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Triathlon on a Low-Carb High-Fat Diet (ketogenic)

By Vinnie Santana, ironguides.net

Vinnie SantanaNutrition has always had a special place for us at ironguides; it’s a way to improve our athletes’ performance and health. In addition to our training approach, The Method—which is based on hormonal balance—all our coaches had always understood that a diet low on carbohydrates, especially when well timed, is the ticket to improving both performance and health with our athletes.

However, we took this approach to another level when I personally was forced to train, live and race under a LCHF (Low-Carb High-Fat) Ketogenic diet for health reasons. The article below is an introduction to my personal experience on this topic, triathlon training on a “keto” diet.

Background

Back in 2000, I was diagnosed with Diabetes Type 1 at the age of 15. People around me wanted to make me feel better and said, “You can still do whatever you want.” With that motto in mind, I continued on my journey to becoming a professional triathlete.

I was managing diabetes as well as I could back then but, due to the lack of adequate information, my diet consisted of the recommended one for high-performance athletes and I tried to cover all that carbohydrate intake with insulin. That did not work so well and my blood glucose levels were running chronically high.

Despite all the challenges, I still managed to turn pro after winning my first Ironman race in 2004. It came full circle when in 2007 I had a PB of 8h50 at Ironman Brazil, which qualified me—as the youngest professional triathlete—for the Ironman World Championships in Kona. My PB also still stands as the fastest time by a Type-1 Diabetic over the Ironman distance.

Then at the end of 2012 I came across a book named “Diabetes Solution” by Dr. Bernstein and he recommended a diet with no more than 30g of carbohydrate per day. The impact on my health was amazing; after only a couple weeks I was seeing blood glucose levels that until that point had been a distant dream. This result created hope that I was now given a second chance with my health and I could carry on with all my other goals in life, as I felt diabetes wouldn’t be a threat anymore.

Vinnie 1 year A1C

A1C tracks average blood glucose for previous 2-3 months

While I felt great overall, my new diet killed any physical performance I still had—even going up the steps of the local subway station became a challenge. While I didn’t have major plans of racing again, I still exercised on a daily basis and enjoy pushing the intensity here and there, but on that diet, forget it—there were several times I had to walk home from a run, even a slow run.

My work also requires that I train some of my clients in a one-on-one situation. On several occasions I almost got to the point of telling them I couldn’t keep up—and these were beginner athletes, we were running slower than 1-hour 10km pace, a pace I would previously consider slower than a warm-up jog.

To me the message was clear: I had regained my health, but lost my sport. It was a trade-off I could live with but preferred to change. So I kept researching until I finally discovered the world of endurance training on a Ketogenic diet—low in carbohydrates and protein, but high in fat. There was hope again I could continue with triathlon training lifestyle I love.

While there are some resources out there, none of them offered information about a higher-performance racing approach and high intensity training. In theory, Ketosis allows your body to tap into this endless resource of energy stored in your body, named FAT. But it was not clear how well you could perform, at a high level, within this approach.

While I got adapted well enough to get back into doing some exercise, I started to wonder if the athletes I coach could benefit from this diet. So I began to do some experiments in my own racing and training, since my diabetes was now very stable and as an athlete I—unlike my athletes—no longer have pressure to deliver results.

I decided to become my own guinea pig to test what was possible in terms of sports performance on a Ketogenic diet.

While we don’t believe in the magical solution, preferring consistent hard work as the winning formula, a small improvement in performance could make a big difference to some of the athletes we coach—from a more high-performance athlete who is winning smaller ironman races but is not as close to being a threat at the world championships, to the very beginner, but busy, athlete that wants to break a certain time at the next 10km race but has maxed out on his training load.

The theory

There are several books and reputable blogs out there that will cover the benefits of a low carbohydrate diet. I will try to keep this article to the unique information that I can provide based on my experience. But just as a quick intro to sports performance: in theory, being “fat adapted” will provide you the opportunity to use fat as your primary energy source while training and racing, which means that even the leanest athlete still carries dozens of thousands of calories from stored fat and would be able to access to it.

I’ve seen the following analogy that makes things easy to visualize:

  • Non-Fat-Adapted Athlete (on a high-carb diet): Is a Petrol Truck that runs out of fuel and has to stop by the side of the road, since he can’t have access to the huge tank of fuel he is carrying. That would be a non-fat-adapted athlete bonking during an endurance event.
  • Fat-Adapted Athlete (on a LCHF diet): You develop access to the big petrol container that you carry. The same Petrol Truck won’t run out of fuel since you can now access a close-to-unlimited amount of fuel. Or in the athletic world, you won’t bonk anymore in your next endurance events.

On race day your muscle glycogen will also be used better and reserved only for very glycolytic parts of the race.

There are other benefits too in health—especially addressing the metabolic syndrome issues such as lower blood pressure, improved blood fat levels, weight loss. The other very positive benefits of a Ketogenic diet aren’t necessarily to sports performance: brain function and energy levels. Once both body and mind start to work on a consistent flow of energy, there are no dips. My productivity at work, for example, has improved drastically, but we will save this topic for another article and stick to sports performance for now.

Getting adapted

The term “low carb” comprises a relatively flexible range: less than 150 grams per day is technically low carb, but I went straight into what is considered the lowest, a VLC (very low carb) or Ketogenic, diet, and aimed to keep my carb intake below 30g per day as per the book’s recommendation.

As mentioned, the blood glucose results were nothing short of a miracle and that was the single reason why I didn’t quit this way of eating. While working and other daily activities were fine, exercise was a nightmare: I was feeling horrible for everything from easy jogs to higher intensity workouts, but reading that it would take between two and six weeks to adapt, I stuck with it. In fact, I HAD to stick with it FOR LIFE, so there was nothing to lose. I would just stay on the plan, hoping to feel a bit better in a few weeks down the road.

Six weeks into it, I definitely started to feel better, there were still some off-days on which I would feel completely empty in training, when slowing down wasn’t enough and I had to stop the workout completely. But after about three months, those days wouldn’t appear as often. While there was a slower session here and there, I got back onto a “training plan” and started to do several time trials to track progress in which I tried to keep variables for conditions very stable:

  • 5km run on the treadmill
  • 400m swim at a 50m pool
  • 20km bike in the velodrome
velodrome in bangkok

Keep variables consistent while doing tests. Velodrome, treadmill and pool are great facilities for that.

With the above scenario I had the opportunity to track the benefits of several aspects that are supposed to help on a LCHF diet, such as adding electrolytes to the diet to increase blood plasma, Generation UCAN superstarch that releases a very slow carbohydrate into your system, and other general experiments with carbohydrate intake, such as what’s the difference in performance when eating 20g of carbs per day versus 60g of carbs per day.

Fuelling in Training

The whole theory is that you don’t need to fuel in training. However, on the very long sessions fuelling does help to protect muscle mass, keep hunger away after training to avoid overeating and being kicked out of Ketosis, since during training and most of the day you won’t feel very hungry anyway.

At first is difficult to find the appropriate fuel to take in training. I remember I used to make a shake of avocado, coconut milk, nuts, coconut oil, and take it on a bike ride in one of my bottles—right there I had more than 500kcal with very few carbs and would keep the flat flowing through my system.

As you get more experienced and just want to keep things simple, you end up finding your own favourite fuels. These days I enjoy the convenience of UCAN superstarch, packets of nuts, and individually wrapped cheese. I must admit that recipes aren’t my thing, I tend to eat similar things every day and I may need to outsource a recipe book for the LCHF diet. Once you understand the core concept, be creative.

Changes in Body Composition

Staying lean is a challenge for carb-intolerant athletes. Vinnie (white hat) training with Olympic Champion Nicola Spirig at teamTBB.

Staying lean is a challenge for carb-intolerant athletes. Vinnie (white hat) training with Olympic Champion Nicola Spirig at teamTBB.

A nice benefit of a low carb diet, both as an athlete and as an active individual, is the convenience of losing body fat relatively easy.

My whole family is carb intolerant, my father is obese, my mother is borderline pre-diabetic and I have a 2-year-old nephew who has Type 1 diabetes—carbohydrates aren’t our family’s best friend and as an athlete I’ve always struggled to maintain my race weight. I would always train relatively heavy and diet very hard (calorie restriction) in the build-up to my races to lose weight and increase my power-to-weight ratio.

 

Vinnie on a Ketogenic diet – easier to maintain low body-fat percentage.

Vinnie on a Ketogenic diet – easier to maintain low body-fat percentage.

While on Ketosis my weight has been oscillating a lot less, and it has been slowly changing to a leaner and healthier looking body type.

Special attention to high performance training

This part of this article may not apply to 98 percent of the readers; however, there may be two downsides of a LCHF diet for high-performance training that I’m still working on to improve.

  • Lack of Glycogen for high intensity training

If you are an elite athlete, a 10km runner for example, you will need to run faster than your race pace at several moments during your race. This is a very glycogen-oriented activity and being on Ketosis may make this type of work relatively difficult.

There are two solutions for this problem: 1. fast running on the treadmill because that biomechanically teaches you how to run faster without the extra aerobic load, and 2. sprint runs on a downhill because that has a similar stimulus.

The same challenge also applies to the swim and bike, for which there are also training methods and tools that can be used to mitigate the downsides.

  • Train Low VS Race Higher

Even though your training performance will be very good once you are adjusted, if you go to a high intensity, you will still have the perception fatigue is coming faster and stronger compared with when you are on a high carbohydrate diet. Training tired is hard enough, training tired and low on glycogen can be mentally very draining; it takes a lot of confidence in this approach to know that once race day comes you will be feeling way stronger.

By pulling back your training load (rather than by carboloading), you will get more rest, your muscles will feel fresh and remember that your body is in carbohydrate starvation mode; it will spare every possible gram of glycogen into your muscles, even while you maintain a low-carb diet leading into the race. The result is that on race day you will have a much higher energy level and speed than you are used to in training.

My experience, for example: I could barely break 5:40 on my 400m time trials, then on race day I managed a 5:08—both were done in a pool, that’s a considerable difference!

Racing

There is no substitute for testing your training, equipment, strategy or anything else, than doing the real thing—a real race. After being away from the start line for two years, I decided to put the whole theory to the test and entered several local races.

All were sprint distance that would take me about one hour, mostly in similar conditions in terms of course elevation and weather. So I now had now the opportunity to test the famous carbo-loading theory! In fact there is a little race here in Bangkok that is almost like doing a triathlon inside a gym since it happens in a pool, but you still get the adrenalin boost and the challenge of competition. Below are the things I’ve tested while doing these events:

  • Carbohydrate Loading both the day before and race morning
  • Protein Loading (to achieve gluconeogenesis, i.e. the body’s generation of glucose from non-carb sources)
  • Electrolytes Loading

I wanted to find out how a fat-adapted body could perform on fat only, Ketosis, but with ‘some’ muscle glycogen via protein intake; I also did a relatively high carbo-load (200g on the day before the race). It was also interesting to see the result all those tests had on my diabetes control and blood glucose. Of course I was limited to some of the carbo-load protocol, for example 10g of carbohydrate per kg of body weight, but I’m testing some of these on athletes I coach.

While most of these tests are already done, the more I study and try things, the closer I get to bring out the ideal racing protocol to people on a LCHF. I’m also testing all this on a few of my athletes who are getting ready for Ironman triathlons and marathons. I am aiming to provide an update on the results in about a year.

For now I can say that the difference is very, very small between most of the above scenarios and one can perform very, very fast racing on a Ketogenic diet. I have broken 1 hour in the sprint distance triathlons on Ketosis—while this isn’t a world class time, it’s faster than most triathletes out there.

So, who is this for? Is this for all athletes of all levels?

Everyone can benefit somehow. Some athletes will benefit a lot more, while others need to be very careful with the way they apply the LCHF in their training, otherwise they may be worse off.

This is NOT the magical ticket to success. I remember researching this topic—the message sold was that this was the real deal, rocket fuel that would provide unlimited amount of energy and that I would be able to cruise at my race pace very efficiently without eating any carbs.

You come across testimonials of athletes improving 20 to 40 minutes on their half marathon times and more than an hour on their marathon times. The problem was that this only happened with athletes who were overweight (in relative terms); after losing weight with the LCHF, they went faster mostly due to being lighter, NOT only due to being able to burn fat more efficiently.

So who and how should each specific group use the LCHF? The answer depends on the combination of the length of your event, your performance level and body fat percentage. Below a quick summary of the benefits for each group:

Recreational Athletes – Unless you are very young or part of the lucky ones who won the carb-tolerant DNA ticket, a low-carb approach would bring several benefits, starting at a rapid weight loss, to increasing the ability to burn fat as your primary fuel while training and racing. Since you are also a recreational athlete, your health and wellbeing may also be very high on the priority list; both are two other big reasons to go low carb.

High Performance Age Groupers ­– It depends on the distance you are training for and competing at, but you certainly want to go to a low carb diet and may time your carbohydrate consumption too during, and straight after, your training. If you are a long-distance athlete, spending a lot of time in Ketosis will definitely bring you benefits on your race day.

Professional Athletes – Can definitely benefit from training periods in a lower carb range, but this should also be timed with the type of work they are doing in each period of the week. The biggest difference to the amateur athlete is the very high intensity training and importance of that on race day, especially from a strategic point of view. At that level, athletes aren’t racing against themselves or against the clock, they are racing their competition. There are times they may be forced to dig deep into their glycogen stores to match attacks and stick to the front group. A fast swim start, for example, can cost an athlete the whole race if they miss the pack, or if an athlete is training low on carbs year around, they may find it more difficult to achieve certain speeds and biomechanical efficiencies that come with it.

Post Lunch in Cape Town with Professor Tim Noakes & Wife Marylin Noakes - Tim is the author of Lore of running and most recent has shifted his focus to Low Carb nutrition and published Real Food Revolution - we discussed at lunch the benefits of LCHF for athletes of all levels, beginners is a clearn benefit, while advanced, they can also metabolize fat at a higher rate even while racing after a certain carboload period

Post Lunch in Cape Town with Professor Tim Noakes & Wife Marylin Noakes – Tim is the author of Lore of running and most recent has shifted his focus to Low Carb nutrition and published Real Food Revolution – we discussed at lunch the benefits of LCHF for athletes of all levels, beginners is a clearn benefit, while advanced, they can also metabolize fat at a higher rate even while racing after a certain carboload period

Special Groups – These are usually health related. Diabetics including me are part of this group. Also, if you have any of the conditions listed as metabolic syndrome, you will have huge health benefits (and subsequent performance benefits) of going to a lower carb range.

Conclusion

Do you fit in any of the above categories? Do you think the LCHF approach is for you? Before you make the switch, I suggest you study the topic a bit more and also understand the other health benefits that come with it. In the end this is a change that can improve your performance, health and wellbeing.

Vinnie Santana, ironguides Head Coach

Disclaimer: This article is for information only and should not be used for the diagnosis or treatment of medical conditions. Information on www.ironguides.net is not intended as a substitute for the advice provided by your physician or other healthcare professional.

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Triathlon training with diabetes — What is different to non-diabetics: Rest days and rest periods

When it comes to certain aspects of training, diabetics needs to be aware that “we are different”, and the normal approach doesn’t apply.

 

Days off or resting phases is one of those situations. At our training plans, we don’t schedule days off unless there is any specific situation with each individual, with our approach you should be training every day, and let the days off comes naturally, be it for a professional or social commitment, or if you feel just too tired on any specific day(s), for those situations is OK to take the rest.

And how does this differs for Diabetics athletes? Why can’t it be just the same?

If the diabetic athlete trains everyday, to a point that he is forced to take a day off, that means this athlete was training hard or long enough to really create a huge insulin sensibility, than out of a sudden, you take the day off, only sit on the coach and have a few extras snacks.

This is aggressive for your body to handle, and your blood glucose levels won’t be very stable at all, since in a matter of a day, you are shifting a healthy/fit routine, to the couch potato one. Is very likely that for the later meals of that day, you will require more insulin than the usual, and is likely that you will need more insulin over night, or your blood glucose levels will be fairly high in the morning after, which creates that tired feel, and you think you need one more day off, and this can get very hard to get out.

How to handle the deep fatigue then? Active Recovery!

If you are into a consistent training routine, one training session, seven times a week, you will be way better by taking 2-3 easy days, than a complete day off. The active recovery workout only needs to be 20-30min long, if possible, include some short 20sec all out effort to work on your hormonal balance and increase metabolism (which helps insulin sensivity), stick to the diet you are used to, don’t overeat thinking that the extra calories will restore your glycogen stores, as with the reduced training and the usual diet, you will be carboloading anyways, no need to force it.

Then after 2-3 days of very easy training, see if you can get back into your plan, focus on getting the volume done first, then slowly build up the intensity to normal levels.

Other than keeping your blood glucose levels down, this approach has also benefits for the non-diabetic athlete. You get something done every day, this avoids the athlete to make up for the lost sessions, as highly motivated athletes are likely to train harder after a forced day off.  You also keep your metabolism high, avoid that bloated feel, and stay loose, which makes easier for your return into the plan, then once you are settle into it, avoid to get into that deep fatigue level again.

Taper:

Taper is nothing else than freshening up for a race. You can do it in many diffent ways:

1) Reduce training intensity
2) Reduce training volume
3) Decrease training frequency (session per week)
4) Taking extra days off
For diabetics, this order is exactly what you should do for your taper. You should be able to taper based on #1 and #2 until 3 days out of race day, then you can do less sessions, especially if the race requires tapering, and of course, as always, avoid the days off, even a 15min easy jog is much better than completely rest.

For that reason, since you can’t have an aggressive resting period, you might want to start your taper a little bit earlier, we usually do a 2 week taper, so for diabetics athletes, I would recommend starting reducing intensity with 2 ½ week to your race day.

All in all, just make sure you don’t follow general training guidelines that you feel are not right for diabetics, as a diabetic, you are different, and requires a different training approach, let your coach knows all the ins and outs of diabetes and don’t be afraid to create something that works specifically for you, but is not “right” in terms of conventional approach, since you are different in a way!

Vinnie

 

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Triathlon Training with Diabetes: Tapering and Insulin dosage

Have you ever noticed how you feel sluggish when you are tapering on race week? Even with a reduced load, you feel tired all the time, hungry and that create a huge self doubt if you are fit enough for the race or you won’t get enough time to rest.

 

Why does that happens?

 

When we switch into ‘taper’ mode after a long period of consistent training, we make a journey from one state of physicality into another. What is happening is that your body is moving from “fight” mode into “heal” mode. The training systems that were on fire are shutting down because you are no longer subjecting your body to the physical training (stress) stimuli.

 

This change means that the balance of hormones in your body is changing. The level hormones secreted to sustain your high levels of physical exertion during training is dropping, while the level of “restoration” hormones is increasing. This change translates to a sensation of fatigue in the body.

 

One of those hormones that are changed is insulin. You were training hard and long, your muscles cells were always on the need of glycogen, it means that a tiny amount of  insulin, was enough to refill your cells.

 

But as you decrease training hours and intensity, you will need more insulin to cope with the ratio of grams of carbohydrate & units of insulin.

 

Basically, I had to use 3 times more insulin on the day before a race, compared to what I was using on normal training days. Of course that to realize that, I had many pre-race Saturdays of high blood glucose levels, it took me a few tapers to understand what was happening with me, why I needed so much more insulin for the same size and sort of meals.

 

The basal insulin mentioned below is above is supposed to cover only the sugar that is released by your liver during the day and night. The healthy athlete produces only one sort of insulin, while most diabetics that are not in an insulin-pump treatment, are on 2 or more types of insulin. On the top o the basal insulin, that I injected myself every night I had to take a “bolus”, that is, a super fast-acting insulin that would cover all my meals.

 

The numbers are scary, here are some examples:

 

  • Units of Basal Insulin and blood glucose released by your liver.

–I needed 10 units per day in normal training days

 

–For a race on Sunday, I would need to increase this

number by Wednesday to Friday up to 20 units (100%)

 

–As I usually take a day off on Friday, by Saturday, my insulin reception was so poor, that I would take up to 30 units of ‘basal’ insulin (that’s 3 times more than the normal!!!)

 

  • Units of fast-acting insulin and Grams of Carbs:

–A normal breakfast with ~100g of carbs, required 5 units of “fast-acting insulin”, that was usually after my first training session in the morning (more about timing of meals coming out soon!)

 

–The same 100g of carbs in the morning before the race, required up to 16 units of fast-acting insulin.

 

 

Remember that for your next taper. Don’t over eat, as your body is already under a huge load and hormonal change, rest properly, sleep well and let your muscles get full replenished with CHO for the race day.

 

Vinnie

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Triathlon Training with Diabetes: Stress, Adrenalin, Insulin and blood glucose levels

No, those are not butterflies in your stomach when you toe the line at a triathlon start and are waiting for the gun — that is one of the symptoms from adrenaline: when one is nervous, blood is pulled away from the stomach and sent into the muscles.

 

Adrenalin is a “fight” hormone, and plays a central role in the short-term stress reaction. It is released from the adrenal glands when danger threatens or in an emergency. Such triggers may be threatening, exciting, or environmental stressor conditions such as a triathlon start!

When secreted into the bloodstream, it rapidly prepares the body for action in emergency situations. The hormone boosts the supply of oxygen and glucose to the brain and muscles, while suppressing other non-emergency bodily processes (digestion in particular). This reduced blood flow, in turn, causes the stomach to temporarily shut down.

Adrenaline has the opposite effect of insulin.  The resulting rise in blood sugar enables the fermentation of glucose in the muscles. Adrenaline furthermore reinforces these effects, because it increases the secretion of glucagon (a hormone with the same effects as adrenaline) and decreases the release of insulin.

As a diabetic, I had no natural insulin to counter-effect this process when I was racing (who doesn’t get nervous before a triathlon anyway?), so it took me many races of super high blood glucose levels to really understand that no matter how low my sugar leves were BEFORE THE START, once I was on the bike, it had skyrocketed!! There were a few times that my glucometer read “HI”  — that means the levels were so high that the meter couldn’t read it.

Once I was 100% sure this wasn’t a one-off process, I started to give myself a huge amount of insulin as soon as I jumped on the bike — to be more precise, eight (8) units of fast-acting insulin, more than enough to cover 120grams of carbohydrate in a “normal” situation. Now if you are diabetic you understand why it took me so many races of high glucose levels to be confident enough and inject 8u of insulin before even testing that. Outside of racing it would have killed me or at best, put me in a hypoglycemia coma (no sugar available for the brain).

Once with this part figured out and controlled, I got into that “steady-state” in pacing where I had no more pre-start tension and was focused on the race; my blood levels were not affected my adrenalin anymore and I could go back to my good old “calories VS insulin” combination.

And what can the “non-diabetic” learn from this?

— Race start: Don’t over do it in the gels and sports drinks. Even if your sugar level is low, it will raise some in those last 5 minutes before the race start. I remember when I first started racing, I use to wear a Heart Rate monitor, 130bpm while just there, standing waiting for the start, wasn’t a surprise.

— First few minutes on the bike: DO NOT EAT – No calories at all, not even sports drinks or energy gels, not only there is very limited blood that will access your stomach at this stage to digest and absorb anything, but since capillaries in arms are open and in legs are closed, your heart is forced to work hard to pump to legs. Start the bike EASY (VERY EASY if in an ironman) for the first few minutes to let capillaries in arms shut down and legs open up; blood sugar get stable, adrenalin loses effect, then eat/drink.

Be aware of your hormones, race faster!

Vinnie

 

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