59. Myths and Misconceptions of Low-Carb Running

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner Ultra runner, Master life coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 59 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today we are talking about carbohydrates. Again, it’s carbohydrate month over there in the Running Lean community on Facebook. I’ll talk more about that in just a second.

But today, we’re talking myths and misconceptions of low carb running. Listen, there are a lot of myths and misconceptions floating around out there around the carbohydrates and running performance. Some say you can’t run without them. Other people say you should ditch them altogether. There’s a lot of conflicting information out there.

How do you know which answer is right for you? So today, in this episode of the Running Lean podcast, I hope to clear up some of the biggest misunderstandings, myths and misconceptions of low carb running. By the end of this episode, I want you to have the information you need to be able to make an informed decision about which approach is best for you, personally, for your personal health and fitness goals. So that is all coming up.

I did mention the Facebook group, we’re doing a 28 day low carb challenge here all this month in February. And the idea is that we’re just ditching the problematic carbs, you know, the highly refined grains and sugars and just giving it a go. And people are having some great success.

People are having tons of energy and losing weight and feeling good. And there’s all kinds of positive results coming out of this. Okay. It’s not easy. It’s not easy for everybody. That’s why we’re doing it in the group, we’re doing it as a group. And that’s why it’s called a challenge too. Because it’s a challenge. It is hard.

At first is little uncomfortable when you stop eating all the sugar because your body’s like, Where’d that sugar go? But we’re having fun over there. So definitely check us out, just search for Running Lean community on Facebook and join us it’s not too late, you can still jump in there and start with us.

Also, people have been asking me about how they can work one on one with me. And you know, I talk about this every now and then. But if you’re interested in personal coaching, working with me, where you’ll get the individual guidance and support you need, you know, we’ll work together to dial in your macros, we’ll help you to get fat adapted.

We’ll do it in a way that supports your long term health and your fitness goals. I’m there as your guide, I’m there to guide you every step of the way to encourage you to do the things that maybe you don’t want to do. So that you can become the healthiest and fittest runner that you can be you I want you to become the person that you’ve always wanted to be that healthy fit athlete.

So if you’re interested in working with me, let’s let’s do it, I’ll get you there. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/coaching. And when you get there, you have to apply you have to apply to work with me. So what that looks like is you just fill out a quick little form a couple questions, and then we’ll jump on a call and we’ll see if we’re a good fit for each other. And for some people, it’s not a good fit, and that’s totally fine. No problem.

There’s no cost for this assessment call. There’s no obligation, it’s just me and you talking about your goals, and we’ll see if we can make it work working together. Okay, so just go to runningleanpodcast.com/coaching to apply.

And then lastly, here’s a quick little five star review of the Running Lean podcast from SerenityBob I don’t know how to pronounce that, but SerenityBob, and it’s titled heartfelt help for runners and beyond. “I happened upon the Running Lean podcast in my pursuit of strengthening my running but also, in attempting to solve the puzzle of unwanted weight gain and problematic body composition. Patrick offered heartfelt sincere support from a place of personal experience, which I found helpful.”

Thank you SerenityBob for sharing the love and if you enjoy the podcast, it would mean a lot to me if you just took a minute to jump on Apple podcasts is the only place I know where you can actually leave a review You and just scroll down and tap the five stars leave a nice review. And I’ll read it here on the show. Cool.

So let’s get into this topic today, myths and misconceptions of low carb running. Right. So I was talking about how we’re focusing on carbs this month, you know, we’re talking all about carbohydrates. I’m trying to give you guys a fresh look at this low carb approach for runners and endurance athletes. And I’ll be honest with you, this is not for everyone, I wouldn’t, I would never say that this is the only way to go. Or this is the best option for everybody out there.

Like it’s just everybody needs to go low carb. I’ll never say that. But I will say that I think it’s a fantastic approach to sports nutrition for a lot of endurance athletes. And for a lot of people in general, I think going low carb has so many health benefits, that I’m not afraid to talk about that stuff.

And here’s the world we’re living in, you know, it’s been shown that like 88% of Americans are considered metabolically unhealthy. 88% of us need some sort of help. And taking a low carb approach to your to your diet is one great way to help, you know, improve your metabolic health. And if 88% of us are metabolically unhealthy, I mean, that includes a lot of runners too, okay, I’m sure there’s a lot of runners out there that are not metabolically healthy.

And if you’re part of the 12%, that’s considered healthy, like, that is amazing, that is awesome. Whatever you’re doing is obviously working, keep doing it, stick with it, I would never tell you, you should change it if it’s working for you. And I’ve said this a million times, but there’s no one ideal human diet, you need to find the one that works for you.

And a lot of times, you know, I start working with a client and we we talk about this because it’s very important that we dial in the right macronutrient and the right caloric intake and the right types of foods that work for the individual, it’s a very individual thing.

We all have different metabolic profiles. You know, we all have different, you know, weights and heights and needs and likes and dislikes. We all have different health and fitness goals. And there’s just no way that you could say like, oh, this is the best option for everybody. Because there isn’t, there isn’t one answer that works for everybody. Okay.

So this is why this is like, this is why I talk about this so much. This is why I have this podcast and my Facebook group and my coaching practice because I want to help people and it really does take some individual coaching and and knowledge and working one on one with a professional and expert in order to really dial in what works for you.

And some people can do this on their own. But it’s it’s a challenge because a lot of times people in this my experience, I’ve tried to like dial this stuff in on my own. And as soon as it gets a little uncomfortable, I’m like, well, that doesn’t work. Let me just like, screw it and I go on to something else.

And I talk about how this diet doesn’t work or that doesn’t work. So having somebody there with you is very helpful. And I’m not trying to push my services on you or anything like that. But I definitely think that having an expert there with you makes it so much easier for you to stick with it.

Okay, so there’s not one ideal diet, you need to figure out what works for you. I’m going to give you some of these myths and misconceptions about the low carb deal today. But again, this is not for everyone. I just want to make that clear, okay. And runners are not immune to health issues. Runners are not immune to metabolic issues. Okay. A lot of runners are considered unhealthy. You know, they’re addicted to sugar.

They’re insulin resistant. They’re pre diabetic. A lot of runners are overweight or obese. You know, even lean runners can be unhealthy. And there’s a name for these people. They’re called tofies, t o f i, and that means thin on the outside, but fat on the inside. You can look lean on the outside but have a lot of visceral fat.

Visceral fat is fat that is around your organs. There’s a condition called non alcoholic fatty liver disease, which is a problem where fat develops around the liver. And it has it’s directly linked to carbohydrate intake, and in sugar, basically. So eating a diet that’s very high in carbs, maybe too high in carbs for some people can cause a lot of visceral fat.

And this is not healthy. This is a sign that you’re pre diabetic or you could even be insulin resistant and diabetic. And so it’s one of those things where, you know, if you don’t, if that sounds like you are, you know, you’re worried about that definitely go to go to have your your blood work done with your doctor have it checked out and everything.

But, you know, I just think that, you know, even runners and even lean runners need to be conscious of the diet and what we’re what we’re eating on a regular basis. The food that we eat affects every cell in our body, every cell, and if you think it doesn’t, then that’s just a misconception.

And so we really need to be mindful of the kinds of stuff we’re eating. It’s important. And I’m biased. I’m going to tell you right now, right now, I’m going to be honest with you. I’m very biased. I advocate for a low carb approach. You probably knew that already. And I find that most of the people I work with, most of my clients have great success with a lower carbohydrate approach.

But it’s not the only thing that works. And I absolutely acknowledge that. And for some people, eating a low carbohydrate diet is not a good option, totally fine. But you need to figure out what works for you. Okay, so just all that being said, you know, if you’re, if you’re, if you want to try a low carb approach, especially for a long distance runner, if this appeals to you, if you want to become fat adapted, and this is something you want to try, then this is what we’re talking about today, okay?

And if you’re interested in doing the whole low carb thing, but you have concerns because people are like, you know, if you don’t eat carbs, you’re gonna die. Or you can’t possibly run fast without eating carbs, then this episode may clear up a couple of those things for you. Okay.

So my goal with this episode is to dispel some of these myths and really give you the information you need so that you can decide, you know, which approach might work best for you, especially for endurance athletes. Alright, so let’s get into this.

The first myth that I want to talk about, and I just mentioned, it is that you have to eat carbohydrates, or you will die. And I’ve probably talked about this before, but I just want you to understand this is not true. Okay, there are essential nutrients that we have to have essential nutrients are those things that we have to get in our diet, because our bodies do not manufacture them.

Right, we have to eat them, we have to find them in our diet. And these include things like fatty acids, amino acids, certain vitamins and minerals, electrolytes, and water, okay, if we don’t consume these things, if we don’t find them outside of ourselves and eat them or drink them, we will die. So fatty acids would be fat, basically.

So we have to have fat in our diet, we have to eat fat, we have to get amino acids. This is found in protein. And we need protein. In order to live, if we don’t eat protein, we die. We need vitamins, we need minerals, we need water, we need electrolytes, all of these things are very important. If we don’t have these things in our diet, if we have a deficiency in fat or protein or vitamins or certain minerals, this will cause illness in the human body. Right?

If you don’t eat enough protein in your diet, this will cause illness. If you don’t get enough vitamins, you know, there’s all kinds of issues with vitamin deficiencies. You know, our iron deficiencies like these things are important and you will get very sick if you don’t have the right amounts of these things in your diet.

But the interesting thing is this is not the case with carbohydrates. There’s no correlation with illness or disease in the absence of carbohydrates, so there’s no such thing as like, carbohydrate deficiency. So like if you don’t if you don’t eat carbohydrates, honestly, you’ll probably be just fine you know?

And so this is like, people don’t like to hear this. They’re like, oh, but what about the food pyramid? What about the my plate that says we should be eating 65% of our, of our calories in the form of carbohydrates? Yeah, they do say that. And I don’t even want to get into why they say that.

But some of it has to do with the people that created the food guide, you know, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, sponsored by big food companies. And that’s a problem. But besides that, you know, it’s just a, it’s a different approach to diet. But if you look at the science, there is no essential carbohydrate, okay, just just let’s just be very clear about that.

So, if you don’t eat enough protein, you’ll die. If you don’t eat enough fat, you’ll die. If you don’t eat enough carbs, you’re going to be just fine. All right. And this is true for people all over the planet. You know, you talk about indigenous cultures, like the Inuit diet, they mostly ate just like fish seal, walrus, mostly fat, very fatty. Diet high in protein, and fat, and pretty much no carbohydrates.

And these people have survived and thrived as a people for millennia on this, almost zero carbohydrate diet, right. But here’s the crazy thing about these cultures around the world like the Inuit, by the 21st century, they have been westernized so they have been exposed to the good ol American western diet. And they’re, you know, purchasing more food from stores.

Now, they’re eating a lot more highly processed foods, refined grains, sugars, vegetable oils, that’s what we mean by the Western diet. And people like the Inuit, they’re starting to experience all the same illnesses, and metabolic issues that we’re experiencing here in the United States, you know, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, cancers, those kinds of things that they really have never seen before.

And so cultures all over the world have had this same experience. So they eat this traditional diet of whole foods, lots of fat and protein, very little, almost no, no refined grains, or sugar and pretty low carbs, you know, there are some cultures out there that eat a higher carbohydrate diet, which is fine.

But some of these cultures, they become westernized and they start eating the traditional, you know, American diet, which is terrible. And then they start experiencing all the same health issues. And it’s not good.

So I just want to make this first, clear up this first myth, which is that you have to eat carbohydrates, or you’ll die, it’s just not true. You can do just fine without them. And this does not mean that we should not eat carbohydrates. I want to make this very clear.

In fact, this brings me to Myth number two, which is a low carb means no carb. So a lot of people think that if you, you know, go to this low carb, high fat diet or a ketogenic diet or something like that, it means you don’t eat any carbs ever. And I want to make this very, very, very clear, low carb does not mean no carbs, right?

People freak out on me to talk about low carb. You can’t take my carbs away from me and listen, I have no, no desire to take your carbs away from you. All right, I’ve never once suggested that we should eat zero carbohydrates, right?

Too many carbohydrates can be problematic for runners. Okay? Runners are notoriously carb addicts. You know, we just we love our carbs. We love our doughnuts and our beer and our pasta and carbo loading and all this other stuff, right?

But eating a diet that’s super high in carbs, like refined grains will cause some problems for runners, especially for endurance athletes. One of the things that it can lead to is nutrient deficiencies. And, you know, carrbridge foods, like refined grains contain phytates and phytates act like it’s like a fiber in your gut. But instead of, you know, binding to things you don’t want they phytates bind to nutrients that your body actually needs, and then they, you know, pull them out of your system.

So, this is something you don’t want, okay? You know, a higher carb diet, especially one that’s high in grains. Because, you know, we all know sugar is bad. I’m kind of shifting a little bit to talk a little bit about grains here, especially because a lot of refined grains is a problem. Like gluten.

Gluten is a big major offender here, gluten has been shown to be mildly to severely inflammatory in most people. So most people have some sort of inflammatory response to gluten. So Gluten is a problem. And when your body is inflamed, it leads to all kinds of other issues.

And gluten has also been shown to compromise our digestive function and our immunity, our immune system, it actually lowers your immune system, we don’t want that. Okay, so it appears that pretty much all of us, to some extent, are sensitive to gluten, some more than others, obviously, you can be mildly sensitive and just have mild inflammation, you can go all the way up to having celiac disease where you have a severe reaction to any kind of gluten at all.

But my take on it is like why don’t we just not have any inflammation at all. So just kind of avoid the the gluten altogether. And then another problem with a higher carbohydrate diet for long distance runners especially is that we become more susceptible to oxidative damage from the stress of training. So when your body is in this state of like chronic and chronically inflamed, and you add additional stressors on your body, like a super long training run, you’re actually way more susceptible to damaging to oxidative damage.

And that means that it does damage to your fatty tissues to your DNA and to proteins in your body. And this oxidative damage leads to a host of other diseases. So enough of this oxidative damage over time can lead to insulin resistance, diabetes, high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, heart disease, neurogenesis, neuro degenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s and even some cancers.

So oxidative damage is a problem. We don’t want that, okay, high carbohydrate diets tend to make us more susceptible to this kinds of oxidative damage. And again, I’m not saying that runners should like stay away from all carbohydrates, we’re not talking about zero carbs, here we’re talking about the problematic carbohydrates, especially refined grains and sugars. And it means that for some of us, a diet high in these, these substances can create a very unhealthy and troublesome environment in our bodies, all right, and it can put us at high risk risk for metabolic diseases.

And it also just thwarts your progress. If you want to get healthy and you want to get fit and you want running to be better, you want to become a faster runner, you build and run on longer distances, you want to improve your performance, this is just going to like tank you, it’s just doing a lot of damage to your body.

You know, if your body is in a state of chronic inflammation, this is going to be very difficult for you to make, make strides in your running, you know, pardon the sort of running pun there. But like you’re not going to be able to hit your PR if your body is in a state of inflammation all the time.

And interestingly, most people when they first stop eating sugar and refined grains, and they get off those problematic carbs within the first week, they say they they lose weight, they usually lose a couple of pounds in that first week. And a lot of that is the inflammation that they’ve been experiencing that they didn’t really know they were experiencing. They say they immediately feel lighter, and less like bloated and puffy, you know, and they feel leaner just from just from making this one change. Okay, so inflammation is a problem.

But what was I talking about? I’m talking about runners, okay? We don’t have to stay away from carbs altogether, we can actually use carbohydrates in a strategic way and make this part of our running performance actually helped to increase our performance.

Okay, so I always talk about eating good, the good types of carbs if you’re going to choose carbs, choose things like dark leafy greens, cruciferous vegetables, some dairy products, like full fat Greek yogurt, I’ve talked about that before, very beneficial for our health. I love my big salad every night I ate this big salad with tons of veggies, dark leafy greens. There are other kinds of carbs you can incorporate to help your running as well like you know, sweet potatoes, wild rice, quinoa, oats, these things all have their place for endurance athletes, okay?

We can utilize carbohydrates strategically, to actually improve our performance. Even in fat adapted runners, it doesn’t mean that you don’t ever use an alternative fuel source, it doesn’t ever, it doesn’t mean you never eat another carbohydrate in your life, okay?

And actually carb loading before a race is still a strategy that you can incorporate even if you’re doing a low carb approach, you can still ramp up your carbohydrates before you’re a race and you want to, you know, PR or something like that. Use some carbs, it’ll help you, um, you just do it with different types of carbs.

So slow burning carbs, don’t go for the pasta, don’t go for the spaghetti dinner, you know, do some of the things I mentioned, you know, the sweet potatoes and the likes. And if you’re interested in learning more about this, go to episode number 56, Good Carbs, Bad Carbs, because I break it all down and talk about all the different carbs that you can include and what you should maybe avoid. So I dive a little deeper into that in that episode.

And here’s the cool thing, once you become fat adapted, your body can actually use utilize carbohydrates differently, then a carb adapted athlete, okay, so because you are a fat adapted athlete, you burn fat very efficiently, your glycogen stores, this is where your muscles store, the carbohydrate energy, right, so carbohydrate gets turned into glucose, which gets stored in your muscles as glycogen.

Because you’re a fat adapted runner, those glycogen stores are pretty low. So when you eat some carbs, most of that energy is readily available in your muscles for energy to be burned for fuel. When you’re a carb adapted athlete, you know, your, your glycogen stores are pretty much full all the time. So when you eat carbohydrates, some of that gets most of that kind of gets stored as fat. And that’s where it becomes a problem. Okay.

So even if you’re a more efficient sugar burner, when you’re an efficient fat burner, right, it’s just, it kind of just kind of works together. And your body can kind of burn both of these things while you’re doing these long distance events. You know, typically your body wants to burn the glycogen first, but you can actually burn glycogen and fat somewhat simultaneously. It just depends on the person and how fat adapted you are and things like that.

But so for, you know, most of us, if you’re doing fat adaptation, you’re doing a low carb, your glycogen stores are pretty low. When you do take in carbohydrates, you’ll be able to utilize those to enhance your running performance. Without you know, the negative side effects that most carb adapted runners run into, which is, you know, they get into like, GI distress.

And you know, eating a lot of carbs, they end up gaining weight, they have excessive hunger, they have inflammation and things like that. So we can actually use some carbs strategically to enhance performance. Okay, so that was, you know, the myth of low carb means no carb, we’re not talking about no carbs, we’re talking about a lower carb approach, okay?

Another myth is that like, long distance runners, you just have to eat carbs, like you just have to eat them, or else you can’t run, you know, and I hope this is pretty obvious to you by now. That this is like totally bogus, right? Like, you don’t have to have carbs to run, you really don’t.

You know, people will say like, well, you know, this is what they’ve been teaching us since the 80s. And I’m like, well, they’ve also, you know, gave us this food pyramid, and we’re much fatter and much more unhealthy now than we used to be. So maybe that’s not the right approach. Maybe there’s another way to do it.

Again, it’s not for everybody, but maybe, maybe this works for you. So the way our fueling works usually is that our primary source of energy is glucose, like we want to use the glucose, you know, for energy. And so most runners think well, you have to have this glucose where you can’t run.

And then, you know, glucose gets put into our muscles and stored as glycogen. So once that happens, you know, any extra glucose that comes in, in the way of carbohydrates gets stored as fat and so this is why a lot of runners who eat a lot of carbs, just keep gaining weight, you know, because they’re just, they’re eating too much. They got too much glucose coming in.

Most runners carry around too much body fat in general. Okay, so glucose is a great source of energy. It really is, but we can only carry around about 1000 calories of glucose at a time, we only store about 2000 calories of glucose as energy. And we have to keep consuming it, especially during endurance activities or we will hit the wall, we will bonk.

So we want to tap into a better fuel source and we all have one, it’s a better alternative fuel source, it’s fat, right. But it’s really hard to get to, if you’re if you’re eating a lot of carbohydrates. So long distance runners don’t have the carbs, they can run on fat very, very efficiently. You just have to like get rid of the glycogen stores and keep your body in a low carbohydrate state to force your body to tap into that stored body fat to use for energy, right.

And here’s the cool thing. You know, if you can only carry around 2000 calories of glucose at a time. On average, even the leanest runner will be carrying around more than 20,000 calories of fat as fuel at any given time. So you don’t need to restock the shelves during a long distance event, you just keep running. Right?

So you know, and 20,000 is a very conservative estimate. And that’s for lean runners, if you’re maybe carrying around a little extra body fat, then you have probably closer to 50,000 calories of fat as fuel available to you.

And remember, carbs provide us with about four calories of energy per gram. Fat provides us with over nine calories of energy per gram. So it’s a more energy efficient source of fuel to like more than twice the energy, and you can carry around more than 10 times as much. To me, this is a no brainer, okay.

I’ve been experimenting with fat adaptation for a year now. And I’ve done it before in the past, but this past year has been very intentional and very, very different for me. And so I’ve been doing all my runs, fasted all my runs in this state where I’m just using my own body fat for fuel.

And I do that to show you what’s possible. So you know, not everybody has to do all their runs, fasted or do them without bringing any fuel with them, I do it because it feels great. It’s really easy to do, I can run all day on bonk proof, I feel bonk proof, I just never worry about hitting the wall, I run a marathon and a 50k on zero calories, just to show that I can do it just to prove to myself that this works, right?

I have become virtually bulletproof. Right. So runners do not have to eat carbs to run long distances, you just don’t have to do that. And there’s all kinds of benefits to becoming a fat adapted runner. In fact, I just did a podcast another one, I recommend you listen to number 54 called The Benefits Of Becoming A Fat Adapted Runner. And this will give you a solid understanding of all the positive benefits that this lower carb approach being fat adapted can have on your running performance.

And, and this is not just me, and I know I’m just an experiment of one here. I’m just one average guy that has had great success with fat adaptation. But a lot of my clients have really great success with fat adaptation too. But there’s also elite athletes that are finding great success with a low carb approach.

And that leads me to my next myth or misconception, which is that you can’t run fast without carbs. Like you have to have carbs if you want to run fast and you know, most people think, Okay, this is gray, Patrick, like running slow, long distances is great. We understand that, like you’re in that fat burning zone, you know, just keep your heart rate low. And you can run all day like that. Right?

But what about running fast? You have to have carbs for that, right? Yes and no. And I’m gonna break this down for you here. So yeah, the fat adapted athlete can basically run all day, right? As long as you’re, you know, staying below the point where your body isn’t producing lactate, you know, faster than you can flush it out, right.

So lactic acid buildup will lead you to bonking right? There’s two kinds of bonking really that most people experience – lactic acid build up. I mean, you’re just going out too hard. And, well, another kind of bonk, there’s actually three. There’s a glycogen depletion bonking, which is like your body’s just out of fuel, right? And then the third is like a mental bonking.

All right, so just keep that in mind that we can eliminate a couple of these at least, with changing our diet, but lactic acid buildup is a problem. And this occurs when your body can’t metabolize the lactate being produced during the higher intensity events, you know, during high intensity exercise is why you can only sprint for short bursts. You know, Usain Bolt is not going to go run the half marathon at that pace, right?

He can’t do that, like you cannot run, you can’t sprint for long periods, periods because that lactic acid would build up and then you would just totally crash, right? But you can run slow all day long.

And the fat adapted athlete, here’s one of the benefits of becoming fat adapted is that you produce less lactate, and therefore you actually have a higher lactate threshold, meaning you can actually increase your exercise intensity so you can run faster, while still being able to metabolize the lactate, because you’re not producing as much as the carb adapted athlete. Alright.

And if you want to learn more about this check out there’s a great book. It’s called The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Oerformance. It’s by two doctors Jeff Bullock and Stephen Finney. And these guys literally wrote the book on low carbohydrate performance. And it’s, it’s awesome.

So I don’t want to get too nerdy with some of the science stuff here. But just know that you can actually run fast and be fat adapted and run for not only longer distances, but also faster. Another example of this is Zach Bitter, who is the current world record holder in the 100 miler and the 12 hour events, right. So he did, this guy’s a beast, he broke the world record in the 100 miler with a time of 11 hours and 90 minutes. That is a 6 minute 48 Second pace for 100 miles. This is insane.

And then his 12 hour world record, he ran 104.8 miles in 12 hours. So Zach, I talk about him because he’s kind of the poster child of the low carb approach for high performing athletes. He’s a leader. He’s like one of the best in the world, right? He trains very low carb. And he’s an extremely efficient fat burner, this guy can just burn fat like crazy.

So here’s where I kind of talk about this myth of like, you can’t run fast without carbs, being sort of true and false. So for Zach, he’s going to use carbohydrates strategically during a race to give him that edge that he needs the extra gear that he needs to be able to compete or to win an event like this. Okay? So Zach does something like, like when he did his world record 100 miler, he did something around 40 grams of carbs per hour for that event. So he added carbohydrates to give him an extra little edge.

Why not use them, right? 40 grams an hour is not much. If you compare that to what most average, like marathoners, like weekend warriors like us do. Most people do somewhere around 60 to 90 grams of carbs per hour for like a marathon where they’re gonna run like a four hour marathon.

So he’s not doing a ton, but it’s enough to give him the competitive edge that he needs is enough to push him to a world record time as an elite athlete, he’s using carbs very strategically, he trains very low, but then races higher, so he uses carbs to improve his performance at times. We can do this too, we can use carbs to help us run faster.

You don’t have to, like, I’m sure that there are. This is different for everybody. So what I’m about to say just like, please understand this is different for everybody. But most people probably wouldn’t need carbs hardly at all for a 5k or 10k, maybe even a half marathon like depending on your intensity.

Like you can probably go out there and smash a half marathon time, you know, an hour and 45 minutes or something like that. Really not need much if any carbs at all, because you’re not going to like deplete the stores that you have and you’ll probably be okay.

But you know that that’s an individual kind of thing, but you can certainly use them right? If you’re staying in that kind of fat burning zone like below your anaerobic threshold you can run pretty far. Like you can run faster for long periods of time. But as soon as you kick into that anaerobic zone, you’re going to like need to keep your muscle glycogen stores topped off.

So you have to experiment with this. This is not the same for everybody. But you might be surprised how hard you can go, like how fast you can run without needing carbs. I’ve had some interesting experiences this past year, running faster without carbs.

So this time last year, I was probably, you know, averaging. If I went out and ran like 10 miles, I’d probably average around a 10-10:30 pace. And today, if I were to go out and do that same 10 mile run, at what, to me is like the same perceived effort that I was doing a year ago, it’s probably more like a 9:30, or a 9:15 pace.

So I’ve improved my times by, you know, roughly a minute, per mile faster. And I say this, because I’ve, you know, switched from being a carb adapted athlete to a fat adapted athlete. And I don’t use carbs on these runs, especially when I’m out there doing the longer runs, I just don’t use anything at all, no calories at all.

And I know this is just my experience is one person. It’s kind of anecdotal. But you need to try this for yourself and see how it goes for you. I’ve been doing a couple of time trials with my running group lately, and my 5k time which I haven’t run like a race, I haven’t raced a 5k in a long time, several years. But my time was like, under 24 minutes, I averaged a 7:43 pace for 5k.

And I did it without any kind of carbs or anything like that. And so when on the shorter distances, it’s like, you don’t really need the extra carbs, because you’re not going to burn through your your energy stores. But to me, though, I was pretty proud of that pace, like that was pretty, pretty hard. I went out hard, and I felt really good.

So you can definitely, definitely run faster, and improve your running performance without having to be a high carb runner, you can do it using some carbs strategically, if you want to. Why not use them, right? I mean, when you’re an efficient fat burner, using carbs, we’ll send that glucose straight to your muscles to be used for energy. So why not do it if you want to enhance your speed and performance, you have that tool available to you. Okay. So that was the myth of like that you can’t run fast on carbs.

And then the last one I’ll talk about today is that, you know, this whole low carb thing is just not sustainable. I hear people tell me this all the time. And I do get it, I really do. And honestly, I used to believe it too. You know, there was a couple of years ago where I went out to become fat-adapted, and I did it. And I loved it. And running was great. And I was able to run all day, I remember doing a couple of 50K’s that summer, and I just felt so good. I was like, this is like the easiest this has ever felt.

But for whatever reason, I got it into my head, that this is just not sustainable. Like I can’t keep this up. And people were telling me, this was stupid, this is not a viable approach. You can’t do this long term, this is bad for your health, you’re gonna die. And I let all these people get in my head honestly.

And I started to believe in myself, you know, I let their misconceptions dictate how I felt about myself. And I started to doubt myself. And I started to doubt if this was the right choice for me. And full disclosure, I was not eating a really awesome diet at the time, I was eating a lot of processed foods.

So on one hand, you know, we just have to understand that you know, what I was the way I was doing, it was not, I wasn’t doing it the right way. Not the way I’m doing I know a lot more now. So I got into my head that this was not something I could keep doing. And eventually I caved, and I just went back to eating the high carbohydrate diet that I was eating before that.

And honestly, that’s when things started to kind of go south for me, I put on somewhere close to 20 pounds a year for the next two years. I gained over 40 pounds. Because I went back to my high carb diet. I kept running, I was still running, I was still working out all the time. I was doing all kinds of exercise.

I was even like counting my calories and like you know, making sure I was getting my steps in and you know doing all this stuff and I just wasn’t I wasn’t losing weight. I was gaining weight consistently. So the funny thing is, that was not sustainable for me. The whole going back to the high carb diet was the thing that was actually not sustainable.

Because if I kept going in that direction I’d be, you know, who knows, another 20 pounds heavier. So for the past year, I’ve been fat adapted eating, low carb, preaching about it, and coaching people on it. And I’ve had great success. I love it. It’s easy. It’s effortless, I enjoy everything about it. I love the food. I love the way I feel. I love how it affects my running in a positive way.

You know, I’m sleeping better. I have more energy. I’m thinking more clearly. And I’ve been sharing my journey with you here on the podcast in the Facebook group for the past year. And I will continue to do that. I will continue to share my journey. I absolutely believe that this is very sustainable. And as I learn new things, and new science comes out, I’ve tried to pass them along to you.

And just as a side note, Zack Bitter, you know, he’s been following this very large, low carb approach to endurance running for over 10 years now. And he continues to break records. And he’ll tell you like this is like, totally sustainable. But here’s the thing: the best diet is the one that works for you and is sustainable for you. You may not enjoy eating low carb like I do. Fair enough, do you.

But here’s my message for you today. There are a lot of misconceptions out there. And I want you to know that low carb is healthy. It’s great for weight loss. It’s great for maintaining your weight. It’s great for long distance running. It’s great for fast running. It’s easy, it’s fun, it’s sustainable.

And there’s a couple of resources. I mentioned one already The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance. Definitely check out that book. It’s great. Another great book is Primal Endurance by Mark Sisson. Two great resources that you guys can check out.

Okay, that’s all we got for today. I hope you all have an amazing, amazing day. And if you liked this episode, and you got something out of it, please share it with a friend. You guys got this. Lots of love. Keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.

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