Like Chris McHorner back in the day. 
He’s on a High Volume plan burning just under 900 calories per hour.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the research says there’s a connection between drinking sugary drinks and greater risk of type II diabetes.
It’s not type II diabetes and general carbs connection in research.
In fact, some of the healthier diets on earth have a high carb intake through whole foods.
The research is also pretty clear that carbs don’t make you fat when calorie matched and compared to a high fat and low carb diet.
Exactly. Refined sugars and whole grains don’t quite have the same effect on our body.
I’m still waiting on you guys to focus on metabolic efficiency. Increasing ones ability to burn a significant percentage of fat at higher wattage is very useful for long events.
It’s also useful for efficiently adjusting body composition.
I imagine it would be of importance for your planned Ironman and Cape Epic events.
Most importantly, it’s a different opinion, one that your podcast could greatly benefit from.
Have a look at the latest research, it’s quite compelling.
We’ve covered this before. It’s in a few threads in here too.
Basically if you have room to raise your FTP in either consistency, volume or intensity do that.
If you’re pretty tapped out on any of those work on being able to preform at a higher level of fat burning at your aerobic wattages.
You could try that earlier but don’t do that at the expense of consistency, volume or intensity.
The guys at Empirical Cycling did a science-y breakdown, with touches on long distance efforts:
And as Nate stated, there’s already a ton of info posted on the TR forum.
Not exactly sure what science are you looking for? There will never be a randomized study of such a long term to show a group with or without low carb has a higher morbidity or mortality. Can’t be done. But no need to look further than what’s in front of you.
Here is the top 10 causes of death and I will write down what leads to them in parentheses.
- Heart disease (obesity, diabetes, smoking, stress, and crap food like McDonald’s)
- Cancer (bad luck, genetics, environmental chemicals)
- Accidents (bad luck, bad decisions)
- Chronic lower respiratory diseases (definitely not sugar)
- Stroke (Hypertension, smoking, diabetes, stress)
- Alzheimer’s disease (unknown, genetics)
- Diabetes: (bad luck, obesity)
- Influenza and pneumonia: (bad luck)
- Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: (bad luck, genetics, diabetes, obesity)
- Intentional self-harm (suicide): (environment, genetics)
As you can see, a lot of other stuff to worry about than sugars.
#3 is actually ‘Accidental Hospital Deaths’.
Always unreported and estimated to be as high as 440,000 deaths/yr.
May have slight sugary overtones.
I would also add ‘genetics’ to the influences of the #1 killer.
I took it as trauma but my point stands.
Except that it’s most assuredly not trauma.
Imagine you go into a hospital to get your crit-induced broken collarbone fixed up and the anesthesiologist accidentally ODs you to death. Etc.
But yes, many more things kill us* than ‘high-carb sports drinks/gels/bars’.
Probably even high intensity exercise kills us more than fast carbs.
*(Mosquitos should definitely be on the list!)
If you listen to the earlier podcasts, they cover it quite a bit. I think Chad even goes full keto for a little bit.
I’ve got a pretty bad sweet tooth, I’m sure it’s the 9pm brownie, not the 6am gel that’s a concern
The 9pm brownie isn’t the real concern, it’s that you’re not doing anything with it that’s concerning.
Not brownie shaming you or anything, but if you eat it, ya gotta use it!
I doubt there’s anyone who can be certain to the exact long term health ramifications of massive sugar intake and endurance sport.
There doesn’t appear to be a lot of solid science on the subject.
I’m interested in improving my performance without eating a ton of sugar and training a majority of high intensity. I’m leaning towards diet periodization. So high carb when applicable, low carb or fasted for Z2 work etc. Basically, diet periodized to season of training, then drilled down to daily goals of session.
I get that everybody wants to be faster. However, at what cost?
There’s some interesting info in the linked podcast. It’s been linked in other threads. Maybe, the indoor and time crunched aspect of modern training is causing many athletes to replace Z2 endurance with sweet spot. Meaning, we may be missing out on some long term health benefits.
I’m also personally convinced that time restricted feeding and extended fasting have numerous health benefits for many people. I’ve also managed to incorporate both into my life, while training and steadily improving as a cyclist.
Hearing that high carb, high intensity is the only option seems dated to me. Maybe, it’s the fastest way of getting fit. However, what if you could get just as fit taking five percent longer to do it, while doing less long term harm?
Just some thoughts, I certainly don’t claim to know the answers.
I agree. However eating plain rice will spike you blood sugar as much as a sugary drink. Also what is the definition of Whole Foods. This is a term thrown around all the time. Is it anything that is not processed?
Wiki says:
Whole foods are plant foods that are unprocessed and unrefined, or processed and refined as little as possible, before being consumed.
And I’d love someone to link some science to how much white rice differs from sugary drinks. I just don’t have the patience right now.
From a health/longevity perspective, there are pluses and minuses to pretty much everything you can do in life.
Looking at all-cause mortality in different groups is a good way to account for all these various factors.
Here’s a meta study on elite athletes:
“It appears that elite endurance (aerobic) athletes and mixed-sports (aerobic and anaerobic) athletes survive longer than the general population, as indicated by lower mortality and higher longevity.”
I didn’t derive the same conclusion from listening to the podcast, (assuming you’re talking about the podcast). Also, the basis of this discussion is assuming that timing high carb, sugar before and during high intensity work actually is damaging - from what I can see we don’t know this.
I think it’s good to be concerned about what you consume, and I would keep an open mind about these concerns if there was research that shows some clear health risks.
I’ve tried fasted riding for tough workouts, I feel like crap and sometimes bonk. Admittedly I’ve never even approached fat adaption, and the only thing that I’ve come close to this is intermittent fasting. For those AM z2 rides, no I don’t require fuel. And I often skip an early breakfast. Is this healthier? I have no idea. Generally I let my appetite or lack there of drive that decision.
To step back a little the thing I can agree with is that as a very active person I too often give myself a pass to eat less than ideal fuel. I could stand to eat less processed food. Like my quick drive by brownie comment above, I think our focus should be how we eat while off the bike. I could eat less easy processed foods and reduce the late night cravings: hm, maybe skipping that early breakfast has its drawbacks?
Just a nit: most of that list are not of causes of what did people in, those are just the things that were the last, grossest failure in people’s system that they didn’t survive. Causes, we don’t know. Certain populations and/or some lifestyles in specific parts of the world experience extremely low levels of most of these health problems (blue zones). For sure none of them are consuming sports drinks or gels, or much of any simple carbs. But they don’t eat much meat, or use Roundup to grow their crops either. We might not have a deep enough understanding of these issues but that doesn’t mean simple carb connection doesn’t exist, so you can’t make an argument one way or another using this.