

On a break and thought I’d call in to see where this was going and I am still confused.

Are we saying that all research against high fat/high protein/low carb diets is flawed, or worse, falsified, because that seems to be where this is going?

crikey you are correct.
But as the danes (who have eliminated trans fat/vegetable oils/marg from their diet by law) have proven it is possible.

But what we need to do is start the protest by not buying the crap they are selling. They need to be forced to change their ways by the only method they know, drops in sales.

So avoid all processed food that contains vegetable oil and inverted fructose syrups. Even high quality foods contain these now, because they are so much cheaper than butter/real fat and sugar.

Where has that come from?
The research into Low fat diets is seriously flawed.
There is little research on high fat diets, but even so the evidence would be worthless as there are too many factors to implicate the cause.

Therefore the current research direction is looking at the specific hormonal and biochemical effects, only with this basic knowledge can we hope to understand whats going on.

Interesting indeed.

From a personal point of view, I’ve been through old fashioned cycling nutrition, going out with water, and a kit kat for emergency use, when my weight was low and stable, through using gels and recovery shakes, when my weight went up, and am now back to a minimal supplement routine and am getting thinner by the week.

I still dream of crumpets though.

Tom does that mean I can drop the flora and get the Lurpak back out 😉

Now all I need to do I convince my 15 year old that sugar is bad and the wife who is trained by the NHS to get people thin. Might be harder work than converting me.

The research into Low fat diets is seriously flawed

In what way? Not being a pain, I really don’t know.

Regarding the high fat/low carb diet my mum is diabetic and uses it quite rigourously. As a concerned son I occasionally have a look around the web for stuff just to make sure she’s ok. As an example I came accross Harte et al Post-prandial high fat intake leads to acute exposure to circulating endotoxin in type 2 diabetes mellitus subjects

If she’s wrong then I will be more than happy as I’m likely to have my mum about a bit longer.

Yes legspin please do. Get rid of the flora it is literally killing you.

Go though your cupboards people, get rid of any vegetable oil containing products (you will be suprised) any inverted syrups.

All fats that are not part of the following list
Ex Virgin Olive oil
Cold pressed rapeseed,grapeseed etc. (all ok as long as cold pressed)
Butter
Coconut oil
Palm oil

Use butter,coconut oil, palm oil for frying.
These saturated fats are very stable at high temperatures so do not chemically change like other oils high in poly/mono unsaturated fats do.

Yes this is going to cost you. but the money you spend now will be paid back to you with interest in lack of prescription charges (for all those meds you’re going to need in the future) not to mention your good health for decades to come.
Eat whole foods, grow your own or eat organic if you can. Don’t be short-sighted with this.

dangerousbeans, can I get back to you on that. I am trying to keep up with all the current research, but its hard with a 60 hour a week plus job. (by the way for those of you wondering I am on a day off at the moment!)

tomhughes – thanks for your input, it’s been interesting reading. 🙂

Can I just ask about coconut milk? Is it any good or just another fad?

I tend to roast vegetables ie carrots, butternut squash, parsnips etc so which is the best oil for this?

No worries.

I’d rather you be working on it than spending time on here.

I accept that what we know may well be wrong and that we should be doing something completely different but worry that, in a few more years, we’ll be told something entirely different again.

Thanks

No coconut milk is not a fad in my opinion. It contains lost of medium change triglycerides (MCTs)
These beautiful little molecules are fats that can almost act like carbs and can be used as a relatively rapid energy source. I use them in my training drinks, they are like rocket fuel.

The only opposition to coconut milk is how they are packaged. They do not like being in tins and can cause leeching of the compounds in tins into the milk (this goes for most tins liquids but seems to be worse in coconut milk for some reason)
So if you can get it is cartons and enjoy!

But as the danes (who have eliminated trans fat/vegetable oils/marg from their diet by law) have proven it is possible.

Yes legspin please do. Get rid of the flora it is literally killing you.

Not sure if this is relavent, but Margerine (as a tub of emulsified hydrogenated veg oil) hasn’t existed for quite a long time, look at the ingredients.

And the Danes banned Marmite under the same legislation, so please can we not follow their lead!

dangerousbeans – yes that is always the worry in the back of my mind that we may be wrong, but this research has been around for almost half a century but has been ignored. Due to the ‘lipid hypothesis’ the american government, the american heart foundation and the food companies involved any scientists who countinued this research were not only sacked but also black balled, unbelievable but true. So it has remained a bit of an underground movement till now.

For those who are discussing carbs after exercise, one important reason to have some immediately after is to help reduce the level of cortisol in your body that has risen because of the stress put on it by exercise. Cortisol stunts reduces immune function leading to illness etc, so its a good idea to try and reduce it after exercise, this is in addition to the benefits of adaption by correctly refuelling the body in combination with proteins

this is not a spoon – yes of course, its now a ‘blend’ still contains the vegetable oil, but contains just enough other stuff to make it legal.

tomhughes – thanks for your input, it’s been interesting reading.

Can I just ask about coconut milk? Is it any good or just another fad?

I tend to roast vegetables ie carrots, butternut squash, parsnips etc so which is the best oil for this?

Coconut milk is definitely not a fad and is a very good choice. For frying roasting I would preferably use coconut oil followed by real butter (kerrygold) but coconut oil for roasting as it can handle the higher temperatures without going bad

Tom – I thought vegetable oil was OK?, I thought it was just hydrogenated fats (Trans fats) that were a problem.

For people who don’t know they take regular vegetable oils and add hydrogen atoms (hydrogenation) under high temperature to make artificial fats, this solidifies the oil and makes it last longer e.g. margarine, but has been linked to diabetes and other health issues and has been illegal in Denmark for several years as Tom indicated.

By the way the food manufacturers have got wise to the fact that people are waking up to trans fats/hydrogenated fats and have started to label with other names such as E471 or mono and di-glycerides of fatty acids, if you see any of these on your food lables including hydrogenated fats it basically contains trans fats.

I was surprised to find every single loaf of bread when I looked in Tescos a few months back had trans-fats (they had labeled with e471 or mono/di-glycerides of fatty acids so as not to alert people to this toxic sh*te). This is what prompted me to buy a bread machine and make my own.

Serious question… if two hypothetically identical people were consuming the same number of calories, one through a ‘balanced’ diet, and one just eating butter, would the butter eater be less fat, as fat doesn’t make you fat?

Can you tell that to all the pro-wannabes leaving gel wrapper litter on a racecourse during a one hour short course XC race

And all the people asking what energy drink to use for their 15 minute commute!

Thanks very much tom and Teifiterror. 8)

njee, serious answer, the butter eater would probably be thinner!
They wouldn’t be as healthy as the butter would not contain all they needed, but because of the lack of insulin stimulation they wouldn’t accumulate fat. They would also only eat the amount their body required for energy. Especially as butter is not sweet.
sweetness causes a dopaminergic based response causing us to over-eat, which is why sweetners can make you over eat and gain weight, especially as sweetners make you crave carbs. This has been proven in many studies.

Serious question… if two hypothetically identical people were consuming the same number of calories, one through a ‘balanced’ diet, and one just eating butter, would the butter eater be less fat, as fat doesn’t make you fat?

Not sure that would be too healthy but potentially they would be less fat because a. It takes more energy to convert fat to energy than carbs to energy and b. you excrete excess blood glucose (from carbs) as body fat while you excrete excess ketones (energy source from fat) in your urine and on your breath!

No probs cinnamon girl, I’m glad your getting something out of the discussion.

Fun fact, ta.

What I want to know is does Solo explode at any point on this thread?

Phil looked to be playing the catalyst at one point. But I got bored before the end of page 1.