optimum nutrition for sport seminar tonight

lennymc

Anyone going tonight? Should be interesting to hear what they have to say.

http://optimumnutrition4sport.co.uk/events/?event_id=31

Enduro

Yup! Looking forward to it.

lennymc

looking forward to it myself. It will be interesting to hear what they have to say.

QueensGael

The link shows the location of the Radisson Blu Hotel near Henry Street, but I'd assume that should be Golden Lane (near Dublin Castle) - does anyone know if that's the case?

http://www.radissonblu.ie/galleries/radisson/PDF/DUBZA/dubza_map.pdf

lennymc

yeah - its Golden lane.

Slo_Rida

lennymc wrote: »

optimum nutrition for sport seminar tonight

I thought you were going to a sports seminar tonight and were wondering what the optimum nutrition for this event would be

lennymc

Slo_Rida wrote: »

I thought you were going to a sports seminar tonight and were wondering what the optimum nutrition for this event would be

I am, I reckon a pile of mars bars washed down with diet coke should do it.

Slo_Rida

lennymc wrote: »

I am, I reckon a pile of mars bars washed down with diet coke should do it.

Diet? What are you a bike racer or something? I just polished off a can 500ml BOTTLE of coke and a crunchie bar...and it's not even Friday. You've changed Lenny.

mp31

How much is it? Tried to check on the site by booking a place but the form was closed (but it did say I could just turn up)

Enduro

25 Euro springs to mind, but that's only a hazy memory!

petethedrummer

ah jesus, i'm only after cycling out of town, now I have to go back in.

petethedrummer

Very good presentation. As I've read mountains of this stuff, there was not a lot new for me, but it was nice to hear professionals confirm what I have been practicing (and droning on about). For anyone who hasn't read exhaustively and is interested, I would highly recommend it. As the lads said themselves there are so many rabbit holes in all this, they couldn't possibly go down them all in 2 1/2 hours. I did have 2 questions going into it and got them both answered. Which as nice.

A purely Q&A session would be nice for Level 7 paleo metallists like myself. My ideal panel would be an athlete, a nutritionist and a sport scientist.

niceonetom

So, Pete, out of interest what were your questions and how were they answered?

lennymc

I didn't see you there Pete. It was quite interesting alright and the guys spoke a lot of sense.

petethedrummer

niceonetom wrote: »

So, Pete, out of interest what were your questions and how were they answered?

1. I've tried fasted training but I've only done it when I've woken up not hungry. If I'm hungry when I wake up should I eat or persevere hungry.

Short Answer(paraphrasing): If you have decided in advance to go fasted training you should do it. Training through the discomfort at the beginning will probably do you some good and the hunger will wear off when you get in to the ride.

2. (asked afterwards and long winded) There was an Australian study that tested cyclists in a lab with a sports drink based mouth rinse and a placebo mouth rinse. The sports drink rinse group performed better despite not swallowing. Given that you feel better within seconds of consuming sugar when you're tired, have you actually metabolised it? Do you actually need to drink anything during a race or does sugar just need to hit receptors on your tongue to fool your brain.

Barry Murray (Short Answer - paraphrase): I was a subject in a UK equivalent of that trial. And you're just fooling your brain. Central governor etc...

The other interesting stuff and its the reason I closed my thread is that nutrition is not the be all and end all of everything sport & health related, though it has had enormous effects on my health. Stuff like sleep, de-stressing, light pollution, cold showers, nature, minimising technology use are important and were touched upon in this presentation. I had started to read about and appreciate the importance of all that stuff but wasn't prepared to discuss it in my thread. Being the resident food nut was enough.

petethedrummer

lennymc wrote: »

I didn't see you there Pete. It was quite interesting alright and the guys spoke a lot of sense.

yeah I had a look round for you but didn't see you. We must both look different in civies.

lennymc

i regularly do the fasted training, and find that water or water with hi-5 electrolyte stuff gets rid of that hunger feeling pretty quick, and once your actually moving you forget/don't feel hungry anymore. hth

ford2600

lennymc wrote: »

i regularly do the fasted training, and find that water or water with hi-5 electrolyte stuff gets rid of that hunger feeling pretty quick, and once your actually moving you forget/don't feel hungry anymore. hth

What kinda of distance you doing on empty?

lennymc

ford2600 wrote: »

What kinda of distance you doing on empty?

about 50ish km/2 hrs. When I'm on the bike I feel like I could go for much longer. Normally have half a bottle of water or hi 5 in that time.

ford2600

lennymc wrote: »

about 50ish km/2 hrs. When I'm on the bike I feel like I could go for much longer. Normally have half a bottle of water or hi 5 in that time.

Ok I've done 75km and felt fine (not hungry until an hour after ride), was going to try 110km last sunday but it was all south into a headwind and chickened out! 3 eggs fried in butter did the job

Slo_Rida

Fasted training? WTF?
So, I'm doing my second ever winters training (first one with anything resembling a plan) and thought I was up-to-date to some extent. And then someone comes out with this corker "fasted training".
Lads, I am so careful not to go out without a decent meal before hand that I would pretty much scrifice a ride rather than do that.
How often do you (should I) do these?
Are they purely for weight loss or do they help your body get used to burning something different than normal stuff?
Any other info would be good if you don't mind.
Slo

ford2600

Slo_Rida wrote: »

Fasted training? WTF?
So, I'm doing my second ever winters training (first one with anything resembling a plan) and thought I was up-to-date to some extent. And then someone comes out with this corker "fasted training".
Lads, I am so careful not to go out without a decent meal before hand that I would pretty much scrifice a ride rather than do that.
How often do you (should I) do these?
Are they purely for weight loss or do they help your body get used to burning something different than normal stuff?
Any other info would be good if you don't mind.
Slo

Other lads on here race, I don't. I like long distance audax type cycling.

For fueling this and general health experiment I'm on a high fat diet. Other than fruit and veg I consume no carbs.

I have no interest in weight loss.

You can store about 2,500 calories in glycogen, even though I'm lean I probably have (at 10% body fat) circa 65,000 calories in body fat. I'm trying to adapt my body to access those calories as much as possible.

In general life part time physical work or when I drive for long periods some days, running on fat is a gift. No need to snack on rubbish

petethedrummer

Slo_Rida wrote: »

Fasted training? WTF?

Recently when not cycling I was going to the gym fasted on a weekend morning and it was fine but that was only for 30 mins. So I thought I'd give it a shot for cycling.

I tried it because I don't like getting up early and I need a long time to digest food before exercising hard. Getting up fasted and jumping on the bike is nice because you're not trying to hold down a breakfast. And so far I have had less desire to sup on sugary drinks when fasted, for whatever reason. Like everything it needs repeating. Not sure I'd do it every time but so far it has been positive. My training rides are maximum 3.5 hours and I do stop for a coffee about 1/3 into the ride. I have yet to try it while training with someone faster than me, so maybe I am cycling within myself to compensate. Repeated tests will tell.

I poo pooed the idea a while ago on here, but I was eating much more carbohydrate and invariably woke up ravenous every morning and didn't see how it would be possible for me.

slideshow bob

Slo_Rida wrote: »

Fasted training?

Have done morning runs (up to 1.5hrs) on empty for a long time as eating beforehand just made me ill.

Slo_Rida wrote: »

Lads, I am so careful not to go out without a decent meal before hand that I would pretty much scrifice a ride rather than do that.

I was much the same as you when it came to bike rides. A long time ago I 'bonked' on the bike. When I started doing long spins a couple of years ago (having done none for a very long time) I would cram myself with food before getting going. But lately I've been doing the bike spins mostly without breakfast too. Don't think it'd work so well if I was in the red zone, but for moderate pace rides it's fine. The objective for me is to improve usage of fat-as-fuel. It's mentioned by ford2600 in this thread, and more extensively by petethedrummer elsewhere.

Got onto this through seeing Tim Noakes do an about-turn on fuel for endurance. This remark is what swung it for me:

I am also running faster than I have for 20 years

I found several podcasts very interesting (search for "Tim Noakes" - PaleoRunner has a particularly good interview with him, as does BJSM).

lennymc

there was an ultra marathon runner there the other night, who was used as an example. He ran a 24 hour marathon, covered 244 kms, and ate very little, and won the race. Something like a few pieces of fruit over the 24 hours.

Edit - Eoin Keith was the utmb runner mentioned above.

ford2600

lennymc wrote: »

there was an ultra marathon runner there the other night, who was used as an example. He ran a 24 hour marathon, covered 244 kms, and ate very little, and won the race. Something like a few pieces of fruit over the 24 hours.

Edit - Eoin Keith was the utmb runner mentioned above.

http://eoinkeith.wordpress.com/
@Enduro here I think

Enduro

That me alright!

ROK ON

lennymc wrote: »

i regularly do the fasted training, and find that water or water with hi-5 electrolyte stuff gets rid of that hunger feeling pretty quick, and once your actually moving you forget/don't feel hungry anymore. hth

+1

I have trained fasted for about two years now.
At w/es if I get out on bike or turbo it has to be early. I started going out without food because I can't take eating at 6 or 7am.

Usually do two hours on the road or 1hour in the turbo.
Unless it is a pure social ride then ther are intervals thrown in. Short and HIIT or longer in Z4.

I have not found the absence of a breakfast to be an issue at all - maybe it would be for longer rides with more intervals.

Usually after these sessions I would tend to have a breakfast of eggs and coffee, with water and some fruit.

i_surge

Has anyone any experience of riding HARD > 2 hrs while fasted? Is it different on LCHF?

I used to do easy spins in the evening while hungry after work but now I eat a small snack before hand, at least 50g carbs + some protein and ride a little harder.

In my case, more net calories burned overall and more importantly a better training effect.

lennymc

Enduro wrote: »

That me alright!

that's some running! Fair play.

petethedrummer

just to be clear to anyone reading....

petethedrummer wrote: »

Short Answer(paraphrasing): If you have decided in advance to go fasted training you should do it. Training through the discomfort at the beginning will probably do you some good and the hunger will wear off when you get in to the ride.

I am not sure I'd actually start off a training ride hungry. And I am not advising anyone to do it. That was just their answer. Whether I would do it would require some more reading by me on the subject, I don't like feeling hungry.

petethedrummer wrote: »

Barry Murray (Short Answer - paraphrase): I was a subject in a UK equivalent of that trial. And you're just fooling your brain. Central governor etc...

I'm not going to start spitting out my drink during a race and I don't advise anyone do this. I just wanted to know what they thought was going in the brain/body when you take a drink and you get a spurt.

Enduro

lennymc wrote: »

that's some running! Fair play.

Given the forum we're in, I should point out that I've been a cyclist for a long time now as well (and have a few national (age group) medals for MTB to my credit in the past).

Billycake

i_surge wrote: »

Has anyone any experience of riding HARD > 2 hrs while fasted? Is it different on LCHF?

I've been teetering between strict LCHF and moderate LCHF for about 6 or 7 months now. I have done a few 4 hour spins at an average of high tempo pace with about 6 to 8 x 12min intervals above threshold power with some hard 30 sec jumps thrown in. I found on one or two of them that towards the last half hour I started to feel a bit woozy and wobbly. I always have an emergency gel or haribos in my pocket and once I ate that I was fine about 10mins later.
I had breakfast this morning at 6am (berries & greek yoghurt) and had some cheese and espresso at about 11am. Today I got home at lunchtime for 90mins on the trainer and was fine. The session wasn't anything intense, just endurance pace with 3 sweetspot intervals thrown in for variety.

MediaMan

petethedrummer wrote: »

... Stuff like sleep, de-stressing, light pollution, cold showers, nature, minimising technology use are important and were touched upon in this presentation.

Cold showers, WTF! I've been willing to get up at 5am to cycle, climb 3000m in a day, even wear ridiculous clothes, but this is beyond reasonable. Out of curiousity, what does a cold shower do for a body? And how cold is cold?

thebouldwhacker

It is thought that it helps remove toxins.
On a more scientific basis it helps reduce swelling, similar to a cold pack being applied but to the entire body. Hence popular with rugby teams as it just nucks the body with cold.
I have heard temps of 10oC being bandied about but I think that's ball park, each to their own.
As with many such practices it seems to be passing and falling out of favour as the results don't seem to be as dramatic as the claims.
But each to their own, not sure they are recommended after a cold Irish cycle when you come back cold and are weak for a hot shower. On a personal note I went for a long hard spin last Friday which took the lot out of me as I battled a head wind and hailstone storms for over 7 hours and hit a hot hot bath on my return and next day didn't have an ache or tired limb after, go figure.

petethedrummer

MediaMan wrote: »

Cold showers, WTF! I've been willing to get up at 5am to cycle, climb 3000m in a day, even wear ridiculous clothes, but this is beyond reasonable. Out of curiousity, what does a cold shower do for a body? And how cold is cold?

You'll have to do some reading and make up your own mind. It was just one of the things touched on in the presentation. I'm not advocating anyone start (or stop) taking cold showers.

thebouldwhacker wrote: »

It is thought that it helps remove toxins.
On a more scientific basis it helps reduce swelling, similar to a cold pack being applied but to the entire body. Hence popular with rugby teams as it just nucks the body with cold.

IIRC it wasn't discussed as a recovery method in the presentation. Any science that is available on the subject is probably conflicting.

Darkglasses

Cold showers allegedly increase testosterone levels too, obvious benefits there if true.

Also supposedly improve blood circulation, immune strength, increase metabolic rate, and help you breathe better.

All unproven but if nothing else they can be good for your mood.

Ole Rodrigo

Going for a swim in the cold sea is good for you.

Those crazy Russians were on to something :pac:

niceonetom

So... get up, cold shower, four hours on the bike without so much as a slice of toast for breakfast or a fig roll for the jersey pocket. Another cold shower when you come in presumably...

You're really selling it.

petethedrummer

Tom, if you want to be as good as me at cycling that's what you're gonna have to do.

petethedrummer

ror_74 wrote: »

Going for a swim in the cold sea is good for you.

I tried swimming at seapoint last february. I lasted 9 seconds in the water.

niceonetom

It's scientifically impossible to get into a cold shower. But it can be relatively easy and even oddly pleasant to sue the James Bond method - get in a hot shower, wash, then turn the shower down to as cold as you can tolerate before getting out.

That takes care of the hypothermia. Now I only need to tackle the starvation aspect... but I still doubt I'll ever rival Pete's fearsome gallop.

Ole Rodrigo

petethedrummer wrote: »

I tried swimming at seapoint last february. I lasted 9 seconds in the water.

Feb is cold in fairness. Wonder if the paleo lifestyle helps with cold water..

..which reminds me of a beluga whale trainer ( naked swimmer - nsfw )

ROK ON

Only time and further empirical study will tell if this is science or pseudo-science.

There has been a debate in the rugby community about he actual benefits of cold showers. However a guy that I work with tried a few weeks of progressively colder baths as an aid to calorie burning.

I have no issue with non processed food, but a lot of the other stuff is not hat far removed from the tinfoil hat brigade.

I think there is an onus of proof on people selling tkts for these type of events to provide empirical proof that would stand up to repeated scientific experimentation. Otherwise much of what is said is dubious while the balance is simply common sense.

petethedrummer

ROK ON wrote: »

Only time and further empirical study will tell if this is science or pseudo-science.

True but a lot of the established tenets of exercise are highly debatable. The evidence for the benefits of stretching is inconclusive. Plyometrics is possibly b0llocks. That "cardio" exercise is heart healthy is disputed, even Ken Cooper who popularised Aerobics is now in favour of interval/resistance training for the heart. The whole notion of low weights/high reps for strength endurance is also hotly debated. Anyone for a Calories in Calories out debate?

ROK ON wrote: »

There has been a debate in the rugby commun
ity about he actual benefits of cold showers.

I will repeat that IIRC cold showers were not mentioned as a means of recovery in this presentation, if they were then only briefly. Cold showers were touched on in the context of subjecting yourself to occasional sharp discomfort to prepare your mind/body for varying conditions. They also touched on training in cold miserable conditions as opposed to sitting on a turbo in the living room.

ROK ON wrote: »

However a guy that I work with tried a few weeks of progressively colder baths as an aid to calorie burning.

There's a whole load of stuff here about brown fat and it's response to cold conditions, doubt its conclusive of anything. I'm not gonna read it myself as it doesn't interest me at this moment in time and my well established position is that if you want to lose fat then buy an Atkins book. No need to sit in a cold bath.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/genetics/brown-fat-revelations-may-lead-to-new-weight-loss-drugs-670440
http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMoa0808718
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2233284
http://www.jci.org/articles/view/60941?key=3723d9632a23d4529001

ryan_sherlock

worm holes, worm holes - everywhere

Cold showers are not in relation to recovery - lots of different things probably going on. petethedrummer's post is pretty much spot on - everything we thought we knew, we don't really know.

thebouldwhacker

ryan_sherlock wrote: »

worm holes, worm holes - everywhere
.

Couldn't
Agree
With
You
More

ROK ON

Hi Pete

I completely agree that all the stuff that you mention as 'received wisdom' also requires proof. (stretching, plyometrics etc).

But your thread and Astras thread started out by espousing a simple premise - firstly avoid processed food and in particular processed carbs and high sugars. Then you both take a more disciplined (or extreme) approach and focus on eliminating carbs as much as practical.

To me this sounds intuitive - well the first part does.
Stuff made in a factory is likely to less good for me in an holistic sense than factory produced goods. Why - profit margins drive factory production whereas nature produces veg, fish, water and meat in a basic fashion.

But we have people there to selling tkts for strategies.
This means people have insights that they want to share.

For me to buy a Tkt I would need go see proof, as opposed to common sense.
If what we eat is bad then bad versus what baseline. What do we mean by bad?
Lots of people eat crap and live long healthy lives,
Lots of athletes eat crap and are highly successful.

This is why I need proof - I want to know what will get better for me if I go to a seminar/buy the book/follow the advice etc etc

Nutrition as applied to sports shares a lot with quantitative finance and macro economics IMHO. They masquerade as sciences because they are quantitative.

However is it the case that there are experiments that have the same result over and over and over again despite the test subject and genetic predisposition.

I don't know the answer to this with regards to nutrition and sports science, but it would not surprise me if the answer here is the same as economics and finance - ie most proponents would like their paying clients to believe in the science. But it is not and repeated experimentation proove that.

I see huge benefits to changing my diet away from processed toward natural, but despite the prevalence of fat, diabetes etc etc. There are lots of people eating crap, drinking gallons of sugary stuff and are successful athletes living what appears to be long and healthy lives.

As you guys say
Everything we know is wrong.

But in which way - I dint think we know.

niceonetom

ROK ON wrote: »

For me to buy a Tkt I would need go see proof.

That's an impossible standard outside of any discipline other than pure mathematics. Even in the hard sciences all "facts" are provisional and all explanations are only our current best, open to future change as further evidence comes in. In the soft sciences - and economics is as soft as they come - there are simply too many moving parts for any experiment to be truly conclusive.

Be it in economics, dietetics or sports physiology we just have to accept the uncertainty, understand that to some extent the plural of anecdote is data, and try and eliminate the charlatans, zealots and cultists by asking for evidence - not proof - evidence.

There's also the problem of perception in the level of 'proof' any new theory faces. LCHF sounds barmy because we 'know' that low fat, especially low saturated fat, diets have in the public mind been 'proven' to work. We just assume the proof is out there so why examine it. But then we demand 'proof' of a rival theory and congratulate ourselves on our scientific rigour. Be careful of thinking that what is commonly held has been well tested. "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."

FWIW I think the emerging LCHF evidence is becoming quite convincing and, while each study may have its flaws, in the aggregate they form a coherent picture. That in combination with my own personal experience living this lifestyle keeps me on the LCHF bandwagon.

petethedrummer

ROK ON wrote: »

But your thread and Astras thread started out by espousing a simple premise - firstly avoid processed food and in particular processed carbs and high sugars. Then you both take a more disciplined (or extreme) approach and focus on eliminating carbs as much as practical.

I'm going to take issue with this being extreme. I eat highly nutritious food till I'm full, always. I don't track calories in or out. I exercise at most twice a week and not for very long. The result is that I'm as lean and as fit as I have ever been in the years when I should be in decline. And I understand the processes behind why this has happened.

Extreme to me is exercising 5 days a week, doing huge mileage, leaving the dinner table unsatisfied, setting up a turbo in your living room, tracking calories, eating rice cakes, tracking rides on strava, strapping on a heart rate monitor and performing bogus calorific equations.

I've said several times that I am not aiming for Ketosis. So it is not difficult to eat this way in any scenario. In fact the more you know, the easier it is to mitigate against and even embrace bad food choices. I had a month of weddings & stags in September. Lots of cider & wine consumed. Weight crept up. I didn't have to even worry about it. It was perfectly obvious in advance that this would happen. And perfectly simple to get it back down with no stress or misguided increase in physical activity.

ROK ON wrote: »

But we have lied there to selling tkts for strategies.
This means people have insights that they want to share.

For me to buy a Tkt I would need go see proof, as opposed to common sense.

The problem is, this is such a huge topic and to get to the science of it would require more time. A lot more time. Think back to your school/uni days and how little was done in a 2.5 hour period. I would have liked more technical stuff but this presentation was not the place for it. That's why I've said over and over that you need to keep reading up on this stuff. I doubt many people have as read as much as me or Astra on the subject so a more technical approach would probably just bore and confuse most attendees. I wanted to take issue with a couple of things in the presentation but decided it was not the place.

ROK ON wrote: »

There are lots of people eating crap, drinking gallons of sugary stuff and are successful athletes living what appears to be long and healthy lives.

This also was touched on by the lads. You can win the Tour de France with a terrible (according to paleo) diet. That is probably why they drifted away in to lifestyle factors. If it were my presentation, I would have presented the lifestyle stuff as a very brief 1 pager at the end. But to be fair, they were acknowledging that a paleo style diet will not turn you into a Tour de France winner and that the mind (conscious & and sub-conscious) plays a very important role in performance and along with the body needs conditioning.

Gary Taubes has said that it's actually not hard to figure out why overweight people become overweight. It would be a much more interesting question to ask why lean people stay lean despite eating and exercising the same as the overweight.

doozerie

I attended a talk by Barry Murray recently. I was aware of the existence of low carb diet but knew little about it, so I went into the talk with no particular bias. I found it very interesting and I came away from it eager to give it a try.

My current diet is already reasonable (by “conventional” standards at least - it is carb heavy though), I’m not looking to lose weight (I actually can’t gain weight for the most part), I’ll never be anything other than an average athlete at best regardless of diet. My motivation then is improved general health and any other benefits, sporting or otherwise, will be a bonus.

As regards proof, or not, of this approach to nutrition being a good thing, I don’t see the fuss. I’ve never sought proof that my current diet is good/“safe”, I simply eat what I want to eat and make a bit of a half-baked effort to limit my intake of certain things. The prevalence of obesity and diabetes in modern society could be seen as symptoms that commonly accepted diet these days is poor, but I’ve never lost sleep about that. Similarly I require no proof of anything before undertaking a low carb diet, I trust myself not to kill myself overnight and I trust in my ability to recognise whether I’m doing myself harm over time and if I notice that happening I’ll change my diet again. It seems to me that science remains very uncertain or ambiguous in the context of nutrition (eggs are bad for you, eat too many and you’ll die - no wait, they’re fine; cholesterol will kill you, here take these statins for the rest of your life - no wait, you probably don’t need medication at all; etc.), so I don’t expect or require science to give me a green light for any change in diet.

It remains to be seen whether I’ll have the self-discipline to stick with this diet, of course. For one thing I have a sweet tooth and it was a struggle to resist gorging on the chocolates that are floating about in work here at the moment. My struggle wasn’t helped by this being my first day of trying a lunch based around rye bread instead of regular (wholemeal) bread - I underestimated both the weight and the desirability of rye bread, I’ll be looking for alternatives to rye bread pretty feckin’ sharpish!

Re fasted rides, Barry Murray’s suggestion was try them. He suggested that at first you eat a banana or flapjack when you hop on the bike, and eat as you normally would on the bike after that. Each week delay eating the banana/flapjack a bit later until you find you can do without it entirely. Then work on delaying the food you’d normally eat on the bike until you no longer need that either.

I also asked him how he’d fared in a recent hilly 100-mile running race, and he finished second in a time of 22 hours. I’m in awe of anyone that can run 100 miles, and I couldn’t even comprehend doing so in a time of 22 hours. Enduro’s run that was mentioned above is even harder to rationalise in my head, that’s phenomenal! It’s not proof, but the fact that people can produce such physical feats as those suggests to me that their diet is not hindering them, and probably not harming them either.