Saturday, October 27, 2012

Carb Load of Bull: Paleo Running (part 1)

Today I tried something new.  I ran my half marathon on an empty stomach.  After my mostly paleo, wheat free week, all I had this morning before the race was a small cup of coffee and a pint of kombucha.  The result:  the easiest half marathon I've run yet, and a personal record (1:43), plus the knowledge that I could have gone a little faster and quite a bit farther with this plan.  What's the key?  Getting out of the carb/glucose/insulin cycle and getting into a mild state of ketosis, harnessing all the energy I needed for distance running.

If you've done any amount of running, I'm sure you've heard of the phrase 'carb loading' before.  You know... the pre-race ritual of eating as much starchy, white, pasty, calorie rich, nutrient poor crap as you can in the hopes of packing away enough energy to survive your race tomorrow.  Instead of carb loading, it should be called 'bull loading' or better yet, 'bull ony'... bologna.  If you're still carb loading before distance races, you're being duped into a slower than you could be, harder than it needs to, more painful method of running.  I'm going to use this time to persuade you to try a more natural alternative.  Here's why:

  1. You're not getting as much out of carb loading as you think:  Your body cannot and will not keep glucose in your bloodstream long.  Why?  Because it's too damaging.  Chronic high blood glucose levels damage blood vessels and nerves.  Therefore your body will go to great lengths to get glucose out of your blood stream fast.  Some of that glucose will be stored in your muscles, which you will be able to use for race day, but much of it is transformed by your liver into triglycerides (fat) and transported to fat stores in your body.
  2. Your muscle stores of glucose are finite... there is only so much to go around, and once it's gone you've put yourself in bad situation.  If you don't replace the glucose, your body will try to create it through a process called gluconeogenesis, where your body creates glucose to burn out of other molecules like body fat or muscle protein.  Now, obviously body fat would be nice, but here's the problem.  The night before you ate enough carbohydrates to feed a small army, so your fat cells are busy storing fat from all the extra calories you ate (your body is uber efficient... if you consume too many calories, it's going to bank them for later and the deposit box is your waistline and hips).  With all that depositing happening, there's no time for withdrawal.  That means, your muscle is the next target for creating glucose... not ideal while your running.
  3. But, if you went down the carb loading path, you've probably planned for this.  You've got some fast absorbing glucose to get fuel to your muscles quickly.  Blood glucose levels up... uptake to the muscles... more energy.  Well, at least for a few minutes, until you use all that glucose and have to do it all over again.  Burn all the glucose, resupply with more calories, absorb, burn all the glucose.  An endless cycle of physiologically living paycheck to paycheck.
But what if I told you there was a better way? A more natural way.  More efficient.  Easier.  What if I told you all the energy you needed was already in your body?  You just need to learn how to tap into it.  How to harness it.  Seemingly endless supplies of energy without the highs and lows of the carb/glucose/insulin cycle.  The key is creating a mild state of ketosis in your body.  How do you do that?  Watch for part two of this article soon.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Intermittent Fasting

It's 9am on a Thursday and I'm finishing up a weekly intermittent fast (IF).  What is intermittent fasting you ask?  I'd say "it the greatest thing since sliced bread", but since sliced bread isn't so great for you... I won't.  How about, it's the greatest thing since low carb diets.  Truly, it is.  Many of us put a negative connotation on fasting, think it's hard, inconvenient, or even unhealthy for the average "gym rat".  But quite frankly, nothing could be further from the truth.  With that being said, let's dispel some myths.
  1. Fasting is Hard.  For your body, fasting is not hard.  In fact, it's quite easy.  Your body knows exactly how to deal with a period of time when no food is entering your mouth.  The hard part is the mental aspect of fasting and your current addiction to carbohydrates (especially wheat).  Too often in America, we look at food as a drug... something that makes us feel good, pass the time, prevent boredom, sometimes even exalt.  The truth is, FOOD IS NOURISHMENT.  That's it.  Food is there to nourish you.  If you rely on food for anything more than that, you've created an idol of it.  You've put it in place of prominence where it doesn't rightfully belong. (Of course we do this for many basic needs:  shelter, money, etc.)  Now that being said, there are foods that make fasting harder.  Wheat, for example reeks such havoc on your metabolism and brain chemistry that eating it before a fast is a ticket to failure.  If  you truly want to try Intermittent Fasting (IF), try eliminating wheat from your diet first.  Trust me, it will go a whole lot better than you think.
  2. Fasting is Inconvenient.  No it's not.  Being uncomfortable is inconvenient.  You can find time to not eat.  With IF, it doesn't matter what time of day you choose to fast, and it's not required to fast for an entire day.  You need a minimum of 12 hours; ideally 14-18 hours; no need for more than 24 hrs.  If you eat Dinner at 6pm, you could feasibly consider fasting until 7am.  Not hard nor inconvenient.  Wait until noon, and you'll really see the benefits.  However, If your lunch is a giant plate of pasta after your fast... well, you missed the point.  Which brings me to...
  3. Fasting is Unhealthy.  I usually hear this from the gym rats who have been sold on the idea that we need to eat every three hours or graze all day in order to keep our metabolisms up.  Not true.  Now, you can graze all day, and your metabolism will stay up because of it (because you're having to metabolize food into energy ALL DAY LONG).  Unfortunately, as fun as grazing is, our bodies aren't designed for it.  We're designed to go long period of time without food.  I mean, really do you think our ancestors sat on their bums and just ate all day?  (Actually, Egyptian royalty did, and thanks to their mummification process, we can see they were chock full of heart disease and other chronic lifestyle diseases that plague our nation).  We get plenty of calories in our Standard American Diet (SAD).  Taking a break from it for 18 hours isn't going to hurt anyone... I promise.  In fact if you eat a nutrient dense/ calorie rich diet full of fruits, veggies, fats, and proteins with little to no calorie rich/ nutrient poor grains, you won't even see a drop in energy when fasting.
Try it... You won't regret it.  Want more info, find it here. And if you're new to fasting, there's one rule.  Water, water, and more water.

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Your Destination Please?

Do you think a true understanding of your current health is important to reach your goals?  Think of it as driving directions for you health.  What if Google Maps could chart a course for your health?  Just like driving directions, the program would need a current location and destination.  With both, the program can chart the fastest course, the one with the least amount of mileage, and even a few alternates.  But without a "current location", there is no course... no direction.  The program still knows where you want to end up, but it doesn't know how to get you there.  It has no idea where you are, and if you don't know where you are, it's a whole lot more difficult, if not impossible to get where you want to go!