Sugar sensitivity

This may be a little complex but interesting nonetheless.

On today’s ride headed out on my normal breakfast but felt slow, tired, and zero energy. Had 1 Medjool date and 2 jelly babies 30 mins in and my whole body woke up and it was like a rocket had been applied to my legs.

I know i am fairly sensitive to sugar as have follower a lower-carb diet for a while (still 200g a day ish) but any ideas why this happens? It happened on occasions before too.

Some thoughts i had was obviously sugar affects the body more and is uptaken fast if you are more depleted so could be in a depleted state, it could be mental, i could just be very efficient at using simple sugars.

This is why so many of us are posting about maximizing the amount of sugar we can take in while riding. Massive reduction in RPE.

A little nut butter (I’ve used almond and peanut) in the dates with a dash of salt is a good on long days. They get a little messy if you use natural peanut butter because it runs. But that seems to lessen the steepness of the downside curve.

I am low carb and am normally under 50 net. I used to do all my rides fasted but the higher intensity and duration made it too difficult to maximize my workouts on ketones alone.

I tried gels and bars and they work wonders. Especially with the gels, 15 minutes after ingestion, I can definitely feel a nice kick but I have to keep taking it else I will get a sugar crash and it does not help my low carb diet and worst of all, 4 or 5 hours later, I am pretty much on the toilet.

For the past few months I’ve been using UCAN (https://ucan.co) and it works wonders! 1 scoop 30 minutes before the ride and 1 scoop after the warmup for higher intensity or long duration rides. Steady energy release, no GI issues and keeps me in ketosis.