Am I Over fueling?

Hmm… I hadn’t considered this. Let me think on it.

Okay… so here’s where it probably breaks down. There is pretty robust evidence that if a study holds protein intake and kcal intake the same, there can be substantial manipulations of fat or carb consumption, with no overall effect on body composition change. If anything, a higher-carb diet probably very slightly wins out for body composition change. But essentially they’re equivalent.

Timing of those consumptions also tends not to matter. (ie. 2 meals per day or 7 meals per day). So long as kcal expenditure and intake are matched between groups, and protein intake is matched between groups, it takes enormous differences in carb vs. fat approaches or dietary timing shifts to cause any difference in body composition over time. This holds true for periods of kcal balance and

Now, many things change in T2D and T1D. Going high-carb when T2D and relatively sedentary is probably a recipe for disaster. But for folks who don’t have current blood sugar dysregulation, high carb or high fat, probably has no real outcome differences on body composition. There will be differences in training performance, favoring higher carb, or equivocality, depending on study design. (always assuming same kcal and same protein intake between groups).

I posit that this is a sign of likely advantaged performance and that what feels bad, is actually just his body signaling “if you eat more carbs, I’ll give you a better threshold and VO2max performance!” … in very scientific terms.

I remain unconvinced that this is advantageous. This is just the kind of protocol I’d love to exploit. I don’t think it does anything other than make you psychologically more resistant to neurogenic hypoglycemia, maybe physiologically more resistant to hypoglycemia too, but importantly never by a greater magnitude than you are sacrificing max exogenous carb absorption and oxidation ability. That is, what you gain in fat burning ability is often outweighed by loss of carb-burning ability.

Hmmm… gout with SIS seems interesting to me. Do you mean SIS beta fuel? Beta fuel 1 or 2.0? If not beta fuel, I’m surprised SIS would be the trigger for gout if it’s indeed fructose-triggered, because SIS is relatively low fructose. Problematically low, for a lot of folks, actually! They use a 4:1 glucose fructose ratio in SIS GO Electrolyte which is their primary fueling-oriented powdered mix. Typically folks end up having substantial GI distress from overdosing glucose with that product, long before fructose causes an issue.

I am nowhere near SME re: gout. FYI!

This comment from @timpodlogar paired with my general skepticism has me wondering if I 100% trust all the uric acid claims Attia makes.

I don’t know what exactly Peter Attia says, but I have noticed a trend of subtle alarmist type thinking from him… which often leads to the sale of some product he’s profiting from.

Super smart guy. Ahead of the curve in optimizing health for sure. But also need to watch for motives carefully there. COI disclosure for me here: I’m going to be profiting from an app I made, soon.

Volume on volume on volume. Don’t manipulate fueling strategies to alter metabolism. Train to get fit. If you’re a natural sprinter, train to increase fitness and volume tolerance. Eat the carbs as needed/desired during training.

My absolute pleasure. You all keep me honest and force me to be current on the research. Too many gol’darn smart folks on this forum to speak out of the side of your mouth. @redlude97 (and a dozen others) will call you (me) out on it immediately.

Wow. That’s awfully generous. Thank you.

Good luck!

I still posit that the only effect reduction of intra-workout carbs has on chronic fat loss is to enhance one’s ability to consume higher volume carb sources, on average, over the course of a fat loss diet phase. This manages satiety better, and facilitates easier adherence to a kcal deficit diet plan.

Regardless of mechanism at play, I hope you have an amazingly successful fat loss phase, and even more, that the weight maintenance phase that follows is permanent and easy to settle into.

5 Likes

@Crosshair, out of curiosity do you plan to reduce carbs during all training sessions? Or just shorter ones? Or just easier ones regardless of length?

Just cutting out fructose? Or cutting out fructose and scaling back glucose? Or just wholesale general reduction of carb intake?

Hourly rates?

I’d love to hear the deets!

I know you’ve thought about it. I’d like to hear your execution plan.

2 Likes

@redlude97 my man! Checking these out asap. Thank you.

3 Likes

After quick perusal of the literature and a couple newer gout systematic reviews and meta-analysis, I can conclude:

I’d need to read about gout and fructose for at least another 8 hours before knowing if I knew anything for sure. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Tip of the hat to you for your wisdom there.

1 Like

Wise choice!

What is easiest, in nutrition, often actually is a very good choice. Only until proven that it’s not, should folks consider changing. I can support this. :slight_smile:

Your approach makes total sense. Not that you needed or asked for any confirmation from me!

I might chalk it up to you being a very good critical thinker and wanting to ask the right questions. But you may be quite right that it’s just contextual (cyclist vs. gen pop).

In the ultimate display of my cynicism and skepticism towards many wildly successful companies in the nutrition space, I’ll say this:

Every time I’ve felt what you’re feeling about someone, or some claim that I’ve thought was really meaningful and interesting, and I’ve really REALLY dug into the validity of what they’re saying, I pull at the string of questions that stem from the one thing they’re not saying and I end up unraveling the entire argument they’re making.

Much to my chagrin.

I always start listening to a podcast with the hope that I’ll learn something truly valuable. So when I’ve spent 30+ minutes listening, and then I bump into the flaw that invalidates some of their most valuable points, it’s quite disappointing.

4 Likes

I don’t think there is a such thing as “teaching the body to use fats”. Body prefers carbohydrates for fuel at any time point, so it will first use carbs if they are available. This is why even a low carbohydrate person would be preferentially using carbs if lots of carbs would have been provided to them. I had a chance to measure Marko Baloh, a pretty famous ultra-endurance rider in the lab and his fat oxidation rates have been super high. I asked him if he is doing any low carb work. He said he doesn’t. High carbohydrate intake all the time. Fat oxidation will come naturally with training…

7 Likes

In my view it isn’t about carbs restriction but rather about calorie intake restriction. I’d rather minimise the fat intake to 0.8 g/kg or lower but maintain high carbohydrate availability. Or your training will suffer… But otherwise - I don’t think that there is an easy way to lose body mass… Everyday stress makes things pretty difficult - I agree!

4 Likes

This is exactly the perspective I was looking for. Thanks @timpodlogar !!

This is actually what I end up doing when leaning up and has always worked for me in my n=1 case. Not saying fat = 0, but I keep it lower than the maintaining phase and still try to fuel all workouts well. @Dr_Alex_Harrison new project is helping with that :wink:

1 Like

Preach!

2 Likes

Thank the lord. It’s like saying I’m gonna to teach my body to not use the ATP-PCr system first. It just ain’t gonna happen.

Louise Burke’s work on LCHF is the nail in the coffin.

4 Likes

Well - first we need to discern between adaptations in aerobic capacity and fat oxidation rates. I believe that targeting aerobic capacity makes sense, whereas fat oxidation rates follow the former.
I do fasted rides all the time pretty much because I don’t bother preparing breakfast. I don’t really think I’d benefit from them in any way…
However, if I was after increased adaptations I might sometimes do a muscle glycogen depleted training session but since I like to use my brain and sleep normally, I avoid this kind of workout as it is too stressful.

5 Likes

Surely the main thing here is if you want to improve your fat ox then you want to raise your LT1 to as high as possible. That way you are then outputting more KJ for a longer time with a more favorable % being used from fat if that is your goal?

Im not sure this is how it works. LT1 defines generally how much fat - carb is used.

For example i just had a recent full lactate VO2 and metabolic profile done. At LT1 and below i was burning roughly 1.4g car and 0.7g fat per min. As far as i understand from the professionals doing this that is the normal ratio and the amount just depends how high your LT1 ish. So someone with a higher LT1 would burn the same ratio but greater amounts irrespective of how they fuel.

1 Like

Im not sure here but it could be that LCHF/Keto supresses LT2 rather than raises LT1.

2 Likes

I was just reading a study about low muscle glycogen training, using twice a day vs once a day with low night.
A first long session to lower glycogen, followed by the HIIT session 2h later appears to be much more efficient than a “fasted” night.

Or the opposite. If you train on low carb, your body gets used to see low carbs and save them. When you do a ride fueling, the body see ample carbs and use them first. Pure speculations here.
I’m following “bike racing without mercy” on youtube. He was doing a lot of fasted morning rides to train his fat oxydation. When he did a metabolic test his sugar usage was super high at low wattage. I never saw any explanation for that.

1 Like

While not directly related to nutrition, but the importance of aero and marginal gains, I remember Alex Dowsett mentioning several times in his videos who well and how poorly some of his past teams performed here. I don’t remember which is which, but some didn’t really take aero gains seriously, something which is the bread and butter for a TT expert. Some teams prioritized performance over sponsorships, others the other way around. If Shimano’s wheels aren’t good enough, then one team would simply use the wheels it thought performed best. So I wouldn’t be surprised if the story were the same in the area of nutrition.

I’m not an expert, but my feeling when I see this chart is that it reminds me of how many people involved in the polarized vs. sweet spot debate struggle with more basic aspects of training such as consistency. My understanding this this:

  • It is much more important to make fueling a habit than to worry about exact amounts.
  • “Overfueling” does not cause anywhere near the same issues that underfueling does. So even if you might only need to take in 70 g/h during lighter workouts, taking in 100 g/h (= + 30 g) has less of an impact than underfueling significantly.
  • Fueling should and does become intuitive. (I noticed that I consume less on less intense workouts; in addition to having a fixed amount in bottles, I have a container with gummi bears that I munch on.)
  • Many people worry too much about higher-level bits (polarized vs. sweet spot base or how much is “ideal”) rather than mastering the basics.

We need to clarify a little what danger means, but I think you are wrong that underfueling is mostly something elite athletes have to worry about. Underfueling has a significant impact on RPE no matter your abilities, which in the long run impacts consistency. Conversely, as far as I can tell the dangers of overfueling are either non-existent (if you define overfueling as taking in more calories than you expend, which for most athletes is impossible) or much less severe (if you define overfueling as fueling past the “optimal” point).

The downsides of athletes who are expected to perform are just more serious: their livelihood or even career may depend on it. The sister of a very close friend of mine was in the German youth swimming team. She got sick once and basically couldn’t keep up anymore when she came back. She quit the team. For amateur athletes, the consequences of not performing or feeling bad while training are less severe, but they are there.

IMHO you are conflating wanting to lose weight with over/underfueling. The two have little to do with one another since most of the weight loss happens off the bike.

Yeah, this is completely nuts to me. Many roadies seem quite conservative (I originally come from mountain biking, now I do both), and it takes ages for things that seem airtight (like aero benefits) to become widely adopted :man_shrugging:

Maybe it is worthwhile to start my response with that: I have lost quite a bit of weight (87 kg —> 71.5 kg —> 74 kg). Yes, you are right, there are no easy fixes, that has been my experience, too. The only thing I had going for me was a pretty good aerobic engine, which masked my weight to a degree in everyday life. I have tried the approach you seem to advocate (not fueling certain workouts and just drink plain water or non-energy electrolyte mix), and it did not work for me.

What has worked for me is to aim for performance on the bike and slowly fixing my bad habits step-by-step off the bike. Fortunately, this can become a virtuous cycle, and when I am in it, I yearn for healthier food off the bike and want to get faster on the bike. The hard part is breaking homeostasis, it takes 2–4 weeks until my body understands and accepts the new normal.

I don’t want to assume anything about your normal diet. But if you (= now the impersonal you) are significantly overweight, then your normal diet is most likely a huge part of the problem. And you can’t exercise your way out of that hole. The adage “80 % of the dieting happens off the bike.” is rooted in truth. If you want to lose weight and keep it off, you need to fix your habits off the bike.

Losing weight is about maintaining a calorie deficit, and being able to sustain a calorie deficit has to do with satiety management. If you don’t eat on the bike, satiety management gets really, really hard. E. g. I train early in the morning on an empty stomach, and when I don’t eat on the bike (which I have done for a little over 1 year), I became ravenous during breakfast. I had to eat until I felt overfull. That’s been my experience at least.

Except it isn’t that easy. Like others have said here, not eating on the bike doesn’t come for free, e. g. a typical response is intense hunger and people then tend to overeat. It also decreases your gains, and any gain on the bike typically translates to better body composition.

I’d be cautious as it depends very much on who you ride with. In my experience, most people don’t have a clue about proper nutrition. The fast guys tend to have a better grasp, although I’d be cautious drawing any conclusions from short rides. Pay attention to the people who still produce good power after two, three hours of spirited riding.

That’s not my experience at all. The fastest guys in my team are the ones who have a good grasp on fueling. Also, the fastest guys are not necessarily the leanest, at least not on most terrain. (I live in Japan and I have a (healthy) male team mate who is in Strava’s <= 55 kg bracket. I’m likely the heaviest member of my team and I’m low-to-normal weight.) Our junior is an exception, although he often cracks or bonks on longer ride and we need to feed him. When I know he’s joining us for a ride, I typically take extra gels with me.

1 Like