Race report oh my god, what did you eat

I'm not the type to type-up a race report.  I figure 'oh my god, who the hell cares?'  What steps I took / where won't change anybody's life.   But serious thanks to Peter Maksimow for coaching me (on short notice) to get me through a 50+miler as it has been a while since I've ran that distance!  

But my race nutrition plan might be of interest to a few.  During my racing am I Practicing what I preach? 

Important definition: 'hitting the wall' = the inability to switch from carb-fueling to fat-fueling while in motion.  By fat-fueling, I mean the fat stored in your body.  No matter how thin you seem, you have days of fuel right there.  Being able to access it is a use it / lose it skill.  A carb dependent athlete has a poorly developed ability to mobilize and metabolize their own body fat and use it as a fuel. 

My goal over the past couple of years is to become 'fat-adapted'.  This does not mean always living in ketosis or fueling my runs with fats.  What is does mean: I'm not dependent on a solely carbohydrate-based fuel while running.  I can switch fuel sources on the fly.

In Dr Jeff Volek's yet unreleased FASTER Study (FASTER=Fat-Adapted-Substrate oxidation in-Trained-Elite-Runners) to look at the physiological differences between elite male ultra-marathon runners with one cohort following a conventional high carbohydrate diet and the other following a low carb/fat-adapted strategy.  One qualitative finding for high performance is all participants got much faster (surge of energy) when they took in a simple sugar source of calories.  Everyone responded to Gels like rocket fuel.  Difference being, carb-adapted athlete needs these gels in an IV bag.

Most every dietitian I have met will tell me that the body needs sugar (carbs) for energy. Well let's see if the basic arithmetic supports this.

My race this weekend, 52 miles, 7860 kcalories burned.

I store between 1200 and 2000 calories in my muscles and liver if those stores are tapped off.  I ingested 500kcals during the race.  I had a breakfast out of a styrofoam left over box, some mushrooms (no, not THAT kind), cheese sticks, little slab of chicken: 300 kcals.  

7860 - 2000 - 500 - 300 = 5060 kcals

Hmmm, where's the energy balance?  Ans: Those 5000 missing cals came from my own fat. The source of my exogenous 500 kcals:

• ~2.5 scoops of Ucan superstarch sipped somewhat regularly diluted in 2 Liters of water
• 1 Justin's Almond Butter (I had 4 with me, but hard to eat.  wasn't feeling it.  better in cold weather
• misc: several little slices of watermelon, little bunch of grapes, two jolly ranchers, a few dixie cups of pepsi - mmm pepsi

How to get fat adapted? Ans: Eat a lower carb diet normally, practice intermittent fasting, narrow your eating window most days, run without fueling, run fasted on occasion.  You'll soon realize, many of the pangs of hunger you feel are habit, food addiction, small alien fetus growing inside you.  

Any times this doesn't work? Ans: High intensity efforts, you will need a high share of carbs to fuel an effort.  No matter how fat adapted you are, you will bump up against your limit of fat mobilization.  According to the study, fat mobilization varies from 0.67 grams/min for a carb-adapted athlete to 1.54 grams/min for a fat adapted athlete.  

Anyway(s), I had a fun low-intensity race, and here's some random pics blah blah race report....

Amazing aid stations with people serving and servicing you!

Scenery sent from the gods

So.... so much mud!

'Selfie'-type picture,... of myself

The Winter of Scarcity that Never Comes

This is my hypothesis:

Our distant ancestors had access only to berries in the late summer.  We consumed them and they were sweet which gave us a reward in our pleasure centers of our brains.  We ate them specifically to gain weight for the upcoming winter.  A food intended to fatten us up should NOT have a satiating trigger, that would defeat the purpose.   

Fast forward to today, sweet is available all the time.  Still no satiety trigger.  We are constantly fattening for a 'winter' of scarcity that never comes.  

If only there was a controlled way to test this... for example:

• In the upcoming That Sugar Film, Damon Gameau, a filmmaker and TV actor, vows to follow a strict diet of “healthy,” low-fat food with high sugar content, News.com.au reported....

• Gameau reportedly consumed 40 teaspoons of sugar per day, or slightly more than the average teenager worldwide, according to News.com.au. According to the American Heart Association (AHA), the average American consumes 20 teaspoons of sugar daily

<40 teaspoons of sugar?? "to match averages." What did he do, just shoveled sugar in his mouth? Not exactly.>

• “All the sugars that I was eating were found in perceived healthy foods, so low-fat yogurts, and muesli bars, and cereals, and fruit juices, sports drinks ... these kind of things that often parents would give their kids thinking they’re doing the right thing.”

• Within three weeks, the formerly healthy Gameau became moody and sluggish. A doctor gave him the shocking diagnosis: He was beginning to develop fatty liver disease. According to the Mayo Clinic, the most severe outcome for fatty liver disease is liver failure.

• Gameau said his sugar-laden diet left him feeling hungry, no matter how much he ate.

These are highlights taken from this news Article: "Man eats sugar-heavy diet for 60 days, receives shocking diagnosis"  (stupid click bait title, must be the new norm')

The Problem of Paleo Diet Arguements

Excepts taken from Chris Kresser's Interview of Mat Lalonde (from here)

Mat Lalonde PHd Chemical and Chemical Biology:

Invalid Inference 1: Our Paleolithic ancestors ate Paleo this way and they were free of disease

I’ll also say that the goal of my talk at the Ancestral Health Symposium was to help people better justify why they’re using this dietary approach or lifestyle.  You know, I do realize that I ruffled some feathers because there are some folks who are coming out of field, and I’m coming out of field, but not that far, you know, chemistry and medicine aren’t that far off.  But there are some folks who are coming from different fields, and really all they’re grasping on is this evolutionary thing, and they don’t realize that all it is really at the end of the day is a great way to formulate hypotheses, and I was seeing a lot of mistakes made in the blogosphere, and I was afraid that it was going to prevent a lot of professionals from taking our movement seriously.  So that was the goal ultimately, and you know, it’s just so simple to ridicule the whole caveman argument that I wanted to go beyond that, I wanted to give people a little bit more to think about, so if you are on a paleo diet, or what I prefer to say actually, because there’s really no such thing as a paleo diet.  The foods aren’t available anymore.  You can try to mimic it.  That’s the best you can do.  But a diet that’s meat, vegetables, tubers, and fruits.  That’s what I call it.  Typical arguments for this will go like this:  Our ancestors and modern hunter-gatherers consumed a diet that was mostly devoid of grains, legumes, and dairy, and they were virtually free of diseases of civilization.  People then make the invalid inference that consuming a diet mostly devoid of grains, legumes, and dairy will thus allow us to be free of diseases of civilization.  

Invalid Inference 2: We haven’t evolved enough to thrive on modern agriculture

Mat Lalonde:  We evolved over millions of years without consuming the foods that became readily available only after the advent of agriculture.  Hence, we’re not adapted to these foods.  But this assumes that a species isn’t adapted to a food because it’s never consumed it.  And if you look at the evolutionary record, that’s incorrect.  There are plenty of examples throughout evolution where species discover novel sources of food and thrive on them.

…You know, when you cooked plant matter or meat, it became more easily digestible so your gut could get a little bit smaller and you got better nutrition as a result.  If you look throughout history, you’ll see that food itself is a huge driver of evolution.  You know, the availability of food has driven some major adaptations.  And that’s another part where I didn’t ruffle some feathers, but I think I was misinterpreted during my seminar talk at AHS, where some people seemed to think that I was implying that adaptation was very quick.  And I didn’t say that.  I said that adaptation depended on time and pressure.  And if the pressure is very high, then it can be very quick.  So European herders becoming adapted to lactose, for example, would be a great example. 

Invalid Inference 3: We should live like our ancestors because we’re still genetically the same

Mat Lalonde:  We’ll lump this into genetics and epigenetics because the third thing I hear a lot is our genes are virtually identical to those of our Paleolithic ancestors so we should live like they did.  And this has to be the most ridiculous statement of them all because here is a group of people that claims to take an evolutionary approach to life, yet shows it does not understand evolution.  Human beings and chimps have virtually identical genomes to the tune of 99.5%.  The difference between a human being and a chimp is in gene expression in the epigenome.  Just because two species have similar genes does not mean that they will both thrive in similar environments or with similar food sources.  You know, one of the mechanisms through which adaptations arise is a change in gene expression.  It would be absurd to suggest the epigenome of modern humans is identical to that of our Paleolithic ancestors, given the substantial changes in environment and food that have occurred since that era.

What is the best scientifically backed argument for Paleo?

Mat Lalonde:  There has been insufficient time and evolutionally pressure for complete adaptation to seed consumption arise in homosapiens.  And I think about that today, and I’m like, well, you know, people might think that there could be complete adaptation.  Let’s say you were to take a population and give them only wheat to eat, but unfortunately I don’t think that’s the case, because all evolution cares about is getting to the next generation. And eating these foods will allow you to reach reproductive age.  There are certain types of insects that live only long enough to reproduce, and then they die off, and then the next generation takes over. That’s right, so the challenge right now is that we are trying to live for a very long time and very well and healthy, so we’re pushing the boundaries.

<<So that we’ve evolved some what might be called “shallow” adaptations or mutations, and some examples of this kind of rapid genetic change are the evolution of light skin in response to humans moving into northern climates or the changes in some genes or gene expression that regulate insulin metabolism in response to a higher carbohydrate diet.  But those are relatively simple mutations.  They’re not complex adaptations, which are characteristics that involve coordinated actions of many different genes together. >>

When you think about these two statements, what I like about it is that it’s pinpointing what think is a fact in that people who are adapted to grains and legumes or who not necessarily thrive, but survive on these foods are probably the minority.  Now, that’s very different than saying, well, nobody should eat this because we’ve never eaten these foods in the past.  And it is a very different statement, and it forces people to think about themselves, which is what you do all the time.  It’s like, OK, where do I sit on this spectrum?  What do I tolerate and what do I not tolerate?

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It all goes back to a personal responsibility argument.  Robb Wolf always says, make changes and see how you look, feel, perform and rank in important disease markers.  In other words, keep an eye on the science, but I put a disproportionate weight into personal experience.