Oh, I don’t think Keto is a good idea. I think removal of complete food groups in nonsense. There is no one magic idea for nutrition and weight control.
What I do think is that it is incredibly complicated and Calories in vs. calories out is so simplistic as to be close to useless. It ignores the bodies hormonal regulation, leptin, ghrelin, insulin and the effect they have on hunger, satiety and fat storage/glycogen and the response to deficit on BMR (some call metabolic damage but it’s not an area of science which has been well researched yet).
The move to low fat high carb diets which were mostly prescribed by the US has almost completely coincided with the rise in obesity and apparently exercise has also increased over the same period.
I thought that both are based on the science that insulin spikes are bad for you and both methods are ways to reduce those spikes. I think low cab and keto are quite different things though.
No one is discounting that but again for the healthy, very active person that hormonal retgulation is less of an issue compared to the obese. Calories still matter as you still need a long term calorie deficit to lose flab, even as fit, active person. As (I think) was stated earlier one of the reasons things like MyFitnessPal or foscussing on healthy nutrition (of whatever method) work isn’t the calroie counting per se but that it makes you examine what you’re eating and removing the bad choices, which in turn has a long term reduction in calories. I am sure most on here realise that it isn’t day to day intake that matters (Edit: as in 1 “good” day’s deficit), just like one big day’s training doesn’t get you fit.
As an aside from the direct issues here is the zealous proponents of LCHF/keto, Sisson’s and Asprey specifically, is their use of PEDs. Asprey proclaims his bullet proof coffee but is then taking anabolics, which is making him lean? Sissons suggests you can’t do endurance sport and be healthy so take HGH and anabolics. Selling a diet as the cause of being lean and somewhat muscular in your middle age, whilst taking PEDs is dishonest for me.
Only 8 subjects, so not really statistical, however, concludes that LCHF diet may have benefits in base build phase of training. However, also reports increase in FFAs which is long term bad for heart
I personally think that there are good and bad diets out there, and there are different kinds of people, what works for one won’t work for another.
you can find an argument to back up pretty anything nowadays.
I’m of the ’ I like food, If I want to drop a few stone I cut down or out Alcohol, eat less unhealthy foods and eat more veg, fish and bits, if i’m not bothered for a few weeks then a few beers on a Saturday night followed up by a curry isn’t going to kill me.
I think that quite a few of us here don’t really have to worry about weight too much, we may put on a bit from time to time, but can lose it pretty easily, we are pretty good at the CICO balance that @Hammerer posted. (appologies to some people here who may be struggling a bit more with weight)
I think that the target audience for this debate is more on IMJ, where people are trying to find a magic bullet
This is my own take: If you want to go to a LCHF diet, then it needs to be a long term project, not something you do in the run up to a race. Initially it will impact your training as your body adjusts to the new nutrition and there are no shortcuts. However, the benefits are that you will not have to worry about your nutrition on race day as energy comes from fat utilisation rather than getting your carb intake right, so one significant thing less to get wrong.
Someone on high carb diet, who executes an appropriate race day nutrition strategy probably has a performance benefit on the day over someone on a LCHF diet. The thing I would worry about most however, is the potential impact on my health, FFAs are known to be a cardiovascular health risk factor. As an older athlete, I do worry about my heart (and the damage I may have already done to it due to a more hedonistic lifestyle when younger).
And apparently LCHF diet gives you bad breath (but that may just be social media crap wisdom)
Finally there probably is some benefits for people with T2 Diabetes to consider a LCHF diet.
One thing to also note is fat needs oxygen to breakdown. Anaerobic systems are “without oxygen” and as you use the anaerobic system in some form all the time then performance will be impaired with strictly controlled carb intake. The elite dietitians are prescribing targeted carbs for endurance athletes, ie Team Ineos/Sky which isnt really rocket science. Those who quote Dan Plews also need to be aware he isnt Keto, or LCHF, he is basically LCHF some of the time, essentially targeted carb intake. He didn’t eat butter and cheese whilst running Kona, he was slamming in the sugar like a fat kid in a cake shop.
Also, he was a very good junior triathlete and as an academic was very time crunched and could only manage an average of 21 hours training a week in the 6 months build to Kona.
So basically following one of the piece of research on the Austrian mountain bikers, where they identified that LCHF diet may benefit athletes in base build phase. One of the other papers stated that people who were on an LCHF diet became very poor at processing carbs and required time to adapt back to a high carb diet. So I assume that Dan made sure that he was properly adapted to processing carbs before a race
Plews said himself he eats fruit, think it was 150g carbs per day in one interview, but on race day hes eating gels and shot blox. Hard training he’ll fuel. Many of the Keto “clique” will quote him and his Kona time as justification but hes not that extreme, like loads jumped on a Froome post a number of years back when he had egg, salmon and avocado on a plate in an Instagram photo. He did an interview for Pro Cycling and went in depth. basically rest days, low volume or intensity days they cut carbs but when they need to train they eat whatever they need, typically rice cakes!
I haven’t seen any concluding evidences that proves that keto diets lead to performance benefits per se, but it does seem to help weight loss. So i guess a ketogenic diet could be helpful if you need to shed a few kilos before a run. Also note that you mention the potential long term health issues of the diet, but from what I’ve read it is not supposed to be an everyday diet, only temporary.
Hey Matt - just a point of note (but an important one) - keto is about putting the body into ketosis.
Which normally requires <50g carbs a day, but if you can eat 100g and are in ketosis it will be a ‘keto’ diet.
