Breakfast Butty in a Coffee Cup, No Bread Roll Please!

I’ll start this blog by saying that it is NOT a diet blog…… it’s a blog about changing my diet and the impact it’s had on my training and performance. I am neither a scientist nor nutritionist; this is my personal experience, and it may not work for everyone.

As we all know, Coach Paul is a data geek. I think all his Christmases came at once when I signed up and he realised he’d found a fellow data geek. Whether it’s something that’s gone wrong or right, I want to know why. If theres something I need to improve, I want to know how.

In October 2022 a few willing SEC volunteers signed up for the INSYCD programme. You guessed it – Coach Paul wanted more data!

Tests were done on the bike and run and the benchmarks were set. Among other things, two of the data results were CarbMax and FatMax. In simple terms, the first shows the level of training intensity at which the body burns through its max intake of carbs, the latter can be used to understand how efficiently the body breaks down fat and uses it for energy.

My results, in Coach Paul’s words “you are heavily reliant on carbs but that’s normal for most triathletes.”

This information got parked in the back of my brain and training commenced. The only thing he asked me to change was to do my early morning easy runs fasted and not to consume fuel for the first 1.5-2hrs of my rides, in an attempt to not rely as much on carbs and to look for fuel from my stored body fat. I didn’t really question why at this point; as Paul so often tells us, I just trusted the process!

6 months later and re-test time. As I was carrying an injury I couldn’t do the run test, so data came from the bike test only. Across the board I had made significant improvements – Anaerobic Threshold up 16% and VO2Max up 13%. FATMax had gone up a massive 23% which meant I was actually burning more fat, however CarbMax had also gone up…. I was still relying on carbs for fuel.

At this point I started asking “so what does that mean?” Why does it matter and how can I change it?

Coach Paul pointed me in the direction of Dr Dan Plews and Endure IQ and so began my research into fat adaptation. For those who are interested, here’s a link to the blog that I started with “Right Fuel, Right Time” and that I followed the principles of in training for IronMan Wales. There is also a podcast and just this week another blog “Fat Oxidation in Training”.

“What are you going on about?” I hear you say. I’ll try to keep this simple.

Our bodies get energy from two fuel sources – carbs (broken down into sugar) and fat. They burn carbs much faster than fat. Imagine an open fire, if you throw paper on it the burn is instant but gone in a flash. If you add logs, it’s a much slower burn and the fuel lasts longer. The paper is carbs the logs are fat.

As endurance triathletes we carb load the night before a race, we add carb powders to our bottles and take sugar loaded gels during the run. We burn through carbs and keep adding more to replace them or else we “bonk” (we’ve all seen the Bownlee video!) But our bodies can only absorb 60-90g of carbs per hour. If we consume more than our bodies can absorb, yes you got it - the dreaded gastric distress!

So in an ideal world we want our bodies to use fat as a fuel source; it lasts longer and most of us have plenty of it stored away! Trouble is, modern diets are very heavily carb based and our bodies have forgotten how to look for fat as fuel when the carbs run out; they need a little nudge.

Everything I read suggested the optimum macro split to achieve fat adaptation is 20% carbs, 30% protein, 50% fat. It is NOT Keto….. that is extreme low carb and not recommended.

I read up on low carb foods and stocked the cupboards with high fat goodies. To begin with, until I got used to what the macro split looked like I weighed and tracked EVERYTHING I ate and drank, much to the amusement of my family!

Some of my favourite meals included:

Breakfast - full fat greek yoghurt with a scoop of protein powder and a handful of fresh berries

Lunch – poached egg, bacon and avocado mashed with lime juice and chilli flakes

Tea – fillet steak!

Our family tradition is to begin any road trip with a Greggs butty - you’d be surprised how non-plussed the staff are (which suggests it’s not an uncommon ask) when I order “a breakfast butty in a coffee cup, no bread roll please.”

Fuel for training rides consisted of mini babybel cheese, peperami, nuts and 90% cocoa chocolate.

I don’t have a sweet tooth, so it was easy to avoid too much sugar and I don’t really drink alcohol either.

The hardest thing was going places where food was provided such as work events and conferences; it’s only when you try to reduce your carb intake that you realise just how carb heavy our diets are!

Things I noticed within the first month:

- Sleeping better.

- Improved gut/digestion.

- More energy/less fatigue.

- I could finish VO2 turbo sets!

Did I notice the difference in races? The normal advised carb intake during racing is 1g/hr/kg body weight. I reduced this by 50% and increased my fat and protein intake to keep the calories up. I did not bonk! I guess that means I’m now more fat adapted?

Time to re-test and see if the data backs up the theory.

Anaerobic Threshold, VO2Max and FATMax all up another 5%…… CarbMax? DOWN by 6% on the bike and 11% on the run - I am officially fat adapted and less reliant on carbs!

In March 2023 (when operation fat adaptation commenced) I weighed 70kg and had 28% body fat. While perfectly healthy, Coach Paul and I had discussed that my ideal race weight was probably around 60kg. By September 2023 I was bang on 60kg and sitting at 23% body fat. I’d burned off a load of body fat and increasing protein intake had resulted in an increase in skeletal muscle mass (as a ratio of my body weight) by 2%.

This has had a couple of benefits - I’m running 5% faster and have seen a 20% increase in my bike power to weight ratio.

In general I also feel a hell of a lot better and healthier.

There has been only one downside; my body is now so used to having a low amount carbs that if I do have a day where I fall off the wagon, the next day I suffer gastric distress. That being said, I think I’ve probably always had this issue to some degree, cutting carbs has just made it more noticeable.

Worth it? Definitely.

Keeping it up? Absolutely

Full fat is for life, not just winter hibernation.