Mindful that I haven’t posted much on nutrition lately. Mainly because I do not claim to be a nutritionist and can only really post interesting articles by professionals. This article seems quite relevant as I start to think about the 100k ultra I’m running in a few weeks.

I’m going to skip breakfast tomorrow before my long run with the weekend posse. I’ll let you know how it all goes.

Note: As promised I did skip breakfast and ran 21k with the BK posse on an empty stomach. Felt surprisingly spritely and finished strong. Albeit as we only ran 21k I’m not sure I was going to start burning fat for a few kilometres but small steps.

Of course, being Christmas Eve, we were never not going to have our long run (21k is quite long?) coffee and pancakes.

About the author
Amy Tribolini currently works as both a Registered Dietitian and Nutrition Professor. She lives, trains, and competes as an ultra runner out of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Amy specializes in fueling endurance athletes, athletic performance, and plant-based diets. Amy holds both a Bachelors Degree in Dietetics and a Masters Degree in Human Nutritional Science from the University of Wisconsin.

You might like to read these other articles on the topic of fat burning:
Plant based carbohydrate recipes for fat burning strategies
Nutrition for stripping fat and building lean muscle mass for race readiness
How to lose fat ultra running

Runners – All you need to know about ketosis and fat adaptation

Many runners have been convinced that they need carbohydrates to fuel for their endurance conquests, but a new question has been circulating in the ultra running community: “Can a high fat diet also be a high performance diet?”

More elite runners are emerging with claims that fat burning, ketosis, enables them to run more efficiently than their carb-dependent peers. With all the fad-diet advice flooding the mainstream, it is essential to understand how specific fuels are metabolized in the body and what current research is saying.

When training and competing in ultra marathons, proper fuel can be a huge part of your success.  Whether you are consuming carbohydrates or fat, your body will find a way to convert those fuels into energy so you can endure for long distances.

Carbohydrate is the body’s go-to fuel source. Carbs are quickly and easily converted to glycogen and stored in your cells. When you need energy, your body can rapidly convert glycogen to glucose and release it into your bloodstream to burn. Ketosis occurs when your body is not consuming enough carbohydrates to meet your energy needs, and as an adaptation process, it begins burning fat instead.

There are many proposed benefits of being in ketosis on long runs. Runners state that they don’t experience the dramatic energy spikes and crashes that accompany using high-sugar (high carb) sport supplements, such as gels, bars, and sports drinks. This is due to the fact that fat is a smooth burning fuel, that does not instigate a sugar-insulin cycle. Additionally, even a very lean athlete has around 30,000 calories of fat stored. Compare that to the approximately 2,000 calories of carbohydrate stored in the body. Just by acknowledging the greater storage capacity of fat, you can see why it is a desirable fuel source.

Now, let’s go back to discussing how carbohydrate is more rapidly converted to energy in the body.  This is true, but in part it is true because the body does not have significant practice in converting fat to fuel. For non-athletes, going into ketosis may never occur. Eating carbohydrate-heavy meals, accompanied by low physical activity, keeps the body from ever transitioning to burn fat as a primary fuel source. In this case, if it were ever necessary for the body to burn fat as a primary fuel, it would be an uncomfortable process and the body would likely feel fatigued.

The good news is it doesn’t have to stay this way. An athlete that commonly enters ketosis on long runs has more practice and has thus become more efficient at burning fat. Once athletes become well adapted, they may not feel a significant difference burning fat versus carbohydrate. The main distinction may be that they no longer feel the desperation to replenish their lost sugar stores frequently, during a run.

Attempting to live full-time in ketosis is an extreme lifestyle change and can require cutting out entire food groups, but the lessons learned from ketosis can be applied in a more moderate manner through a method called ‘fat adaptation’. You may not have heard of fat adaptation, but if you’re an ultra runner, your body is likely to be no stranger to it.

If you have ever ran out the door on an empty stomach and decided to do a longer run than planned, your body may have had no choice but to turn fat into fuel.  Since one pound of body fat contains 3,500 calories, the average 150-pound person could run for three hours and burn a mere half a pound of stored fat. Ultra runners can find peace of mind knowing that their bodies already contain the necessary fuel for long runs. I am not advocating for runners to starve themselves for better results, quite the opposite. I am encouraging endurance athletes to fuel with healthy fats and limit sugary, high-carbohydrate supplements as a means to ultimately perform more efficiently on long runs.

What is fat adaptation?

I’ll start by explaining what fat adaptation is not. It is not a low-calorie starvation diet; it is also not like the Atkins diet. Fat adaptation is a ‘state of being’ where the body is comfortable, efficient, and content burning fat as fuel. This method works by understanding food’s macronutrient content: carbohydrate, protein, and fat.

Fat adaptation requires two things: decreased intake of carbohydrate and increased fat consumption.  These dietary changes coupled with the right kind of physical activity can be the magic combination.  Since converting fat to fuel is a slower metabolic process than converting carbohydrate to fuel, especially in the untrained body, practicing this technique with lower-intensity physical activity is where athletes want to start.

How do I become “fat adapted”?

The easiest way to jumpstart fat adaptation is by skipping your morning breakfast and going for a run first thing in the AM. **Gasp** Isn’t this what every nutritionist says not to do? Yes, breakfast is an important meal to fuel your body, especially if you primarily burn carbohydrates as fuel. But, if you are an endurance athlete looking for that edge in long races, this is for you.

When first trying out this technique, your body may hurl hunger cues to your brain, desperately demanding a bagel, orange juice, cereal, or other high carbohydrate foods. If you feel you need to eat before heading out on a run, selecting high fat/low carbohydrate foods can provide satiety without sabotaging your fat adaptation goals.

I like to make coffee in the morning and put a large scoop of coconut oil in it. The bonus with coconut oil is that the fat structure (medium-chain-fatty-acids) increases energy expenditure and ultimately allows your body to burn fat more rapidly. If you are a big breakfast eater, this may seem hard at first because your body is so conditioned to burn carbohydrates as fuel.

Dietary tips to enhance fat adaptation

• You don’t have to remove all carbohydrates for fat-burning to initiate, what is more beneficial is removing grains.
• Continue to eat fruits, vegetables, proteins, and a lot of healthy fats such as: avocado oil, olive oil, coconut oil, nuts and seeds.
• Exercising on an empty stomach (or a high-fat snack) in the morning can be the most effective way of entering the fat adaptation zone.

How should I train to aid fat adaptation?

Start with moderate intensity running (approximately 70% effort). While your body is adapting to converting fat as fuel, remember, this is a slower process at first. Be prudent, lay off the high intensity running until your body has more time to adjust. For example: my comfortable running pace is a 9-minute/mile. I know this because I can carry on a conversation, run long distances at this pace, and not feel exhausted when I’m finished. If initially I tried to enhance my fat adaptation while doing 7-minute/miles, I would feel exhausted, struggling, and desperate for sugary, high-carbohydrate snacks when my workout was done. This is because the body requires carbohydrate for high intensity workouts. Whatever your comfort zone is for running, utilize that as your pace while adapting to fat burning.

Just weeks into your training phase for fat adaptation, your body has likely adjusted to burning fat more efficiently. You may notice that you feel less hungry during and after runs. This is due to the stability of your blood sugars. Burning fat does not give you the severe highs and lows in blood sugar, it allows your blood sugar to remain steady despite burning significant calories.

If you want to re-introduce high-intensity training, such as hill repeats and speed workouts, you can re-introduce more carbohydrates into your diet. Carbohydrates are not harmful; they simply turn off or decrease your fat burning for the time being. High-intensity exercise benefits from carbohydrate burning because of how rapidly your metabolic process can convert it to energy. Using the naturally rapid metabolism of carbohydrates coupled with your newly acquired fat burning efficiency, you should be more equipped to handle any pace, distance, or course.

What are the benefits of fat adaptation?

Research is showing that fat-adapted athletes are able to race endurance events with just a fraction of the calories typically consumed. They are achieving these goals with stable blood sugars and minimal crashes in energy. Additionally, they are not suffering the typical gastro-intestinal malaise often caused by sugary, high-carbohydrate sports supplements. Consuming fewer calories, while feeling steadier levels of energy, may allow ultra-runners to reach higher levels of performance.

Research also shows that lactic acid, a compound produced when glucose is broken down and burned as fuel, is decreased in athletes burning primarily fat as fuel. Once built up in the body, lactic acid can produce painful, burning sensations. Fat adaptation and a heavier reliance on fat as fuel during a race, can cut back on lactic acid formation and decrease overall discomfort in the body.

Conclusion

Fat-adaptation can come in extremely handy during long endurance efforts such as ultra marathons.  I like to think of it like a ‘get out of jail free’ card.  If my stomach turns sour or I simply don’t want to take as much time eating during a race, I know that my body is well trained to adapt.  This is because my body has become more self-sufficient using itself as a fuel source.  Just like ultra runners count on their physical training to get them through a hard race, I can count on my body to do what it has practiced: to efficiently burn fat as fuel.

It’s now less than 4 weeks to my first 100k race (http://australiadayultra.com ) and I feel I need to start to think about nutrition. I’m a big believer in the saying ‘an ultra is an eating and drinking competition with running between aid stations’. Basically it’s all about keeping the body hydrated and fuelled at all times. The fitness bit will take care of itself as I’m confident I have the foundation to complete the event. So I need to scour the internet  using google as my co-pilot and try and find the magic diet that will get me to the end of the race at a similar pace to what I started. Running an ultra it’s even more important to get the pacing right because unlike in a marathon where you hit the wall at 32k and then stumble home in an ultra you could be hitting the wall and looking at a 30k run to finish, minimum. That has got to hurt.

I posted an article last week about the human body being capable on running on just about anything and ice cream was mentioned as a possible fuel. (You should have seen Jon’s eyes light up when I mentioned this to him. It was like all his Christmas’s had come at once ! I see trouble ahead for Jon next month. He’ll probably end up spilling the ice cream all over his triathlon top, not a good look for the photos me thinks !) not totally convinced on the ice cream diet for my first 100k so have done some more digging.

I’ve attached two articles below on different approaches to the ultra diet by two greats on the ultra scene. Dean Karnazes and Scott Jurek are two of the best ultra runners on the circuit at the moment. Both have won the Badwater Ultra , considered to be the hardest ultra in the world, and both have different approaches to diet.

Myself I’m still an old fashioned carbohydrate junkie so will probably, in the short term, stick to what I know. Not to say in the near future I won’t be adapting my nutrition and when I do it’ll all be on the blog.

 

A look at the diet of Dean Karnazes, who once ran 50 marathons in 50 days and adheres to a mostly Paleo food intake.

Professional athletes don’t get to the top by accident. It takes superhuman levels of time, dedication, and focus—and that includes paying attention to what they put in their bellies. In this series, GQ takes a look at what pro athletes in different sports eat on a daily basis to perform at their best. Here’s a look at the daily diet of ultramarathon runner Dean Karnazes.

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Running is the easiest sport to get into casually, because all you need are shoes and legs. As a result, there’s a lot of lore and common wisdom about the ideal runner’s diet: Everyone knows that the night before a big run—whether you’ve signed up for a 5k or a full-on marathon—you’re supposed to carbo-load on stuff like diavolo pasta, brown rice, or buckwheat pancakes.

Well… supposed to. “That’s so passé,” says Dean Karnazes.

Karnazes, 52, is an ultramarathoner who ran 350 miles—or a little less than the distance between Los Angeles and San Francisco—in 80 hours and 44 minutes; completed 50 regular, 26-mile marathons in 50 days; and wrote Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner. Come September, he’ll be hosting the third annual Navarino Challenge, a marathon in Greece meant to raise awareness of childhood obesity. And in the last 20 years of professionally being someone who runs very, very far, Karnazes has transitioned to a mostly raw diet that upends a lot of conventional wisdom about what runners need to eat to perform.

On a good day I run a marathon before breakfast.

“I used to live on junk food, thinking that since you burn 30- to 40,000 calories on some of these runs, you need to get as many calories as you can no matter how you get them in.” One time, on the solo leg of a 200-mile relay run, in the middle of the night with a cell phone and a credit card, Karnazes ordered a pizza delivered to him and kept running while he ate the whole thing in a big roll.

His running times never suffered from his diet, but his daily energy levels fluctuated wildly, so he started experimenting with different foods to see how they affected his recovery time and how they made him feel. “When you push your body that hard you get a feel for what builds you up and what slows you down.”

That intuitive elimination process led him to a diet that’s pretty close to the Paleo Diet, based on the idea that humans aren’t meant to eat anything they can’t pick from a tree, pull from the ground, or kill themselves. Karnazes’s diet isn’t as bacon-heavy as most Paleo-enthusiasts. Instead it’s heavy on fruits (VERY heavy on fruits), vegetables, cold-water fish, and yogurt. If he has any meat, it’s organic, free-range bison, usually so lightly cooked that it’s practically tartare.

The absence of oatmeal and pre-run waffles may cause skepticism, but the fact that Karnazes’s diet is enough fuel to just get him through his workouts, let alone his monster runs, is a pretty strong argument for its effectiveness. When gearing up for a big run he eats 8,000 to 10,000 calories a day. He starts with a base of 3,200 calories, and then adds 300-500 calories per hour of running.

His only real meals are yogurt at breakfast, sometimes flavored with oregano, often with fruit and nuts, and a very large dinner of salad, vegetables, and fish or bison. Most of his carbohydrates come from fruit, which Karnazes eats throughout the day whenever he’s hungry (“I think the notion of three meals a day is rubbish”). And—surprise!—he’s hungry often.

“On a good day I run a marathon before breakfast,” he says, starting off with nothing more than coffee and flax milk. After the three-and-a-half to four-hour run, he waits over half an hour to eat anything else, letting his body adjust to powering itself just on fat reserves.

The rest of the day is constant motion. Not only are there several modified high intensity Navy SEAL workouts (push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, dips, and burpees) and eight to 12 miles of sprinting up hills and jogging back down, but Karnazes rarely sits. His office space is designed to work at standing-level and he’s rocking on the balls of his feet all the time, never letting his legs rest. He is almost physically incapable of staying still.

Like a hummingbird? I wonder aloud.

“Kind of like a shark,” he says.

Pre-morning run
Coffee with flax milk

Post-morning run
Greek-style yogurt (full fat, no sugar added) with cashews, banana and blackberries

Eaten over the course of the day
Apples
Pears
Oranges

Food and hydration for long runs
Nut butter
Unflavored coconut water

Dinner
Large mixed green salad with avocado, olive oil, ground ginger and turmeric
Raw beets
Cooked sweet potato (the one vegetable eaten cooked)
Wild-caught sashimi grade salmon

Dessert
Greek-style yogurt (full fat, no sugar added), topped with olive oil and Himalayan blue sea salt

This Man Ran the Entire Appalachian Trail in 46 Days. Here’s What He Ate Along the Way

In a sport that already dances on the fringe of society, ultrarunner Scott Jurek is a true rarity. As one of the athletes who helped make ultramarathons—any race longer than 26.2 miles—mainstream (well, more mainstream), Jurek has smoked the competition in some of the world’s most punishing trail and mountain races. Not only did he take home the win at the prestigious Western States 100-miler seven years in a row, he also set a course record in 2005 for the Badwater 135, an epic 135-mile race through Death Valley—and it was 130°. In July, he completed a run across the entire Appalachian Trail, breaking the speed record by over three hours. He finished in 46 days, eight hours, and seven minutes.

On top of all this, Jurek also happens to be an accomplished home cook and vegan—he shared his story and favorite recipes in his book, Eat and Run. The plant-based diet, he says, has contributed to his success as a runner, allowing him faster recovery times and better endurance on the trail. So, with all this in mind, we were curious to chat with Jurek about how he eats on the run (heh, heh), what foods fueled his AT record, and what he likes to cook at home.

What’s your morning routine?
I exercise before eating in the morning, unless I’m doing some huge, six- to eight-hour run. I don’t need coffee or caffeine to wake up, so I’m more of a tea or yerba mate-type person. I do enjoy a good cup of coffee or espresso when I’m out with friends. For breakfast, I’m really into green drinks, so I might do barley grass, or blend greens into my smoothie—something as simple as kale, arugula, or spinach. If I have spirulinaor chlorella on hand, I’ll put those in, too. I make sure to replace the carbohydrates I lost on my run with banana, frozen pineapple, or frozen mango, and then I’ll mix it up with whatever berries I have. I use brown rice and pea protein for my protein powder, and I also incorporate 7 Sources, which is an essential fatty-acid blended oil. Sometimes I’ll throw in coconut or avocado.

One thing that’s misconstrued about a plant-based diet is that it’s all just fruit and nuts. People assume that you can’t get full off a plant-based diet, but it really comes down to the amount of food you eat, and getting enough healthy fats. I’m one of these people that likes to eat. That’s the beauty of a plant-based diet; unless you’re eating junk food, you get to eat a lot.

As an ultrarunner, your caloric needs are different from the average athlete. Can you tell us about that?
When I’m training to come out on top and win races, I’ll need 5,000 to 6,000 calories a day. But someone who’s newer to running—say, training for a marathon or triathlon—might not need that many. The key thing is you have to eat while you’re running; you burn through the glycogen [a form of glucose that is easily processed] as you exercise. Marathoners can squeak by with a gel or two, although I think they’d have better results eating more often. But when they move on to their first ultra—say, a 50K—they spend more time on the trail. More time on the trail means more calories. It really comes down to your brain and nervous system needing those carbohydrates. You have to find the type of food that’s easiest for you to digest, consume 25 grams of carbohydrates every 20 to 30 minutes, then wash it down with plenty of water and electrolytes. It’s based on body weight, though, so larger individuals need more calories per hour than somebody who’s smaller. It’s not a blanket recommendation!

When I race, I’m eating a lot of “sports food” that’s carbohydrate-dense, like gels and energy chews. One of the cool things I worked on with Clif during the last year was something called Organic Energy Food. It’s basically food in a pouch that’s blended to a consistency that’s easy to get down. There are even savory flavors like pizza and sweet potato.

On your longest races, you’re actually eating while running. How does that work?
People are shocked (and competitors are jealous) that I can eat a burrito at seven- or eight-minute-per-mile pace. It does take practice, but getting solid or real food down is so important. It’s about trial and error, though. In Eat and Run, I wrote about how I tried to drink straight olive oil during a training run before my first 100-miler. I hardly knew what I was doing, and I was like, “Well, olive oil’s this amazing food and I’m gonna need a lot of calories, so why wouldn’t I drink that on my run?” I ended up with extreme nausea, basically just puking in the bushes.

You lost a lot of weight during your Appalachian Trail run. How much were you eating?
I was on the trail for 13, 14 hours a day at first—and then, later, it became 16, 18 hours a day. Sometimes 20. I was getting less and less sleep, and my metabolism was just raging. I needed to consume 7,000 calories or more a day. A lot of that—around 3,000—of that was in Clif products. Jenny would supplement that with sandwiches or toast drenched in olive oil. Sometimes she’d get me hash browns or greasy home fries from a local diner. Or, after eating pasta with olive oil and vegan sausage, I would down a whole pint of coconut milk ice cream and it didn’t even make a dent. But my time was so limited, the question I’d have to ask was: “Do I spend more time on the trail or more time sleeping?” [Jurek’s wife and friends drove their van along the trail as he ran, and he slept there after logging his miles.] I know it looks shocking, but it’s the nature of activities like this. People might think, “Oh these crazy runners…” but I missed cooking so much.

I weighed around 173 going into the trail. I’m 6’2” and, as a larger individual, could afford to lose some of that. People were surprised I lost almost 20 pounds, especially when they saw pictures, but unfortunately that’s just what happens. The body is trying to get all the calories it can, and when you’re sleep deprived and put these huge stresses on your body, it goes after every little calorie it can get—even the muscles you’re not using. My body started cannibalizing itself a little bit, but that’s where the recovery comes in.

What was the first thing you cooked at home?
I think it was the Swedish pancakes. Well, the day before we had made a huge salad from the farmers’ market. I hadn’t been to a market all season, so being able to pick all these amazing vegetables, fresh here in Colorado, was so great.

Hikers and locals brought you food along the way, right?
Yes, some did. This one family from Pennsylvania brought us fresh fruit and meat substitutes, and it was amazing because we were having a hard time to find things I could eat at small grocery stores. Somebody delivered me two boxes of cinnamon rolls and caramel rolls from Vegan Treats based out of Pennsylvania. Just amazing. One individual brought me avocado maki and vegan pizza, which I was really craving. He hiked up a crazy technical trail for three miles to deliver these random foods. That was one cool thing about the AT. Even though it’s in a remote location, it’s a really social environment. It’s kind of amazing sharing that experience with people.

You mention in your book that you used food to woo your wife Jenny. How’d you do it?
Jenny was a typical female bachelor. She had basically condiments and frozen veggie burgers; very “cereal-for-dinner” type girl. I’m a big believer that food is the way to a woman’s heart, so it was pretty easy to woo her. Food was so integral to my family—with our garden, and hunting wild game and fishing growing up—and it was fun to share that with Jenny. She had never seen that side of me; she had always just seen me as this quirky ultrarunner.

Any parting words?
So many people think cooking has to be this exquisite, elaborate process, but it’s really about just getting in there. It’s about not being afraid to try things. My mom would say, “If you can read, you can cook.” As an athlete, I pay a lot of attention to how I fuel my body…but it’s also just really fun.