Mrfreddy, as one my old law profs used to say to me, i hate any sentence that begins with the phrase: i bet; or i suspect. problem low carb has is that no cyclist has yet to prove it as a competitive theory (i.e., win a major using it). not to say it isn't true but, it doesn't have the results to back it, for whatever reason.

well the lab results are in and they support the high fat approach.

Yeah right, the most energy fat-metabolism is going to provide is about 900-1000 calories per day. How are you going to get the remaining 5000 calories/day to do a day in the TDF? How are you gonna replenish the 2000-2500 calories of glycogen that's stored in the muscles?

How many miles do you ride a day? How fast do you do them? The empirical evidence is out there with tens of thousands of people bonking from insufficient carb-intake. Do three consecutive days of 75-miles daily riding and try to finish the 3rd day without having eaten substantial amounts of carbs the previous days. I bet you would bonk on the 2nd day even. The evidence is also out there with muscle-catabolism from low-carb intakes in conjunction with HIT. Low-carb is a lazy couch-potatoe's way of losing some weight because their diet was so unhealthy to begin with. But you cannot combine that with an athletic training program that requires 3000-5000 calories to be burned off every day. People who try do to so end up with constant fatigue and lethargy. And while they may lose weight, they lose a tonne of muscle as well and their body-fat % doesn't change by much. You end up with a 130-lb twig with a double-chin and less strength and conditioning than before due to all the muscle-loss. :(

BTW - Cite the studies.

1) when you're using fat as your fuel, it's impossible to bonk, since your fat supply is so large... where did you get that 900 to 1000 per day number? It is actually glucose that is the far more limited fuel supply, you can only store enough to last a few hours. btw, if you train on a high fat diet, you'll make that limited glucose last longer. see the studies I cited above.

2) your claims about the effect of low carbing are based on what? your opinions? cite some studies that support your notion that low carbing and a high level of exercise results in loss of muscle tone (wrong!), body fat % staying the same (wrong!) and contant fatigue and lethargy (guess what? wrong again!)

3) Please google "Stu Middleman" he is an ultra marathoner who eats high fat/low carb, and by the way, runs 50 - 100 miles DAILY, day after day after day. Ask him about muscle tone and lethargy and body fat %.

While you're at it, google "Stuart Trager" a doctor, Atkins spokesman, and triathlete with respectable times for a guy his age.

4) I cited just a few studies I found, somewhere back in this thread.

[QUOTE=mrfreddy]
I only looked at the first study because it supports the opinion of those who suggest some carbs during exercise (everyone in the tests did this) and power output was only improved very slightly with the high fat group at the very end of a 100K bike ride. The other tests showed no difference or an advantage for the high carb diet.

The test did not measure various intensity ranges either.

The other problem is the high carb diet used in the study isn't normally recommended for athletes-it was 70% carbs and only 15% protein. So this diet should not have been considered.

So Mr. Freddy, got any studies that actually support your point of view instead of recommending against it (assuming that your main interest is not in a 2% improvement in power over the final 10K of a 100K ride.)?

I also looked at the last study you cited.

The study compared hi fat and low fat diets prior to _carb loading_ for three days before the tests. IOW, ALL of the test subjects did carb loading for three days before the test, AND they ingested substantial carbs DURING the tests.

So, do either of these scenarios look like the way you fuel up before and during rides?

Actually Mr Freddy, you and guys like Mike are very common. Very little experience actually cycling but this doesn't stop you from telling experienced cyclists how wrong they are. Guys like you have been around for most of the 25+ years I've been racing. My only problem with this is that you pass along bad information to unsuspecting people who may not bother to ask you to back up your silly claims or understand what the studies actually show, or don't show.

Be sure to let us know how your back to back to back days of actual training go for you on that diet of a teaspoon of sugar a day. Don't forget to call Lance and tell him that you think that in spite of all the expert advice and testing he receives, with millions of dollars at stake, you, a guy who's hardly ridden a bike, can tell him where he went wrong.

Enjoy your cycling, but try to learn from people who have far more experience than you with the topic.

TROLL.

I am in favor of low carb eating to the MAX!

You folks talking AGAINST Low Carb MAY
not even know what it means.

Basicly you can eat all the meat (I eat lean meat only)
and green veggies you can handle.

No Bread. No Potatoes. No Grains or rice. No sugar.

I have the additional 'problem' of considering myself
a compulsive eater. I used to eat ice cream and pies
and cakes and cookies, candy, chocolate and all sorts
of fried foods, but I can't handle it. I now CHOOSE to
not eat that crap for health purposes. And my diet
choices are my business, and I could care what the FDA
has to say about a food pyramid. The FDA is corrupted
by CORPORATE America's PAYOLA and promulgate their
propaganda. Think about it! If you ate 5 servings of Fruits
and vegetables a day, plus dairy, plus meat plus grains or
legumes and drank whole milk, plus using OILS, you'd be fat
as a pig!

The corporate crowd is no friend of mnie. I am betting my
life on LOW CARB. My 'numbers' for all health indicators
are EXCELLENT and I have never felt fitter in my life.

Actual proof speaks volumes about life styles, and mine is
currently in great shape.

I entered the fray here at the resquest of a fellow who also posts
on the LOW CARBER Forum on the Atkin's site. I don't really care
if you folks eat twinkies on a regular basis, it is ok with me.
I heard once that the human body can get used to surviving
on any kind of food, so many different diets are probably ok.

I am betting on HIGH PROTEIN / LOW FAT (meats)
WITH restrictions on eating superfulous carbs like
sugar filled crap, grain products, potatoes, and too much fruit.

I have maintained an 80 lb weightloss for about 6 yrs
on LOW CARB and am betting my life and
longevity on it.

I am 55 yrs. old, have 3 - 4 inch titanium pins in my
right hip but ride a bicycle at about 14 mph average
up and down hills to the tune of about 75-130 miles
per week depending on the weather.

That is not to brag, because I know many people on
this forum ride Century's routinely in one day, but
my point is that I am a hell of a lot better off on the
LOW CARB Way of Life than being the fat assed person
I used to be, sucking up all the Fast Food, sweets and
bullsh*t that corporate america advertises on TV.

But most importanly, and bottom line
relevant to this forum - - - LET's all RIDE! (Ride to Live)

Ned Goudy
240-160-160 - 5'6"

Easy Racer EZ1-SC
http://www.easyracers.com/ez_1_sc.htm

Lightning Thunderbolt http://www.lightningbikes.com/thunderbolt.htm

welcome ned! you are the man!

whoa neddy, dont you know that what your doing is impossible? at least according to the anti-low carb crowd on this forum (including a "Certified Nutritionist, who formerly educated herself on these matters!"), so you better stop it! you're gonna lose muscle tone and turn yerself into an amonia factory and you wont lose weight and even if you somehow do lose wt. you wont be able to maintain you wt. loss and you wont be able to ride hard for long periods of time and you wont recover properly and you'll bonk like crazy!!!


so knock it off, would ya? you are debunking some deeply treasued dogmas here!

I doubt that, champ.

Ahh the South Beach diet has put in an appearance.

Here's what the WAPF has to say about it, http://www.westonaprice.org/bookrevi...beachdiet.html

Simplisticaly its a "politically correct" invention thats provides less nutrients than a high carb/low fat diet.

Regards, Anthony

So you've lost weight, kept it off, and ride your bike regularly. Very good. The low-carb approach is better than eating lots of trash. Good. Is there no middle ground for you like 40-60% carbs of good quality instead of only 10-20% carbs of good quality? With more appropriate fuel you could likely be able to ride at an average of 16+mph instead of only 14mph because of improved recovery between rides and more effective fuel during your rides-both of which would lead to improved performances. For a 55yo who's not overweight this is a very reasonable expectation.

you know, I am really beginning to not like the tone you take with me, young man!

anyway, the way I read the studies, they tell you:

1) if you train on a low carb diet, your body adjusts and improves its abiltity to use fat as fuel, and spares carbs, both very good things.

2) yes, there is a small advantage in peformance in highly anarobic effort levels if you poison yourself with carbs. to me, its not worth it, but hey, I dont compete.

so the studies do support my point, at least as far as I intened it. performance is not degraded by a low carb diet, except, as I said, at the highest levels of effort.

and it's an ocean of ninny's like you that are providing people with bad information, armed as you are with dogma and bad attitude! guess that carb bonking you experience so regularly makes you kinda cranky, aye?

the trouble with eating that many carbs, whether they are from high quality sources or from ding dongs, is what they do to your blood sugar levels, and all of the bad things associated with that. of course, loads of exercise mitigates a lot of that problem, but why put yourself into that position in the first place?

It's not that difficult, if you're paying some attention to it, to keep blood sugar levels relatively constant. This can be done by eating the more complex versions of carbs, eating simpler carbs in smaller amounts and/or along with other foods that slow down the digestion of these carbs so they don't result in large blood sugar swings. The suggestion to eat five small meals and (maybe some small snacks too) per day tends to help alot.

Also, it's actually a very good thing to have a sudden rise in blood sugar right after exercise because (the resulting surge of) insulin is very effective at helping cells absorb sugars and proteins so the recovery process can get off to a good start. At the extreme, bodybuilders (and some other "athletes") use synthetic forms of insulin to help drive more proteins into their muscles so they can grow. This is illegal in Olympic sports, but effective.

As for your question about "why put yourself in that position anyway?"... Well, if you're going to sit around all day and night you don't really need many carbs because during that type of activity your slow twitch muscle fibers can handle that load just fine and the relatively low amounts of energy you'll need can come mainly from fats being used with lots of oxygen to produce your energy/fuel.

If you're going to do some exercise that calls upon your fast twitch fibers as well as slow twitch then you're going to need some glycogen/glucose for fuel to perform even reasonably well. Also, many people suggest a bit of medium to high intensity exercise both as as means for burning calories but also because studies show that medium to high intensity exercise is best for raisng a person's "base metabolic rate" (BMR).

The reason you want a relatively high BMR is because you'll burn more calories throughout the day (and probably also at night) even when you're just sitting around. The amount of fat calories burned with a higher BMR is fairly significant-never mind that with the higher BMR you tend to feel better-more energetic. Or you can just drink lots of caffeine but your heart may not like that forever.

Gym "trainers" like to tell you that increasing muscle mass will raise BMR but in reality it's a very small amount of increase. They mainly want you to keep coming back to the gym so you feel like you're getting your money's worth, and so you can pay them to be your trainer. :-) Riding the bike with some occasional intensity will increase the BMR more than a few more pounds of muscle.

If you're exercising you want to improve, but if you're using muscle proteins for fuel (because you're not supplying enough carbs/glycogen/glucose) you won't perform as well during exercise and your muscles will have a hard time getting enough protein to repair and rebuild themselves after the exercise. I forget the number of days, but IIRC your muscle cells get comepletely replaced approximately every 90 days, so you'd better be providing them with enough good protein to help with that.

As someone else already mentioned, some diets lead people to lose weight, and some of that comes from lost muscle. Best to measure the changes in bodyfat rather than just lost weight. Did you know it takes 3 grams of water to store 1 gram of carbs? This also means that for every gram of carb (glycogen) you remove from your body you also remove 3 grams of water. Deplete your carb stores(glycogen) by switching to a low carb diet with exercise and you could be losing 4, 5, 6, or more pounds immediately just from that, and that is not good.

I didn't read all this in some book hyping hopes and dreams or trying to sell me something. You can find it all by doing your own searches at places like PUBMED online and reviewing the scientific studies there.

The carbs are spared for efforts that can use them. Fats can not be used for some efforts, and not very well for others.


Uh, no. Carbs will be wanted far below the level of an anaerobic effort regardless of whether you're a complete novice or the best pro racer in the world. Right around the level of 1.5mmo/l of blood lactate is where glycogen and glucose begin to become needed to a relatively significant degree. As the intensity rises to around 3mmol/l of blood lactate the need for glucose and glycogen are relatively high. The level most associated with "anaerobic" is near 4mmol/l of blood lactate. Novices would not be able to ride at even 5mmo/l for more than a minute or so. As you can see, you have a fairly high demand for glycogen and glucose at levels well below "anaerobic".


See above, and the studies did show a degradation of performance in many of the exercise sessions. And you're omitting the fact that both of the studies that you mentioned and that I could look at utilized very high amounts of carbs either before the test or during the test. This is because the researchers know that carbs are a necessary fuel and required in reasonable amounts just to do the testing. The one study that looked at a low carb diet had the subjects _carbo loading for three days_ before the test. Why do you think that is? It was so their glycogen stores could be filled sufficiently to perform the test.


What I am "providing" is backed up by years and years of scientific studies that you can read for yourself at PUBMED. As for "carb bonking" that I experience so regularly you're wrong about that too. I train at a very high level approximately 450-480 hours per year. I bonked once about two years ago, and two or three other times in the ten to twelve years before that. The most recent was during a 4 hour ride that included thousands of feet of climbing and some high intensity intervals. The time before that was two hours into a cross-country ski race. It's very difficult to get enough calories to support an effort that takes (me) more than 2400 calories to do, especially during a xc ski race where it's pretty hard to eat or drink much of anything. And no, fat alone is not a good fuel source when the average HR during the 135-minute event is near 83-85% of MHR.

I'm pretty disappointed in how hostile this thread has gotten.

Lighten up, folks.

Ok, let's do the ultimate test of these different philosophies. Put everyone into a race and the proof-of-concept will be crossing the finish-line first! :)

well Chris Carmichael has commented many times that low carb diets are not suitable for cyclists..

I personally need to have carbs for cycling.. I have also found that I do not lose a lot of weight just by riding. Cross Training is what helps me lose weight. For some reason playing racquetball drops the weight off me super fast. Like said many times in this thread everyone is different.. If you find a low carb diet works for you, go for it..

Ahh come on. It wouldn't prove a thing and you KNOW it.

Something to think about is that the high carb diet is so pervasive in sport that it infact SELECTS for carbohydrate types because the protein types would have their performances hampered by too many carbs in their diets that their trainers and coaches have insisted that they needed. The result is that fat/protein types have been hindered, based not on scientific knowledge but on quasi-religious predjudices.

Regards, Anthony

not if you've trained yourself on a high fat low carb diet.



I'll have to go back and look at those studies, I just picked a few out of the mountain that google returned, but meanhwhile, pick apart this one: http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/1/1/2

i am sure PUBMED contains a lot of flawed studies, just like all of the flawed studies that tell us that saturated fat is bad for you, all disproven by now. And at one time, anyone who dared to suggest that the world wasn't flat was subjected to ridicule.... just because this is what the cycling and athletic world have chosen to believe doesnt prove it is right or wrong.

um, that was a joke, it was late on Friday night, take it easy... although, I still contend that bonking isnt an issue when you low carb, you are running on fat, of which you have an unlimited supply.


its not difficult when you've trained your body to rely on fat instead of the limted amount of poisonous sugar you can stuff into it. Google "Stu middleman" and take a look, he does ultra-marathons, running 50 - 100 miles day after day after day, and guess what? he low carbs...

it makes a hell of a lot more sense to avoid starchy foods and of course sugar all together. your body wasnt designed to handle it, evolutionarily speaking...

but if you're Mike and you want to lose wt. a surge of insulin the last thing you need....

well I maintain that you can raise your BMR sufficiently without loading yourself with carbs. you train on a high fat diet, your body responds by getting better and better at supplying the fat to your muscles... you are not burning muscle proteins, you're burning fat. the processes that supply fat to your muscles improve with training.


and I maintain that carrying around all the unneed water wt. is not a good thing. and of course you can burn fat on a low carb diet, you just need to more calories than you ingest. take a look at the guy who maintains the site "theomnivore.com" he low carbs, cycles, and maintains a sub 10 per cent body fat level.

you can also find the opposite arguments all over the place, if you look, with an open mind. start by googling "Stu Middleman" and "stuart trager'....