The Tao of Training (Nutrition)

Nutrition Periodization

Nutrition is always one of the most polarizing topics because everyone has a vastly different way of doing things and they think their way is best. The other really difficult part about Nutrition is that there are just not a lot of REALLY GOOD studies out there showing scientific proof that one way is, in fact, better than another. Add in the fact that many people have moral/ethical dilemmas about eating a certain way and you end up with something that’s about as taboo as religion to talk about. Although I have studied nutrition at the university level and have been certified as a Sports Nutritionist through the International Society of Sports Nutrition, I am going to approach this topic more from an experiential standpoint and give my own personal thoughts and experimentation with nutrition for ultramarathons.

First off, I would like to say that I view nutrition strictly as a means of fueling my body to get from point A to point B. Secondly, I have had some severe digestive issues in the past which force me to eat a certain way in order to function in everyday life. I was diagnosed with sever ulcerative colitis about 10 years ago and through years of testing and tweaking my diet I have settled on something that seems to work very well. It is a very limited diet which nearly eliminates all fiber and plant foods. Because of this my diet is very high in fats and protein and I get my carbohydrates mainly from honey and bananas. I know there are a lot of ultrarunners out there who have either experimented with low carb diets or have been interested in trying this way of fueling. This post will be most appropriate for those people. Again, if you are a high carb athlete I’m not saying that this way is better it’s just what I do and what I am most comfortable talking about.

What I have found to be most beneficial as a low carb athlete (in both myself and athletes I’ve trained) is the drastic reduction in required calorie intake during races, bonk resistance, and the ability to maintain lean body mass.

Reduction in Race Day Calorie Intake and Bonk Resistance

I hate talking in generalities, but for the sake of making a point I’ll take that liberty here. Most runners require 300-400 calories per hour from extraneous carbohydrates while racing to ensure they have enough energy to keep on going. I have personally experienced (and seen in many other ultrarunners) that this can be easily reduced to 100-150 calories per hour from extraneous carbohydrates during racing, simply by shifting the way your body prefers to burn fuel. For me, the biggest benefit from this is that I never have stomach issues while racing anymore. There are a lot of people whose races have ended because their digestive system has shut down (extreme diarrhea, bloating, cramping, vomiting) and they can’t get in any more calories or water. This is almost universally the cause of over-taxing the digestive system with loads of calories that it can’t properly digest while also exercising. By reducing the amount of calories that are needed, your digestive system has plenty of time to absorb what you are eating.

Through training, you can keep that top line much higher as speed increases.

Here’s how the reduction in needed calories works. As a high-carb athlete, carbohydrates are burned much more readily by the body especially during exercise. The pathway to getting energy from carbohydrates is much faster and easier than it is for fats, so when higher levels of glucose are present in the blood (and glycogen in muscles) the body will tend to use that as fuel first. If this becomes a constant thing i.e. you always have higher glucose levels in your blood due to a high-carb diet then your body will become even more efficient at using those carbs for fuel. There are several ways that this happens including increased enzyme production for breaking down sugars and changes to mitochondria in your muscle cells. The body is very good at adapting to whatever we need it to. This is almost never a problem except when you require your body to exercise for prolonged periods (more than 90 minutes). Most people have enough stored carbohydrates to sustain moderate activity for ~90 minutes (this equates to roughly 3500 calories of carb stores). If you can maintain a carbohydrate intake of 300-400 calories per hour, most people can continue running and avoid the dreaded bonk. If we look at the other side of the coin to the fat burning athlete we see that the body again adapts very well to its environment. With much lower blood glucose levels (and consequently insulin levels) the body will start to preferentially burn fat for energy. It takes time to switch from a carb burner to a fat burner because your body has to shift the way it does things. If there is a prolonged period where carbohydrate intake is drastically reduced the body will start to increase enzyme production for fat breakdown. Also, since fat is only burned in a longer slower pathway in the mitochondria called beta-oxidation your body must increase the number and density of mitochondria in your cells. All of these changes take a little time. The results, however, are a drastically reduced reliance on carbohydrates during exercise. While running a performance lab that tested athletes’ metabolism I saw some pretty incredible things that the body was capable of. Take a high-carb athlete and put them on a treadmill at an easy pace while hooked up to a metabolic cart and you can see that they are burning 60-70% fat and 30-40% carbs. That same athlete after several months of low-carb high-fat diet and those numbers change to 90-95% fat and 5-10% carbs. This is where your difference comes in on race day. If you are able to maintain a pace which burns 90% of that energy cost from fats and only 10% from carbs then you only need a fraction of the carbs to refuel. And by the way, there is never a need to fuel with fats. Fats are extremely hard to digest while exercising and even the leanest athletes will have over 50,000 calories of stored body fat (that’s enough to fuel you a very long time).

Maintain Lean Body Mass

Joe Rogan on Carnivore for 30 days. Reduced fat mass but retained lean mass.

As a high-carb athlete I always found much more difficult to get down to my ideal race weight. This is a bit of a tricky topic so I’ll try to tread a bit lightly here. There’s a reason that the best endurance athletes in the world aren’t carrying around 50 extra pounds of body fat. That’s 50 pounds that isn’t doing anything for you out there on the trails. This doesn’t mean that a runner should be as light as possible. I would much rather lose 10 pounds of fat but gain 15 pounds of lean muscle (a net increase of 5 pounds) than loose weight which consisted of 5 pounds of muscle and 5 pounds of fat. Lean muscle (especially in the lower body) is extremely important for runners. As a high-carb athlete I found it very difficult to drop only fat while leading up to a race. Also, as a high-carb athlete I found it much much easier to put the extra body fat back on after a race. After transitioning to a low-carb athlete I have been able to maintain a very consistent body composition. I seem to be able to maintain lean (muscle) mass even while dropping the little bit of extra fat mass leading up to competition. I even have to put a little bit of effort into putting on a little more fat mass in the Off-Season. It’s just not that easy to gain weight as a low-carb athlete. I do think that it is a good idea to cycle fat mass up a bit in the Off-Season. Your body doesn’t tend to operate very well with extremely low body fat (< 10%) for extended periods of time.

Off/Pre-Season

If you currently eat a Standard American Diet or a high carbohydrate diet and would like to try a low carb high fat approach, the Off Season is the time to transition. DO NOT TRY TO GO LOW CARB DURING YOUR TRAINING SEASON! It will take time for your body to adjust and build the “machinery” to be able to utilize a lot of fat for energy. Because of this, you will very likely feel like crap and have low energy for several weeks. If you have been low carb for a while the Off-Season is one of the times that I like to strategically add in a lot more carbs on specific days. I have personally found (as well as many others) that adding in more carbohydrates prior to a strength training session gives you that last little boost to help with heavy lifting. Carbohydrate intake also causes a release of IGF (insulin-like growth factor) which aids in building muscle (something we are looking to do in the Off-Season). I will prioritize my “high” carbohydrate days to only the days that I am heavy lifting and will take in the majority of those carbs (honey) within 30 minutes of the session. Also during these heavy lifting days I will make sure to prioritize a large amount of high quality protein (typically ribeye) so that I have all of the essential amino acids necessary for proper recovery and muscle rebuilding.

One strategy that I’ve found that seems to work well to help keep my body preferentially burning fat even while consuming larger amounts of carbohydrate is to incorporate intermittent fasting during the Off-Season. I prefer to skip breakfast and do a run in the morning while fasted. This helps to boost fat burning through the run. It also helps to keep the runs in a low Zone 2 which is a very easy pace. This also ensures that your body is preferentially burning fat. I will eat protein and some carbs (banana) for lunch and then take a couple of tablespoons of honey about 30 minutes prior to my afternoon strength training session.

In-Season

When the training season officially starts (Base Training) I prefer to drastically reduce the amount of carbohydrates that I consume as a % of total calories. Just to make this a little clearer, in the Off-Season I might eat 3500 calories per day and might have about 100 to 200 calories from carbohydrates (this would be about 2.8-5.7% of total calories). During the season I might still take in 100 calories from carbs but my total caloric intake would be closer to 5000 due to the increased caloric expenditure. This means that the amount of carbs might be the same on some days but the % of total calories from carbs would decrease from 2.8% to 2%. I have found that the general principle of train low/race high (carbs) tends to work very well. Again, all of these are simply generalities that I find work well. There may be some days where I feel like I’m dragging a bit and need some extra carbs. There may be some days where I fast completely and don’t eat anything. For the most part during the Base period of training I like to fast though the day, perform my training run in the evening (usually fasted for ~20 hours) and then eat after that. I typically have 2 meals in a 4 hour window in the evening. This method seems to really boost fat burning during Zone 2 runs. I can burn 95% fat at a HR of 165 after a couple of months of training this way.

Build/Peak Phase

The nutrition strategy doesn’t change a whole lot during Build Phase. Almost all of the Zone 2 runs are done fasted and carbs are kept pretty low throughout this phase. The exceptions are during any of the higher intensity runs that might happen during Build. For some of these runs, not all, I will pre-load with carbs similar to the pre-load prior to weight training in the Off-Season. The other exception during Build is while performing some of the long runs and especially the back-to-back long runs. Build Phase sees the longest runs during the entire training cycle so these are a great opportunity to practice “Race Day Nutrition” (see below section on Race Day). I will usually pick several Long Runs and use the same fueling strategy that I will use during the race. This gives great insight as to how you might need to tweak your fueling plan for the race.

Peak is a lot of the same. The only differences are that there would typically be more runs at a higher intensity which might require slightly more carb intake. Other than that, now is the time to really dial in the Race Day Nutrition

Race Day

By this point you should have tested and retested your race nutrition strategy and figured out what works best. All of the physiologic work has been done as far as fat adaptation and carb utilization. You should know what types of carbohydrates sit well with your stomach and which ones are easiest on your digestive system. I highly recommend that you don’t consume much in the way of protein or fats just prior to the start of the race or even in the early stages of the race. If you’ve followed the fueling strategies that I’ve laid out for the Off-Season and In-Season training then you are very used to (and even prefer) running on an empty or close to empty stomach.

Depending on the beginning of the race I may or may not load with some simple sugars prior to race start. Otherwise I prefer to start the race fasted from the evening before. Starting the race fasted always helps to get your body into fat burning mode right away. I prefer to “trickle” in a relatively steady stream of quick burning (simple) carbs. This is usually in the form of liquids such as Tailwind or some other sport drink. This alone usually isn’t enough to get the 100-150 calories per hour that I shoot for, so I’ll usually take in some additional simple sugars at each aid station in the form of easily digestible fruit, honey, maple syrup, or soda. Keeping up with this strategy usually works very well for me far into a 100 mile race. Please keep in mind that protein and fats are very hard to digest while exercising and by this point your body is already extremely adept at burning body fat as fuel. I will only consider consuming some protein if my pace drastically declines or I begin to get very hungry late in the race. If you feel like you need to eat something of substance like a cheeseburger or a pizza you will have to slow down. Plan on walking for a good bit after you eat something with a lot of protein/fat. I have made it though 30+ hours of running without having to eat much more than the little bit of fruit at aid stations and liquid calories that I plan. I’ve also run over 40 miles completely fasted without taking in any calories (I do not recommend).

For me, fueling this way is less of a choice and more of a necessity. I know that there are many ultra-endurance athletes out there that also find this to be a very beneficial way to fuel. I simply hope that my experience with fueling this way can provide a little guidance on how to go about doing it so that your training and racing can benefit. I’m currently trying to figure out how to integrate nutrition/fueling into the app. I’ve got some ideas on how this will work but we are a ways off from being able to offer this as an update.