Stuff about cycling ...
First off, a disclaimer, I got the idea for this from the recipe on page 230 of The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living, but it’s not exactly the same so I figured I’d pass it along.
If you’re curious about this whole ketosis thing, Attia has an excellent Ketosis 101 article part 1, and part 2, that will get you up to speed.
Apparently I’ve been living under a rock, despite being familiar with his central governor theory and having read his doorstop of a book, The Lore of Running, I didn’t know that Noakes’ position on nutrition was anything other than what he had espoused in his book.
In fact, nearly the entire third chapter (I have the 4th edition) is devoted to how maximizing carbohydrates maximizes performance, save this reference to a discussion at a conference in 1977 where D.S.Kronfeld from the University of Pennsylvania made the following statement about the prevailing dogma that human athletes must eat exclusively high-carbohydrate diets:
I’ve had a fair few searches, and a couple emails about the effects of ketosis on a person’s heart rate, and while I’ve mentioned it in other posts, I thought it best to talk about it specifically.
First off, I’m not a doctor, I don’t play one on TV, and I didn’t stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night; I’m just relaying my personal experience, which is probably worth about half what you paid for it.
In support of my long standing position as a nutritional heretic, I figured I’d pass on some stuff I’ve recently come across.
If you haven’t read it, provided you’re interested, Dr. Attia’s latest Ketosis article ( Ketosis – advantage or misunderstood state? (Part II)) is particularly informative.
Way down in the comments, and Attia gets lots of comments, is a link to a particularly interesting article about the research of Oxford Professor Dr. Kieran Clarke.
Oh, right, here’s the link to the article… Sorry ‘bout that…
I have received several questions, and there have been numerous searches that have landed here looking for what sort of things to eat to establish and maintain ketosis.
While I am in no way qualified to be giving nutritional advice, I can relate to having searched high and low for any information on what to eat to make the whole ketosis thing work.
I have relied heavily on what Dr. Peter Attia has done. In fact, it was his article on ketosis and athletic performance that led me to experiment with long(er) term ketosis in the first place.
Dr. Peter Attia M.D. released this presentation on Generation UCAN, and I thought I’d pass it along. The presentation is a slide based power point type of thing wherein he explains the benefits of using UCAN for carbohydrate supplementation.
The presentation starts out with basic exercise metabolism, and goes thru the various forms of carbohydrates used to fuel exercise.
The UCAN specific stuff starts about 2 thirds the way into the presentation.
I’ve used the stuff and can vouch for its effectiveness, as well as it not stimulating an insulin response sufficient to either take me out of ketosis, or prevent me from entering ketosis.
I can definitely say that this season has felt like an ‘off’ season, toxic bug bites, wonky nutrition, the death of my brother, and recently, very spotty training.
It all started well enough, by the end of June I had collected almost 500 hours of riding time as well as being ahead of last years climbing totals. Then, the bug bite fiasco, and the downward spiral that to date, I haven’t been able to recover totally from.
Enough gloom and doom… At some point, after your last big ‘event’, ride, or race, and before the buildup for next season, comes the time for the ‘off’ season.
Ucan is based on a new fangled carbohydrate source that was developed to help with a childhood disease that causes frequent episodes of hypoglycemia. They call the stuff Super Starch, and the idea is that the carbohydrate is released slowly enough that it doesn’t cause an insulin response.
They’ve got all their science stuff here.
I talked about the whole ketosis thing, and possible drawbacks to fueling intense exercise with ketones in CHO as a PED.
In CHO as a PED, I also hypothesized that Ucan might be able to help with the ‘top end’ fueling that seemed problematic with ketosis.
Until fairly recently, I held the belief that a low carbohydrate diet, as in less than 50 grams per day, was something of a temporary fix. I didn’t think that an active life with considerable amounts of long duration exercise could be sustained without carbohydrates.
I had dabbled with low carb diets, but never for longer than about 30 days, until I came across Dr. Peter Attia. After seeing what he had been doing, and learning more about the whole ketosis thing, I decided to give it a try to see how it would work for me personally.
“I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.” – J. Wellington Wimpy
Cyclists are by and large a weight conscious, neigh, weight obsessed group of people, ergo the coined descriptor ‘weight weenies’. While this obsession manifests itself in many forms I’d like to focus on the body weight variety, you know, the denominator of the Watts/kilogram equation.
In the quest for that holy grail that is increased W/kg, cyclists are willing to undergo all manner of evils, not the least of which is dieting. This would seem to be a permanent condition for the cyclist being that, as pointed out in Climbing Weight, no matter what your current weight, your ideal weight is given by the equation weight ideal = weight current – 1kg.
