Next, let’s look at how you can enhance your body’s ability to oxidise fat as fuel. To do this a more periodised approach is recommended, and this means tailoring nutrition, particularly carbohydrate intake, to training intensity and load. An important point to remember is this does not mean LCHF (Low carbohydrate, high fat).

Here are 12 tips to help you tailor your nutrition to training intensity and load.

1. Aim to include high carbohydrate choices around high-intensity training sessions and races – this will ensure that you can hit the target paces necessary for your progression.

2. In practice this means thinking about including carbohydrate 24-48 hours prior to your session/race, depending on the distance – so if you are planning on doing a track session on a Tuesday night, then you need to be considering fuelling for this as early as Monday’s evening meal, not the snack prior to training.

3. If you are preparing for a half marathon race on a Sunday, I generally recommend, increasing intakes of carbohydrates on Thursday and Friday and then returning to normal eating on Saturday.

This prevents any discomfort from over consuming the day before, which can contribute towards gut issues; it also ensures that you have full glycogen stores – it takes 24-48 hours for carbohydrate to be turned into glycogen stores.

4. How? The aim is to eat little and often so 3 meals a day with around 1/3 plate being made up of complex carbohydrate plus 2-3 carbohydrate-based snacks such as oatcakes with mashed banana or couple of slices of malt loaf or crumpets with jam/honey.

5. For those where time or food availability is a barrier, you can drink your carbs by having diluted fruit juice or smoothies instead of the additional snacks.

6. When it comes to those runs that are done at a low to moderate intensity, it is possible to avoid carbohydrate before and/or during (if long slow run). This will ensure that you use fat stores to fuel that session.

7. Remember we know the body will already use a higher proportion of fat for fuel at these low to moderate intensities.

By training at these paces in a carbohydrate-depleted state, the body will be even more reliable on this fat as fuel. With time, training in this way means that the body gets better at using a higher percentage of fat as fuel.

8. Practically, this means aiming to do these low-intensity/moderate-intensity runs in a fasted state or avoiding carbs for up to 4 hours prior – so if you are planning on doing this run after work, then aim to have carbohydrate at breakfast but keep lunch and snacks protein and fat based.

Remember this is not about losing weight or changing body composition, this is about allowing the body to adapt its fuel usage.

9. During the session, fluid should be drunk and possibly electrolytes if it is very warm; in longer runs, energy can be taken on in the form of fat or protein – good options include salted peanuts and beef jerky.

10. It is important to stress here that firstly these studies have been done on well-trained athletes so I would not recommend trying this if you are new to endurance sport.

Secondly, even in highly trained athletes, I would recommend NO MORE THAN three fasted or depleted sessions a week in order to prevent any issues with a depressed immune system or increase injury risk.

11. If this is something that you want to try but have never done before, remember it has to be a low to moderate intensity run; start short maybe 30-40 minutes and build up the time running fasted or depleted slowly.

12. Finally, it is important to highlight here that while these “fat adaptation” runs are important, it is equally critical to have some long slow runs where you mimic race day, including what carbohydrate fuel you will be taking. This prevents the down-regulation of carbohydrate oxidation, ensuring that you will be able to tolerate your chosen fuel. 

This is one of the biggest mistakes I have come across with the runners I work with, not practising on race day and then suffering severe gastro-intestinal problems on race day.

About the Author
Renee McGregor is a Performance Dietitian and author who works with elite athletes, coaches and sport science teams to provide nutritional strategies to enhance performance and manage eating disorders.

She is the author of Training Food, Fast Fuel books and Orthorexia, when soon to be released Healthy eating goes bad.

The post Fat Adapted Running: 12 Tips for Tailoring Nutrition to Training appeared first on Fast Running.

However, how many of us really understand and know what this actually means? And does it really benefit or hinder our performance?

Simply put, “fat adaptation” describes the process of our bodies becoming better trained to use our fat stores even when we are working at a higher intensity.

This, in turn, means that our glycogen stores and carbohydrate fuel source can be spared, resulting in us going faster, working at a higher intensity, for longer during endurance events. Remember that for most of us, full glycogen stores will fuel high-intensity work for up to 90 minutes.

The theory suggests that by becoming fat adapted, you can spare these glycogen stores by using a higher percentage of fat as fuel, alongside carbohydrate and prolong the decline in glycogen stores significantly.

Scientifically though what do we know?

We know that our body actually uses a mix of both fat and carbohydrate for fuel; relying more on fat stored in the muscle in low to moderate intensity training.

We also know from numerous studies over the past 20 years, that as exercise intensity increases- so above 65% of your maximum, the body needs carbohydrate in order to be able to maintain these faster paces.

However this doesn’t mean that we suddenly stop using fat for fuel, this will also continue but the body will rely on carbohydrate, which can be broken down into glucose and delivered to the working muscles quickly and efficiently.

Contrary to what you may have read though, it is endurance training and SOME manipulation of your diet that actually improves your ability to oxidise fat for fuel, NOT just removing carbohydrate from your diet.

It is also important to highlight that it is these processes that determine how well you oxidise fat for fuel, not your store of body fat; a higher body fat percentage does not necessarily mean you will use a higher percentage of fat for fuel when exercising.

Ketogenic diets

Ketogenic diets, where carbohydrate intakes are kept below 50g of carbohydrate a day and the diet is predominantly fat and protein-based have become very popular particularly in ultra running, with many high-profile athletes advocating the benefits to performance. They are also popular from a weight loss aspect.

Professionally, I do not advocate the use of Ketogenic diets and feel very strongly that such a regime should not be sustained for long periods of time. It is still a relatively new area of sports nutrition and long-term studies and the effects on the body are not understood.

What we do know, as it has been extensively researched, is that insufficient carbohydrate intakes in runners can lead to:

• Depressed immune system and so higher risk of illness and infection.
• Over-reaching which can fast turn into overtraining syndrome.
• Changes to hormonal and bone health, increasing risks of stress fractures.

From a weight loss perspective, looking at the literature, it is apparent that this type of diet was rarely complied with for more than 12 months, which may suggest that compliance to such a strict regimen may be difficult.

A review of the literature has concluded that it was not the composition of the diet that caused weight loss but the overall energy consumption – it is still possible to achieve weight loss while eating carbohydrate as long as energy intake is lower than energy expenditure.

Next read my recommended 12 tips for tailoring nutrition to training, particularly carbohydrate intake to training intensity and load, in order to enhance the body’s ability to oxidise fat as fuel.

About the Author
Renee McGregor is a Performance Dietitian and author who works with elite athletes, coaches and sport science teams to provide nutritional strategies to enhance performance and manage eating disorders.

She is the author of Training Food, Fast Fuel books and Orthorexia, when soon to be released Healthy eating goes bad.

The post Can Fat Really Make You a Better Runner? appeared first on Fast Running.