71. Zero-Carb Marathon Training

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Well, hey there, and welcome to episode 71 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today I’m talking about zero carb marathon training. What the heck is this all about? Well, recently, I decided to try a little experiment, a little nutrition experiment on myself.

I trained for a marathon or at least, you know, did the good portion of my training while following basically a zero carb diet. And then I ran that marathon without carb loading without the use of any fuel at all. And why would I do this? Why would anybody do this? How did the training go? How was the race? Did I crash and burn? Is this something you should consider trying for yourself?

Well, in this episode of the Running Lean podcast, I answer all of those questions. I’m going to share my results of this experiment. And I’ll talk about what it was like to train for a marathon and then run that marathon without the use of carbohydrates as fuel. So that is all coming up shortly.

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And then here listen, I know I talk a lot about diet, nutrition, weight loss, and all of these things, you know, running without carbs becoming fat adapted and all this stuff. And it can probably seem a little overwhelming. And I get it I totally understand. And I got you covered too. You know, as a coach, this is what I do every day is I help people make sense of all this to help you apply these principles to your own weight loss or running journey.

Whatever your goals are. Listen, we’re all different. We all have different body types, metabolisms, different goals, different likes and dislikes. There’s not one approach that works for everyone. And what I’m talking about today, this whole zero carb training thing, this is not for everyone, okay. It’s just something I was playing around with.

I’m going to share that whole experience with you. I think you might find it kind of interesting. But if there was one thing that works perfectly for everyone, we wouldn’t be having these conversations, you know, there would just be one thing that we all did, but it doesn’t work that way.

So with coaching, what I do is I work with you to come up with a plan that works for you based on your metabolic profile based on your health and fitness goals based on your likes and dislikes. And then we put together something that is tailored to help you reach your goals. Okay.

And this isn’t just about losing weight. It’s not just about diet. This is about becoming the healthiest human being that you can possibly be physically, mentally, and emotionally. You know, I work with runners who are tired of gaining and losing the same 20 pounds over and over again.

I work with runners who are maybe already pretty fit but need help dropping those last 10 or 15 pounds, so they can run lighter and faster, maybe they want to qualify for Boston. I have worked with people who aren’t really runners, they want to lose, you know, 50 or 100 pounds, and they can’t run, but they want to be a runner.

They desire to turn their life around and become a healthy person who could be a runner, they want to become a runner, they wanted to their whole life to be a runner. But they need to lose this weight in order to get there.

So whatever your health and fitness goals, I’m here for you, I’m here to be your guide to show you the way to help you to become the most badass version of yourself. To learn more and apply for coaching, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply. And I’ll see you over there.

Alright, let’s talk about this zero carb marathon training. What did I do? And why did I do this? So first of all, what I did was, I adopted basically a zero carb diet. And some people would call this like the carnivore diet.

Okay, so I was not eating plants, I was eating, basically just animal based foods. So meat, eggs, cheese, you know, some dairy, but really no plants at all. Okay, so it wasn’t really like zero carbs, like, you really can’t do that. I mean, eggs have a couple of grams of carbs in there, I guess you could eat just like steaks or something like that. But I didn’t really want to do that.

So this is basically a very, very, very low, almost zero carb diet. And my goal was to do this for 30 days or so. And I decided to do this during the last part of my marathon training. So before I you know, I had all these long runs scheduled, and I wanted to see how it would affect my training. Okay.

So why would somebody do this? Why did I choose to do this? Well, I study nutrition all the time, and I’ve heard lots and lots of studies that show how eating plants can be somewhat toxic for human beings, like, plants have these built in defense mechanisms. Okay, so plants can’t really run away. So in order for them to defend themselves against predators, meaning animals that would eat them, they make it hard for animals to digest them.

So a lot of plants are not edible, right? And a lot of plants are very hard to digest for a lot of animals. The fiber content in a lot of plants gets passed through the human digestive system, right.

So we talked about, Oh, you want, you want to get your fiber, eat a bunch of plants, right, and you’ll get all this fiber. So there are some animals that have adapted to eating a lot of plants. You know, there’s, there’s animals like, you know, elephants and gorillas who are very well adapted to eating nothing, but plants eat a lot of grasses and things like that.

We cannot eat that kind of stuff. So it’s very, very difficult for humans to digest that stuff, our stomachs just don’t work that way. Some of these animals have developed ways of making plant materials more easily digestible.

For example, birds have this thing called a crop where they eat like seeds, and they sort of store them seeds and grains and things like that. And they store them in this little pouch in their like throat sort of. And in this little pouch, these grains or seeds will sort of ferment and sort of sprout a little bit and they become more easily digestible for some of these birds that have this crop.

Okay, so the nutrients from the plants are less toxic, and then more bioavailable. Some of the toxic traits of plants would be things like lectin, gluten from wheat, though, these are the kinds of things oxalates are the kinds of things that make it kind of difficult for humans to digest some plants, okay.

Also, nutrient absorption from plants is much lower than nutrient absorption from animal based foods. Alright, so you know, when you’re eating something that’s high in fiber, you’re not going to extract all the nutrients from that high fiber food because a lot of that is actually just going to get passed through you and digested.

Okay, with animal sources of food, like meat and eggs and some dairy, our bodies are really able to pull all the nutrients out of that very easily because there’s nothing blocking that process from happening, right? There are in plants, but not in animal based foods, okay?

Also, plant proteins are basically inferior to animal based proteins. Plant proteins are great for growing plants. You know, if you want to build plants, plant proteins are perfect for that. Animal proteins are designed for growing animals. And I’m not trying to say like, plant proteins are bad, I’m just saying that they are not complete proteins, they don’t have all the amino acids that you need.

And you have to combine them with other types of proteins in order to make it actually work. And there’s people that do this, and they have great results with that, whatever. But then animal based proteins are complete proteins. And they’re kind of the proteins that humans have been eating for millions of years.

And we’ve, you know, evolved from eating these things. And we’re very, very good at using animal proteins to, to build strong muscles and connective tissues and things like that. So they’re great for building humans. So I’ve been reading all these books, listening to all these experts sharing all these amazing results from, you know, going in more of like a carnivorous direction, like eating more of a carnivorous diet.

Okay, sticking with mainly just animal foods. And I thought, Okay, I just want to see what this is all about. I just want to see if this will make any significant changes in how I feel in my running performance. Like, is this all it’s cracked up to be? Is this a better way to go? Can you even run, you know, 20 miles or run a marathon without eating any carbs at all?

So these are some of the reasons why I did this. And these are some of the questions that I wanted to answer and just kind of find out for myself. So what did I eat? Mostly just, you know, meat, eggs, cheese and dairy. So I just skipped veggies, basically. Okay, so no big salad. I know, I love my big salad. And I just stopped eating that.

And stuck to a very high protein and diet of just, you know, a few basic food groups. Now the types of meats I would eat while I was eating were ground beef and steak, and pork. And, you know, fish, salmon, chicken. So I was eating a really wide variety of meats, eggs, a bunch of different ways, some cheese here and there, but not a ton.

And then some dairy, little full fat, Greek yogurt, maybe some sour cream, but not a ton of dairy either. Okay, so mostly the focus was on meat and eggs, you know, and like fish for the most part. So one disclaimer, I need to say this here, it’s almost impossible to eat zero carbs.

Like there are carbs in eggs, there are carbs in cheese and dairy and things like that. So it really wasn’t zero carbs, it was basically zero carbs. Okay, so for all intents and purposes, it was around, you know, my daily net carbs on eating a low carb diet, the way I have been eating for the past, you know, year, year and a half or whatever. Typically, my net carbs are somewhere around 30-40 grams a day, maybe less some days.

And my daily net carbs on carnivore were like seven or nine grams total, you know, and this is just from a couple of eggs, and a couple of grams of carbs that you get from eating eggs and some dairy. So but this is about as low as I could get them. Um, like I said before, like you could eat nothing but meat. But that just didn’t really appeal to me. So you know, these fine, tiny few little carbs were okay, no big deal. Okay. So that’s what I was eating.

And so how did my training go? Well, I gotta tell you, I felt pretty darn good. I just kind of stick stuck to my same running schedule. My same workouts, you know, I was running three times a week. You know, I started you know, I got into the longer 16,18, 20, 22 mile runs, and really was running fine.

Like I never ran out of gas. I had plenty of energy. I was doing my weightlifting twice a week. And I didn’t really notice any changes really. Okay, so I went from, you know, maybe 20 to 50 grams of carbs a day to like, you know, seven to nine, and really didn’t make much of a difference at all.

I’m already a very efficient fat burner, so I’m using fat as energy pretty much all the time. So as an efficient fat burner as a well established fat adapted runner, this was not a big transition for me, like it wasn’t that big of a deal. Now, I have to say this because I did not train to run a fast marathon. Alright. And you’ll know why I say that.

When I talk about the actual race, I was not training to run a hard, fast marathon. For the last several years, I’ve sort of backed off of like running hard and fast, I’ve just been like, headed, I’ve had this mindset, that I’m just gonna run slow. Like, I’m a slow runner.

The last time I ran a hard marathon was I think it was like 2016, or 2017, we’re talking like four or five years ago. And I had a terrible couple of outings. I remember having a terrible spring marathon and then a terrible 50k that I did about a month later. And I was just like, screw all this. I hate marathons, this is too hard. I don’t want to, I don’t need to run fast anymore.

In fact, I’m not going to do marathons or races, I’m just going to stick to like half marathons. And I sort of quit on myself. Right. And so for the last five years, I’ve been sort of like, you know, I backed off of running hard and running fast, and trying to hit some kind of time goal is just like, I’m just going to run and just, you know, get it done and enjoy myself and a strong that kind of that kind of goal for my races.

And that’s been my MO, right, even through last year, you know, I ran a marathon and 50k last year, but I didn’t like push the pace, it was just kind of like a, you know, casual, I guess, you know, kind of effort, right? Easy effort. So this is the way I was training. I was training to do an easy effort marathon.

Alright, so little foreshadowing, you’ll know why I’m talking about this in a minute. Okay, now I want to talk about fiber a little bit, okay. And I’m actually going to talk about poop for just a second. So if you’re eating right now, you may want to like take a break or something like that.

But here’s the thing. I’ve heard a lot of people talking about how if you stop eating fiber, this is going to be a big problem for you, you’re just going to become constipated, you’re never going to poop again. You have to eat fiber, or this is going to be a problem. So I was like, fully expecting to like not poop for a week or something, right? And this is gonna be a big problem for me.

Okay, so I stopped eating plants, I stopped eating fiber. So I’m eating a zero fiber diet at this point, right. And up to this point, I’ve been super regular. I’m once a day pooper, I’m very consistent. It’s all good. No, no issues there. And then I have to say that I really enjoyed pooping on the carnivore diet, like it was fine.

I did not have any issues at all, no constipation, I was still completely regular, you know, once a day at the same like always, but the poops were maybe a little smaller, and a little more dense. Okay. And this is actually a good thing.

Because here’s what’s happening, the animal based foods that I was eating are much more nutrient dense. And since there’s no fiber to like, bulk up the stool, you are actually absorbing more of the nutrients from the foods you’re eating. So it means that your poops are generally a little smaller and a little denser.

So for me, my experience and a lot of people have this very same experience. No fiber is no problem. Okay. There’s a lot of misconceptions about fiber out there. Now, obviously, everybody has to like, experiment with this. But fiber I believe is kind of overrated. So people say like, Oh, if you’re constipated, you need more fiber, eat more fiber, eat more fiber.

Well, think about it like this. If you’re sitting in a traffic jam, the last thing you want to do is add more cars to that traffic jam. And that’s what it’s like if you’re constipated. To add more fiber, you’re adding more of the thing that’s kind of blocking you up in the first place. Okay.

So without having all this fiber to kind of block things up, things tend to just move very, very easily through the system. This is my experience, a lot of people have the same experience. Okay. So this part of the experiment, I will say, was a huge success and I enjoyed that. I enjoyed my poops on the carnivore diet. Okay, so I’m done talking about poop, I just want you guys to all know that it was not an issue.

Okay, so what about vitamins and minerals? What about all those vitamins that you get from eating, you know, vegetables, and don’t you need all the micronutrients? And, again, the animal, the animal based sources of, of macronutrients, so fat and protein contain all of the nutrients that we need to be healthy and to grow a healthy human being okay.

So all the fat protein we need is contained in animal based foods. Also, so are the vitamins and minerals, and they are much more bioavailable to the human body, there’s nothing blocking their absorption like there is in plants, okay, so you get more nutrients out of the foods you eat, when you’re eating animal based foods you just do.

Your body is able to absorb more of the nutrients out of the food. So let’s say you know you’re eating some liver. Now, I don’t really eat organ meats, I just don’t like them. You know, but the liver is just such a great source of all kinds of vitamins like vitamin C, and iron, right.

And if you eat a bunch of spinach, you know, the iron content or the vitamin C content of that spinach, you know, you’re going to get some of those nutrients from that some of those vitamins and minerals, but not as much as you would from eating liver because, again, the plants are going to pass through you a lot of that and digested, right.

So just know that you can get everything you need from eating animal based foods only. Okay, so that wasn’t really a concern at all. I wasn’t really worried about that at all. And I felt great. This whole time, I didn’t have any lack of energy, I didn’t have any nutrient deficiencies that I can really tell. So that was all good. All right.

So race week, here’s why I decided to do the week of the race. So about a week out. A week before the marathon, I made a decision that I was going to shoot for a time goal. Now this is what I was talking about earlier, when I was like I really wasn’t training to run a hard or fast marathon. But then I decided about a week out, I’m gonna like push the pace. I’m gonna run this thing hard. I’m gonna give it everything I got.

And so this was a little bit of a concern of mine, because I hadn’t trained to run a hard and fast marathon. Yet at the last minute, I’m like, Hey, I think I’m gonna run a hard and fast marathon. This is not recommended, by the way. I don’t think this is the way we should do things. Okay? So diet, nutrition, definitely a big part of the equation.

If you want to run a successful marathon, you have got to dial in your diet, nutrition, it’s so important. You’ve got to, you know, train, eat the right kinds of foods and train, you know, fueling yourself properly. Okay, whether that’s eating fat, you know, a lot of fat and protein and being fat adapted or eating a lot of carbs, whatever you want to do.

And listen, there’s no right or wrong answer here. That’s all good. You can do whatever you want. I’m just giving you a different way of doing things here. So diet, nutrition, are definitely a big part of the equation, but also specificity of training. This is a critical component of any type of physical endurance activity, like you have to train for the type of ratio you’re gonna run.

So if you want to run a fast 5k, you have to train, you have to run fast for that distance. You know, you got to train doing that. If you want to run a fast marathon. You got to do some fast long runs. Like those there’s just no way around it right? I didn’t do that. Alright.

I’d been doing my long runs like around a 9:30-ish pace or something like that, you know, which is okay. And that was so easy anyway, so that was kind of the goal that I was shooting for was alright, maybe I can just maintain like a 9:30-ish pace for this marathon, not something I had really been planning on.

So I just wanted to see what I could do. So here was the goal, the goal was to run a 4:10 to 4:15 marathon somewhere in that range. So, you know, that was the goal that I decided on at the last minute. And that was what I was going to shoot for, and just see what could I do? What could I do zero carbs, what could I do?

So now normally, when I even running, like in training, low carb, like I, like I have been for the past, you know, year and a half or so, I will add in some strategic carbs, you know, the day or two leading up to a race, you know, sweet potatoes, rice, you know, quinoa, oats, things like that, just to like, build up a little bit of glycogen stores.

And so you got a little extra fuel in the tank for a marathon or whatever. But this time, I decided not to do that at all. So no carb loading, not even one piece of rice, not even a sweet potato, nothing. So I just was eating the same animal based foods, you know, think the night before I had, you know, a steak or some chicken or something like that. And that was that no veggies, so no carb loading.

And and this was a big part of my experiment, which is, can I run a hard and fast marathon using just my own body fat as fuel basically having no glycogen stored up extra glycogen stored up in the muscles, just whatever my body naturally produces in our bodies produce, our liver actually produces glycogen, you know, glucose and it gets stored in our muscles. So we have all the sort of sugar fuel that we need and it just naturally gets produced.

So I wasn’t too worried about that part. But I’m so well fat adapted that I wasn’t really too concerned about that. But can I, you know, train for this marathon and then run a hard and fast marathon using just my own body fat as fuel? Would this be a success or would I totally crash and burn?

So the goal of 4:10 to 4:15, that was my time goal. And I really wanted to finish feeling strong. I didn’t want to be like dying at the end of this thing. So to me, that was also a big part of this. I wanted to finish feeling strong, feeling good. Okay, race day comes right Saturday, last Saturday, the morning of I do coffee as usual.

And then I considered taking, I have these newer energy gels which are very clean, slow burning fuel. They’re made for people that do low carb, they’re not super sugary. They use blackstrap molasses and sweet potatoes in the energy packets. And there’s just like four ingredients and they’re awesome.

So I consider taking one with me and like sticking in my pocket just in case I needed it. And then as I was getting ready and drinking my coffee in the morning, I’m like, you know what, I’m not even going to bring this with me. I’m going to leave it at home. So I’m just going to do this thing like naked I’m not even going to bring, you know, something you know as a backup just in case things go south.

No, I was confident. I was super confident right? So I do all my long runs fasted. I don’t eat beforehand. I don’t eat during, so I don’t take in any calories. I just drink water and electrolytes and I use that element recharged by elemental labs. It’s just a powdered drink that you can add to water and you can find it at drinkLMNt.com because people ask me all the time what do you use for electrolytes so that’s the stuff I recommend to people.

So I just brought that with me and I used that only, right, water and electrolytes. Okay, so the first half of the race, the first 13 miles I ran comfortably hard like I had that 9:39-40 ish pace, something like that. And maybe a little slower than that. And I was running comfortably hard now.

The reason I say maybe a little slower than that is because my watch died. around mile five. I have an Apple Watch. I use this for all my long runs. It’s works great. For the most part. I’ve had the battery die like during my 50k but I thought this is only going to be about four hours. It should be fine.

No, it wasn’t fine. My watch just stopped working. No more GPS, I had no idea how far I was going. I didn’t know what my pace was, I had a vague idea of what my time was. But that was just vague. So I was just kind of running blind. So I don’t even know, like, what my pace was, I can’t tell you what my splits were or anything like that.

So I’m a little bummed out about that, because I really wanted the data for this race. So I had to do this all by feel I was running on feel I was running on how did this feel to me, you know, we’ve got that rate of perceived exertion scale that RPE of like, zero to 10, like, you know, running like a three, four, it’s pretty easy pace, and then running like a five, six is harder, you know, that kind of thing.

So that’s what I was kind of using in my brain just to like, am I running fast? Felt like it. Yeah. Okay, so first half, comfortably hard. So I was, you know, trying to aim for that, you know, 9:30 ish pace or whatever, I have no idea where I was, it’s probably slower than that. And then I felt great at the halfway point. So I was like, Okay, I’m gonna pick this up a little bit, I’m gonna make the second half, uncomfortably hard.

So I’m going to run the next two hours, uncomfortably hard. And that’s what I did. I set out to with a faster pace, I picked it up. And that rate of perceived exertion, I kicked it up a notch or two. And I was just like, let’s see how long I can keep this up. And I gotta tell you, I felt pretty good. I never felt out of gas, I always have plenty of energy in the tank, like, but those last few miles were tough.

Those last few miles, my legs, were feeling pretty beat up, I was getting pretty sore and tired. And this is where the specificity of training would have helped me a lot. Because I didn’t really plan and train to run a fast, hard marathon. I planned and trained to run a nice, easy, casual marathon. But I pushed through the pain, I pushed through that feeling of like, I’m getting a little tired here.

And I just kept going and I finished feeling super strong and finished feeling amazing. And really the last half mile, I just was like not sprinting, but I was running pretty hard. And it felt so good. I literally had no idea what my time was, so I crossed the finish line. And this was a timed race, you know, we had a timing system and everything like that. So trip times.

So I didn’t know what my time was. And, you know, we could log into a website and you know, after about a minute or two, and then we could see where time was at. 4:16 was my time. This is almost exactly what I wanted to do. I felt so damn proud of myself because I was so close to my projected finish time without even having a clue what my time was while I was running.

So the fact that my watch wasn’t working, and that I hadn’t trained really, for this kind of thing is a testament to me being pretty fit, pretty efficient runner these days, and running only on fat as fuel like not having any carbs for my training, not having any carbs the day before. I did not crash and burn, I finished feeling strong. And I was so close to my time. I was so ecstatic with that performance really.

This is like the first time in five years or so that I set out to run a hard marathon and it was a big success. I felt super, super good about this. And, you know, I gotta tell you that there’s a lot of there’s a lot of talk about, you know, running and having to, you know, fuel up on all the carbs and carbo load to run things like that. And it’s just I think it’s a little overrated, honestly.

So here are some of the lessons that I learned from this experience. Okay, so number one is just that, like carbs, I think are a little bit overrated. I don’t think we need them. I don’t think they’re essential. Actually, they are not essential. And this is not just me, you know, my opinion that essential macronutrients are fat and protein.

If we don’t eat fat and protein, we will die as human beings. We have to eat those two things. But there’s no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. There’s nothing from carbohydrates that we have to eat, or we will die like we can go fine. We’ll be fine without eating carbohydrates. Okay.

Do I think you should eat zero carbohydrates? No, I don’t. And honestly, I don’t know that I have any big, amazing changes by trying this experiment. I just wanted to see, is this even possible, okay?

So my biggest lesson learned is just like, the carbs are a little overrated if you’re a fat adapted runner, which I am, and you can get there too, and you don’t have to do zero carbs to get there, by the way, but if you’re a fat adapted runner, you could run just fine, you can do all kinds of amazing things, and even run a hard and fast marathon without them. Okay?

Another lesson learned specificity of training is very important. Okay. I’m going to do this again. Well, I’m going to train for another marathon in the fall, I’ve got another marathon coming up in the fall.

And I’m going to take a different approach to that one, I’m not going to do this carnivore thing like I did for this marathon. I’ll talk more about that later another day. But I’ll definitely be changing my training plan, I’m definitely going to train differently for that one, because I do want to hit a time goal for that one.

So my big lesson learned around this is like, set your goal early, and then base all your training around that goal. So if you want to run a four hour marathon, train from day one, to run a four hour marathon, that means you’re gonna have to do the speed work, that means you’re gonna have to do the long runs those tempo runs, you’re gonna have to do the, the those goal paced runs, you know, which I didn’t do.

Okay, another lesson learned is that there’s a lot of truth to the carnivore diet, being healthy and being effective. And being just fine. Like, you can do just fine eating a carnivore diet. Like, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it necessarily. Okay. I think it’s a diet that humans have been eating for literally millions of years, and I think we’ve evolved eating a lot of animals and animal based product foods.

So I don’t think it’s bad, okay. And you can even train for a marathon and run a successful marathon without eating clients and carbs and things like that. Okay. Now, here’s one big lesson, I’ll just tell you, like, I didn’t see amazing results, I didn’t really see big changes to my energy levels, or how I felt or, you know, sleeping better or overall feeling better, I would say that I felt about the same as eating a relatively low carbohydrate diet.

So for me, there wasn’t that big of a change, honestly. And my original plan was to just do this for about 30 days, and then get through that marathon. But I felt good so I kept it going for I did something like 40 days of this, and it felt great, you know, but nothing, not a big difference from where I was before that, okay.

So since then, since the marathon, I’ve gone back to eating some carbs and eating my big salad every night. You know why? Because I love it. I love it. So I’m back to doing probably, I don’t know, 30 to 40 grams of carbs a day in the form of some veggies, avocados and things like that, I miss my avocados.

And I’ll report back to you in a few weeks and see if there’s anything big that I noticed that changes, but so far, after almost a week, like nothing is really different, no significant changes, everything is still functioning beautifully. Okay. So is this something I would recommend? Like should you do this? Honestly, I don’t recommend one way of eating or one diet over another.

Other than I suggest that most of us who are overweight, can probably benefit from eating a lower carbohydrate diet. So most people are somewhat carbohydrate intolerant, meaning that they, most people can’t handle carbs very well. And when they eat a lot of carbs, they tend to gain a lot of weight.

And I think most people can dramatically improve their health by ditching the problematic carbohydrates, okay, but other than that, like I don’t recommend anybody do plant based or vegetarian or carnivore, or whatever it is, you know, pescatarian I’m not going to tell you what to do. You’ve got to try stuff and see what works for you. I’m doing this because I’m just curious. I’m a curious person. I’m always learning and always curious and open to different things.

You know, if I was working with someone who was a one on one client, and they were having trouble losing weight, and you know, maybe they the weight was just not moving at all, or they were dealing with chronic constipation or something like that. I might suggest trying a carnivore approach for a few weeks to see if things change.

You know, like, I’m suggesting that for somebody that I was working with, and we would have to talk about exactly how you would do that, and what that would look like, and, you know, but here’s the thing, we are all an experiment of one, what works for this person over here may not work for you what works for me, may not work for for someone over there.

I didn’t see dramatic improvements in my health and well being on a carnivore diet. Right? It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t much different from what I was doing before. If you prefer to get fuel from plants, if you prefer a high carbohydrate diet, and this works really well, for you for running and for your health and for how you feel, that is amazing. That is awesome. Do you, absolutely. Right?

If you want to, if you’re a vegan, because of like, you know, religious reasons, or, you know, moral issues with animals and whatever, you don’t, don’t do this, like, it’s, I support that. I absolutely support that everybody’s different. Do what works for you.

You know, I’m not opposed to a plant based diet, I did it for like 10 years, and it just wasn’t, it wasn’t the right diet. For me, it wasn’t the best diet. For me, I feel so much better, eating more of an omnivorous diet. But if you trying something like this appeals to you, and you want to give it a shot, try it and see how it goes can’t hurt, can’t hurt.

So I’m always open to trying things for myself, I’m always kind of pushing the envelope a little bit to see like, what can I do? What can I improve my health? You know, will this help to improve my health? Will that make me healthier? Will make me stronger? Will it give me more energy? Will it improve my sports performance? I’m always trying stuff like this. Okay.

So one of the points I want to make here is that I wanted to show you and show myself but I really wanted to show you that we really don’t need carbs to function optimally, right? We don’t need carbs to run a marathon, we can do just fine without them. Okay, I’m not saying you should, but I’m just saying we can do fine without them. Okay. Listen, I love being a fat adapted runner.

I love the feeling of running a marathon and running it hard and relatively fast for me. Without having to worry about bonking without having to worry about hitting the wall at mile 18 or 19, which I’ve done so many times. I love all day energy. I love the clarity of mind that I get from eating a low carb diet. I love being fat adapted runner. The foods that I eat is very satisfying, very delicious and very satiating, right? I’m not hungry all day long. I don’t have afternoon crashes. I’m not thinking about food all the time. So I love this whole lifestyle.

All these things are amazing and really eating this way that I am now just being a kind of ditching the problematic carbs and being more of a low carb runner, and being fat adapted. This works really well for me and I feel really good eating this way. Right. And I can still be very fat adapted.

I don’t have to go strict carnivore, I don’t have to go zero carbs, I can still eat my big salad, and enjoy it. Alright, so that’s all I got for you guys today. I hope you got something out of this episode. I hope you pulled some little nuggets out of this today. And if you got something out of it, please consider sharing it with a friend. I would so appreciate that. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

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