Ready to go full lo carb & training for a marathon. Tips please

by | Feb 4, 2013 | Low carb diet, Questions about low carb | 0 comments

Here is a copy of a recent comment I did on a post over at Jimmy Moore’s regarding low carb

 

Hi whitehorse,

Thanks for your very interesting post. Nice to see that you’re looking after yourself and that you have quite a worthy goal ahead of you.

I read through most of your post nodding to myself until I got to the last part where you said you’ll be working out on an empty stomach which in essence means that you’ll be following what is in effect an intermittent fast. Now if that is done properly that can be a very effective way of losing fat because fasting increases the resting energy expenditure while at the same time decreases insulin levels thus allowing the fat that we’ve got stored in our  body to burned for fuel.

The other thing fasting does or  intermittent fasting in particular does is that it encourages the body to produce human growth hormone which is one of those brilliant hormones that burns fat while at the same time helps our body to build muscle.

Now as an athlete you’re going to need protein and that needs to be high quality protein and the general consensus is that is should be eaten within less than an hour after you finished training.

As a dedicated organic fellow, I would encourage you to get that quality protein from meat but many athletes, although I hate to say it, seem to get positive results using whey as well.

The other great thing about intermittent fasting from an athlete’s point of view is that our body will naturally preserve any muscles that we’re using.

I know there is a lot of concern in low carb circles about our bodies’ consuming our muscle tissues if they’re not given enough protein or fat for energy but that’s only partly true as yes, the body will break down other tissues but it won’t break down active muscles as in those being exercised.

This is actually quite a fascinating and surprisingly effective way of reshaping or sculpturing your body if you prefer and I think the best thing I can do is give you a link to find out more about it. The most readable information I found so far is on Mark Sisson’s blog called marksdailyapple.com. He goes into this in quite some detail and I think you’ll find many of the answers you’re seeking there.

Hope that helps,

Mark

Sports drink for Low Carb cycling Part 2

by | Jan 24, 2013 | Questions about low carb | 0 comments

This my comment on a previous thread about sport drinks at forum.lowcarber.org

 

jludders:

Thanks

Sounds like a good alternative what sort of ratio’s would you recommend and could you use a potassium salt for the mixture?

 

My reply:

Hi jludders!

As we’re on a low carb forum, I am of course assuming that you’re getting your daily potassium intake from good green vegetables such as broccoli and spinach and so on. Just three good servings of those will give you around about 2,500 to 3,000 mg of potassium each day. Obviously it is important that you maintain a slightly higher potassium to salt ratio. As for salt I would also recommend that you choose a good natural salt without any chemicals added.

The last thing of course, to bear in mind is the ratio of salt and potassium to liquid that you take.  After all you want to make up for what is lost, I would assume rather than just correct the imbalance.

So rather than just pick some figures out of the air, it’s probably better that you have a look at some of the more accessible scientific literature. Here’s an article that should give you most of the answers that you need and if you want anything further, please do come back to me or follow some of the links that you’ll find on this website.

Hope that helps,

Mark

Sports drink for Low Carb cycling

by | Jan 22, 2013 | Questions about low carb | 0 comments

Here is a copy of a post at forum.lowcarber.org where I have commented on regarding sports drinks

 

jludders wrote:

Any ideas for a suitable water bottle drink for a long bike ride? 
As opposed to bought electrolyte replacement powders etc.

 

My reply:

Hi jludders,

Yep, those shop-bought electrolytic replacement drinks are quite expensive, aren’t they? I always question whether they actually do anything significant that you can’t do with something as simple as a few drops of lemon juice in water and a sprinkle of salt on your tongue.

When you think about what we lose when we’re exercising, it really is down to basically, liquid and salt. Now providing those two are being replaced, you should be fine.

Hope that helps,

Mark

Atkins “flu” again?….

by | Jan 17, 2013 | Low carb diet, Questions about low carb | 0 comments

Another copy of a recent post I have commented to at forum.lowcarber.org about Atkins

 

Post from KristyRusi,

So 2 days after my induction “day 16” i’d lost an additional 1lb bringing my total to a 13pounds lost. Then on “day 17” i gained the pound back, and now today, “day 18” i’ve lost the same pound again. But the weird thing is that today i’ve been experiencing the symptoms i had during “day 5-9” of induction. Feeling foggy headed, my ears feel like they won’t pop and ache, my head is killing me and i’m extremely tired and have zero energy. I have pretty much changed NOTHING about my diet from induction to now, other than starting to add a bit more fat to each meal. For example i make the same omelet i made in induction only now i will add 2 tbsps of butter instead of 1 because i’ve heard it helps you stay in ketosis to have the extra fat. Does this mean that perhaps i had gotten OUT of ketosis and now i’m going back into it or is this just a deeper level of ketosis or what’s going on… i thought after that miserable induction Flu those days were in the past? It’s pretty cripling to feel like this and i get NOTHING done.. i’ve started having to drink broth again for sodium to ease the headache, but it’s as if i’m ammune. I feel like that kid in that viral video of him waking up after the dentist… “isss…. thiiisss….reall…liffee?” head all bobbling as well lol. Also my neck has the worst pain and cramping even worse than before in it i can’t turn it left or right without sharp bad pain. I will say i’ve been suffering from insomnia for nearly 5 days now, only sleeping maybe 4-5 hours in a 24 hour period. I’m just “not sleep” i had very high energy and good spirits and felt very clear headed until yesterday, and this afternoon after finally falling a sleep i woke up feeling like garbage. What’s going on?… Thanks for all the advice in advance.

 

My comment:

Hi KristyRusi,

The key to what’s going on here and both what you’re experiencing and what other people experience with what they seem to call “Atkins flu” is enzymes. As you may be aware, our body produces enzymes in order to help break down the food that we eat into something that the body can use more easily. Enzymes are produced by the pancreas and basically come into salts. Digestive enzymes which do exactly what their name suggests; they help us break down food so that it can be absorbed and transported and then utilized by the cells in our body. It also produces metabolic enzymes. These are used within the cells of our body where they help the cells to reproduce and replenish itself. But the pancreas isn’t the only source of enzymes. Many of the foods that we can eat contain with them exactly the enzymes our body needs to break them down. However, processing those foods in any way destroys the enzymes. And it’s true to say that the greater amount of processing the food goes through, the less amount of enzymes will end up in what we eat. So therefore, food that is eaten raw will come with all the enzymes we need to break it down.

That’s just a bit of a background. What’s it got to do with Atkins flu and the way your feeling is simply like this: Our Western diet which consists of highly processed food still needs to be broken down. The only thing that can produce the enzymes to break it down is the pancreas. If the pancreas is having to work overtime in order to produce digestive enzymes, its capacity to produce metabolic enzymes will be greatly reduced. That means that there is lot of undigested food passing through our digestive system. This then becomes a breeding ground for all sorts of harmful bacteria, viruses and many other things that will slowly build up within our system causing all sorts of different health problems.

Now when we start on a low carb diet, the fact that we cut out so many complex carbohydrates, sugars and at the same time reduce the amount of food that we eat, has both benefits and short term consequences. The first of those benefits is that our need to produce digestive enzymes greatly reduces simply because we’ve cut out or cut down carbohydrates which require a lot of, to use the term, “enzymic energy” to be dealt with. At the same time, those digestive enzymes that are produced and work more efficiently and more effectively on the foods that we do eat which will result in less undigested food passing through our intestines creating a more healthy environment within them and at the same time getting rid of unhealthy bacteria and so on. This therefore allows the pancreas to produce more metabolic enzymes which then go to work in the rest of our body and start clearing up all of the garbage, viruses, bacteria and other harmful substances that are built up over the years.

It’s this elimination process or the detoxifying that causes us to have, what people describe as “flu-like symptoms”. This can happen a number of times through the first part of a low carb journey. How many times and how severe the symptoms will depend on a large number of factors. Principally, these will be things like the type of foods that we previously poisoned our bodies with, whether we were smokers or not, whether we had long-term courses of antibiotics, whether we have been on medications as in some cases there can be quite a lot of, what one might call, “residue”. Even something as mundane as what type of job we have done and what poisons and other chemicals we might have absorbed during the course of doing it.

So that’s the why.  Can anything be done about it? Well yes, much! As the detoxifying process is already going on in our body, it will be a shame to cotale that in any way as we would need to go through the same thing again later on. So the best thing to do is to aid that detoxification. Firstly by drinking more; secondly by moving more which will have the advantage of moving toxins out through the lymphatic system more quickly and also causing us to sweat a bit more profusely again getting rid of toxins. Another thing we can do is actually increasing the amount of enzymes that we actually eat either though increasing the amount of raw, living foods that we eat, chewing our foods thoroughly but avoid using chewing gum and strangely enough, by eating less as up to 75 to 80% of our energy input is used to digest food.

While this part of a low carb journey may not be the most comfortable thing to go through, you can look upon it as a good thing simply because you’re now getting rid of  all the garbage that has built up in your body throughout the years of eating low quality food.

Hope that helps,

Mark

Sleep Problems

by | Jan 16, 2013 | Low carb diet, Questions about low carb | 0 comments

This is a copy of my comment on a post at Jimmy Moore’s regarding sleep problems

 

Post from tcbsoc:

Hi All.
I started low carb this week and have done induction since Wed. Since starting, I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night and having horrible nightmares. Anyone deal with this before? Any suggestions on what to do?
Thanks.

 

My response:

Hi tcbsoc,

Starting a low carb diet is probably one of the biggest changes your body has had to go through in its entire life. In fact the changes going on in your body both chemically and hormonally, you could liken, to going through puberty yet all condensed into a week-long period. 

There are principally, five reasons that I can think of off the top of my head why your sleep will be disturbed since starting a low carb diet. As Mackay has rightly said, it could be just a lack of magnesium and perhaps there are physical things disturbing your sleep.

Other things you need to be aware of are the fact that a low carb diet particularly in the early stages, will mean that your body is having to deal with higher energy levels which leads neatly on to the next thing that you may not be getting enough physical exercise. Another thing that you should pay attention to is the amount of protein that you’re eating or more specifically the amount of protein compared to the amount of fat. It is not uncommon for many people who start a low carb diet who concentrate more on meat and bacon and eggs and that sort of thing and not consume enough fat to balance out their protein consumption.

Coming back to the nightmares though, it may be that you have commenced a diet which although it makes sense to your brain, doesn’t make sense to your emotions because you don’t have a big enough reason why. Without the big reason why, our own conscious mind which nearly always tries to move towards the status quo will be fighting with our conscious mind. One of the outcomes from that will be things like nightmares. So do find yourself a big reason why you want to get fit and healthy.

Something that many people overlook is the way that low carb affects men and women differently. So it would be helpful to know whether you’re a man or a woman, as again, hormonal changes can affect drastically how we react to a change in diet, particularly in the early stages.

Lastly, one other things has just occurred to me, you don’t mention what type of diet you’re on, only that you’re in the induction phase on a low carb diet. So is that low carb Atkins, low carb South Beach? Frankly, a little bit more detail would help us to help you enormously.

Lastly I would say, if you’ve only started your diet this week, then because of your metabolism, history or current weight and many, many other things; it can take time to get into a low carb diet. Every one of us here can testify that the beginning of a diet wasn’t always plain sailing but it was well-worthy effort to persevere.

Hope that helps,

Mark

No appetite for two days

by | Jan 16, 2013 | Low carb diet, Questions about low carb | 0 comments

Here is a copy of the recent post at Jimmy Moore’s where I have commented on regarding ketosis

 

From Chicago Dave:

Hello, I’ve been on LC since January 4th. I have been doing great so far. I’m regularly losing enough weight that my clothes are now starting to become baggy. 6 pounds in 8 days. That was two days ago.

I was getting hungry like clockwork, I’d eat just enough, I’d be satisfied until the next meal. But for two days I haven’t had an appetite. I have still eaten, but when I try to eat a meal of even small portions, I feel really full.

An example of a typical meal:
5 oz. beef w/ cheese
2 cups broccoli w/ cheese
12 oz. water

Any ideas?

 

My response:

Hi Chicago Dave,

Strangely enough, you’re not the first person I’ve heard this from in the last week or so. Sounds to me like ketosis has kicked in for you which simply, as you probably know, is when the body starts using its own stored fat to get energy from.

One of the good advantages of that is the fact that we don’t feel hungry when that first starts and that can go on for a number of days so enjoy it because this is the time when you will have probably one of the highest fat loss rates you will ever experience on your low carb journey.

Now the great thing is that while you are not wanting to eat so much or eat anything at all, your stomach will be shrinking,  that when you do start to eat again, you will be satisfied with even smaller portions. 

Providing you associate that hunger with good quality low carb fare, you’ll give yourself an advantage. So enjoy this time and take full advantage of it.

Hope that helps,

Mark