Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
If you’re a runner and interested in getting the most out of your training, then you’ve probably tried a multitude of supplements. There are literally thousands upon thousands of health and …
Continue Reading about 213. Supplements Every Runner Should be Taking →
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.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 213 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, supplements every runner should be taking. If you’re a runner and interested in getting the most out of your training, then you’ve probably tried a bunch of supplements, there are literally thousands upon thousands of health and wellness supplements out there on the market today.
And I looked this up – around one thousand new supplements are introduced every single year. So if you’re feeling a little confused, and a little overwhelmed by all of these options, rest assured you are not alone. Today on the podcast, I’ve got a few simple suggestions for supplements every runner should be taking that will actually improve your health and fitness.
But first, I know I share a lot of information here on the podcast about nutrition, weight loss, running strength training. And if you’re new, it may seem a little overwhelming and a little confusing. And that’s okay, I got you covered.
You may not know where to start with all this, but I’ve created a free hour long training that you can check out at any time, it’s called 5 Simple Steps To Becoming A Leaner Stronger Runner. You’re going to learn the basics of nutrition, strength, endurance and the right mindset that is required for you to become your best self. And all this is geared towards you the runner.
If you’re ready to get leaner and stronger and become the most badass version of yourself yet, I hope you are, then this free training is exactly what you need. Just go to runningleancoaching.com click on Free Training and get started on your weight loss journey today.
Okay, supplements every runner should be taking. The reason I am talking about this today is because I just realized after looking back through 212 episodes that I haven’t really talked much about supplements. And it’s something that I talk about with my clients regularly.
But one of the reasons why I typically don’t make suggestions for supplementation, or even, you know, certain nutrition suggestions here on the podcast is because, you know, making these blanket suggestions for the general public is not the way I like to do things.
I don’t like to just tell you like, oh, everybody should be doing this, or everybody should be doing that. Because we are all different. And we all respond differently to different nutrition, to different exercises to different supplements.
But I feel pretty confident about these few supplements I’m going to talk about today and I’m pretty sure everybody can benefit from from these particular supplements, okay, these are pretty generally accepted, pretty generally beneficial to just about everyone, there’s probably going to be some exceptions out there. Which is fine. If that is you and you’re like, oh, this one doesn’t apply to me or I can’t do that one. That is completely fine. Don’t do it.
Don’t think that I’m telling you that you have to do anything, okay. Also, I think that these supplements will really help you if you are a runner, because they are geared towards, you know, building strength and hydration and helping you to become as to perform your best as a runner.
Okay, so if you’re a runner, and you’re someone who’s interested in improving your athletic performance, improving your body composition, then stay tuned, this is definitely for you. That being said, I do have to make a little disclaimer here that I’m not a doctor, we’re not engaged in any kind of a coaching relationship.
So please check with your doctor before taking any kind of supplements to make sure you don’t experience any adverse side effects and that there aren’t any interactions with any other supplements you’re taking or medications. Cool. Okay. Awesome.
So first one is and we all know about this one is electrolytes. And what are electrolytes? First of all, electrolytes are minerals that actually carry an electric charge. They’re found in your blood, your urine, your sweat, and they are vital to specific processes that keep your body functioning properly.
Some of the most common electrolytes found in your body include sodium, potassium, chloride, calcium, magnesium phosphate and bicarbonate. These electrolytes are required for various bodily processing, including nerve and muscle function, maintaining pH balance, and keeping you hydrated.
Electrolytes are crucial to keeping your nervous system and your muscles functioning and your internal environment balanced. So your brain sends electrical signals through your nerve cells to communicate with the cells throughout your body. And these signals are called nervous impulses. And they’re generated by charges to the electrical changes to the electrical charge of the nerve cell membrane.
And these changes actually occurred due to the movement of the electrolytes sodium across the nerve cell membrane. So electrolytes, if you don’t have electrolytes in your system, you will die. This is something where you just have to get electrolytes in your system.
And we all get these in our in our body, you know, through our diet, you know, sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium phosphate, these are all very common, and most people will get these in their diet.
I do think that as runners, especially if you are a heavy sweater or live in a warm environment, that it is very important for you to supplement with electrolytes, it can really improve your health and fitness and you’re running performance in a lot of ways. So let’s talk about some of these ways that taking supplemental electrolytes can help you.
Number one, it improves hydration. And this is the most common way we think of electrolytes, electrolyte water, electrolyte drinks, you know, energy drinks, you know, running endurance drinks.
Water is the most essential nutrient. And it’s very important that you drink enough water throughout the day, right> However, staying hydrated with water doesn’t really work on its on itself. Like you have to have electrolytes in the mix somehow throughout the day, okay, they play a key role in maintaining your hydration levels, by directing the flow of water in and out of cells.
So studies have actually shown that adding salt to fluids greatly improves improves your fluid retention, especially when you’re restoring the fluid balance after significant electrolyte loss, which happens after long runs when the weather is really hot outside when you sweat a lot. This is because both water and sodium need to be consumed in order to establish proper hydration levels.
Okay, so know that you cannot just drink tons of water by itself, that you have to have electrolytes in your water. When you are especially when you’re exercising. I like to start my day with electrolytes first thing in the morning, I hydrate what right when I get up with electrolytes.
And I feel like it’s a great way for me to start the day. And I feel like I’m not myself until I’ve had my electrolytes first thing in the morning. When you sleep you you kind of tend to get dehydrated. So it’s great to start the day with proper hydration including electrolytes.
Okay, another benefit of taking a supplement electrolytes is that they do give you energy so electrolytes support energy production, by ensuring the body is properly hydrated and fueled. So sodium in particular, plays a pivotal role in hydration, which is essential for maintaining high energy levels.
It helps regulate fluid volume levels and ensures that your muscles function correctly. So essentially, a well hydrated body is an energized body. And if you’ve ever been out on a long run on a hot day, and you’ve kind of, this has totally happened to me, I’ve kind of run out of water run out of electrolytes and just got a little dehydrated, my energy levels tanked really fast, you know so it is important that you stay hydrated and use electrolytes to maintain energy levels.
Another benefit it improves athletic performance. So sodium before a workout helps to increase blood volume. This means that more blood is available system wide. More blood volume means more oxygen is available for working muscles. So more oxygen means better performance.
So if you just want to do something to improve your athletic performance, salt before a workout is going to help get you there. You know you’re improving increasing blood volume, and you’re going to improve your athletic performance for that workout. So right there is a great reason to make sure that you’re doing electrolytes especially before workouts.
Another benefit of electrolytes it helps to promote good sleep. So quality sleep is crucial for just being an overall healthy human being. Electrolytes particularly calcium helped to promote REM sleep, which is a deep sleep phase allows your body to rest and recharge.
This is especially beneficial, beneficial for people who struggle with insomnia. Maintaining a proper electrolyte balance can significantly improve your sleep quality. So electrolytes support sleep without the need for stimulants or our caffeine or anything like that. So just understand that good quality sleep is important electrolytes play a role in that electrolytes also helped to reduce stress.
Magnesium, one of the electrolytes we talked about is an essential electrolyte has been shown to have a calming effect on the body in the mind. And this is often used to help with sleep as well. But it helps to alleviate anxiety too. And it helps to regulate the nervous system and promotes relaxation.
So maintaining a healthy electrolyte balance helps you to your body to function properly helps to reduce stress levels, and helps you to just to feel less stressed throughout the day. Good thing for all of us.
Another benefit of electrolytes is helps to strengthen bones and muscles. So now we’re talking about calcium and potassium. These are vital for strengthening muscles and bones. Calcium contributes to bone health, which is particularly important for those at high risk of osteoporosis. And potassium helps to maintain muscle health by preserving muscle mass and helps to prevent muscle cramps. All very good things for us runners right.
Electrolytes also helped to improve recovery. Studies suggests that consuming electrolytes like sodium can optimize water absorption, which yields faster recovery times, and probably is more effective at enhancing your performance and recovery than water alone.
So it’s encouraged for someone to focus on fluids and electrolyte consumption to facilitate proper recovery not just to improve performance. And it helps with tissue repair too. So electrolytes help to rebuild damage tissue by improving cell function and cell hydration. So better all around workouts and better all around recovery from workouts, which is super important.
And then we’ve all probably heard that electrolytes help to prevent muscle cramps. Yep, this is true. Studies have shown that to that there are two main types of cramping, there’s a overuse cramping, that means you’re just pushing a muscle too much too hard, too soon. And there’s cramping from electrolyte deficiency.
If you are a really salty sweater, temperatures are really high, you’re doing really long distance runs, consider using electrolytes before and during those long events to prevent cramping. And then obviously, you have to make sure you’re ramping up your training slowly and you’re not overdoing it.
A lot of runners experience cramping, you know, miles 18 to 22 into a marathon because they’re not used to running nonstop for that long. So a lot of people get cramps during their first marathon because, you know, they may have done a few 20 mile runs.
But they’ve done them where they stop and they take breaks and things like that. But you know, running nonstop for, you know, three hours or whatever is a little bit different and it causes muscle cramps. So the the overexertion tends to be the big contributor of muscle cramps, but the electrolytes will help prevent that as well.
Okay, so how much should you take? So the recommendations vary, but listen, we’re mainly talking about salt intake. That’s the one that you know people are concerned about. And the FDA says that we should only be getting 2.3 grams of, of salt per day maximum.
Interestingly, the average American gets around three and a half grams of sodium per day. Of course, the FDA would like to see that reduced. There is a growing body of research that reveals that optimal health outcomes occur at sodium levels, two to three times the government recommendations.
So if you eat a diet, low in unprocessed foods, less you’re getting less sodium right there. If you eat a diet low in carbohydrates, you’re gonna have less water retention. And then you probably need to add more salt in the way of you know, an electrolyte supplement into your diet.
And the sweet spot for most people seems to be four to six grams of sodium per day. That’s kind of recommended by new research and by experts, and the new research definitely backs this up as being the optimum amount. Of course, if you have high blood pressure or hypertension, you have to check with your doctor before adding more more salt into your diet.
And then just understand that you are if you are a low carb athlete, then your body will be not as inflamed and not holding on to as much water which means you’re processing more fluids processing more water and losing more electrolytes in that process.
So most low carb athletes tend to err on the side of more salt is better and they seem to feel much better doing more salt brands I recommend there’s a couple brands that I like one is called element LMNT and they come in little packets.
And the ingredients are pretty simple. It’s salt, in the form of sodium chloride, citric acid, magnesium malate, and then potassium chloride, natural flavors, stevia leaf extract. In each packet of LMNT there’s 1000 milligrams of sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium, and 60 milligrams of magnesium. This is a good mix.
These things are really good I’ve recommended these in the past. Another one that I really like is is by a salt brand called Redmond. Redmond Re-Lyte is the name of the product. Re-Lyte and they use ancient sea salt. These are the ingredients coconut water powder.
Coconut water is a natural has natural occurring electrolytes in it. Citric acid stevia leaf extract natural flavors 810 milligrams of sodium per serving and this stuff comes in a little tub so you can measure out your own servings but 810 milligrams of sodium, 400 milligrams of potassium, 180 milligrams of chloride, 60 milligrams of calcium, 50 milligrams of magnesium. So both of these have good electrolyte profiles.
I kind of like the Redman Re-Lyte just because it’s a little more convenient without having to have all these packets that you have to open, number one. Number two, it also includes calcium, which I think is important as an electrolyte. So, but they’re both great, they’re both great choices.
Okay, next supplement that I think every runner can benefit from is protein powder. So protein is probably the most important of all the macronutrients that we need for survive like we cannot survive if we do not get protein in our diet. Fat is the other one, we have to eat fat or will die, we have to eat protein or we will die. These are called essential macronutrients. If we don’t consume those in our diet, we will perish.
Interestingly enough, carbohydrates are not considered an essential macro nutrient. If we don’t eat carbohydrates, we’ll be fine. Like there’s really nothing that’s going to go wrong. Our liver will produce all the glucose that our that our brain needs for survival. So we really don’t even have to eat foods that are related with carbohydrates or sugars.
Okay, so protein is very important. Why should you supplement with protein? Why do you need to eat some kind of protein powder? Shouldn’t you just get enough protein in your diet? Yes, you can definitely get enough protein in your diet. But most people find it difficult to get enough protein by eating a protein.
You know, meat essentially is probably the best form of protein. But if you’re vegan, vegetarian, whatever tofu, beans, there’s legumes, there’s other sources of protein where you can up your protein intake. But I just find that most people I talked to struggle to get enough protein in during the day.
The recommendations from the government are like, hey, 65% of your calories needs to be coming from carbohydrate. So this right alone right there, if you’re following the standard American diet right there, it’s gonna make it really difficult to get enough protein.
And I think that the type of protein powder matters and that whey protein seems to be the best the safest, the most studied the most effective, the most bioavailable form of protein, it is a complete protein means it contains all nine essential amino acids. So whey protein seems to be the best.
Now, if you are vegan or vegetarian, you don’t want to do the dairy or you’re lactose intolerant or something like that. No problem. There are other good options out there. Soy is a good option. I know a lot of people are allergic to soy, but it does have all the essential amino acids, which is important.
Pea protein is the other one that has all the essential amino acids, so those are both considered complete proteins. And those are pretty good to do, but way is superior in a lot of different ways. So if you’re somebody that can handle, you know, eating the whey protein, then that’s your best bet.
Okay, so the for the focus of this conversation today, I’m going to be mostly focusing on whey protein as the protein supplement, but you can just, you know, plug and play the other ones into this same formula because they all have similar benefits. But there’s a couple of benefits that are specific to weigh as I’m going to mention here in just a minute.
Okay, so some of the benefits of whey protein or you know, taking a protein supplement. So muscle mass declines naturally as you age, unless you’re doing something to offset that, okay. For most people, this leads to muscle loss and fat gain, and raises the risk of lots of metabolic diseases right.
This adverse change in body composition can be slowed, prevented or reversed with a combination of strength training and getting enough protein in your diet. Strength training, coupled with the consumption of a high protein foods or a protein supplement has been shown to be an effective preventative strategy for muscle degradation, and weight gain as we age.
So particularly effective seem to be high quality protein sources such as weight. So whey is rich in a branched chain amino acid called leucine. And leucine is the most growth promoting or anabolic of the amino acids. And for this reason, whey protein is effective for the prevention of age related muscle loss, as well as for improved strength.
So for muscle growth, some studies show that whey protein may be slightly better than other types of proteins such as casein or soy, okay. Whey protein may also lower blood pressure, okay, so abnormally high blood pressure, or condition called hypertension, is one of the leading risk factors for heart disease. Numerous studies have linked the consumption of dairy products with reduced blood pressure, interesting.
This effect has been attributed to a family of bioactive peptides and dairy called ace inhibitors. And in whey proteins, that specifically, the ace inhibitors are called lactic acids and several animal studies have demonstrated their beneficial effects on blood pressure.
So one study in overweight individuals showed that whey protein consumption around 50 grams a day for 12 weeks lowered systolic blood pressure by 4%. And other milk proteins like casein had, casein had seen similar effects.
This is supported by another study that found significant effects when participants were given whey protein for six weeks. However, understand this though, blood pressure decreased only in those that had high or slightly elevated blood pressure to begin with. So it didn’t really have an effect on lowering blood pressure for people with normal blood pressure.
But that’s a good benefit of just doing something as simple as taking a protein supplement. Protein helps to reduce inflammation. So inflammation is part of the body’s natural response to damage and short term inflammation can be beneficial. But under certain certain circumstances, it can become chronic and this is not good.
Chronic inflammation can be harmful. It’s a risk factor for many diseases. And it may reflect underlying health conditions of or lifestyle habits that can be detrimental to your health. This large study done recently found that high doses of whey protein supplements and when they say high doses, they’re talking equal to or greater than 20 grams per day, that is not high.
That’s like less than one scoop of protein powder basically. But anyway, these particular doses of whey protein supplements significantly reduced reactive protein CRP, which is a key marker of inflammation in the body so good at reducing inflammation. If you’re a runner and you want to recover faster and not be so inflamed, whey protein is a great supplement for that protein in general will help with that.
Also understand this protein is highly satiating, it’s very filling, and it helps to reduce hunger. So when we talk about satiety, we’re talking about the feeling of fullness we we experienced after eating a meal.
It’s the opposite of appetite or hunger, and it should suppress the cravings for food and the desire to eat. So eating food that is more satiating will help you to not eat as much to feel more full throughout the day. And to help you to not be craving all kinds of crazy foods throughout the day which is all good.
If you’re trying to lose weight then not being totally ravenously hungry and craving sugar and stuff like that is a good thing. It’s a good thing. So some foods are more satiating than others, and it depends on their macronutrient composition.
Carbohydrates, being the least satiating, fat being the next and then protein being the most, by far, the most satiating of the three big macronutrients. However, not all proteins have the same effect on satiety. Whey protein appears to be more satiating than other types of protein such as casein or soy.
These properties make it particularly useful for those who want to try to you know, consume fewer calories and lose weight. Okay, so protein, super satiating, I always suggest people eat more protein. And this is a great way to help you lose weight.
That is actually the next big benefit of a protein supplement is that it increased consumption of protein has been a well known weight loss strategy. And this is one of the things that I promote with my clients as well. And the reason this works is because it suppresses appetite, it leads to typically reduced calorie intake, it helps to boost your metabolism helps you to burn more calories.
And if you’re burning the right kinds of calories, meaning fat, then it’ll help you to lose more weight, it helps to maintain muscle mass when you’re losing weight. A lot of people they set out to lose weight, and they lose a lot of muscle mass in the process. We don’t want to do that. So supplementing with protein, especially a good quality protein, like whey will help you to offset that muscle loss.
And as long as you’re doing proper strength training as well, then you’ll be actually gaining muscle and losing weight and losing the fat weight. This is how you improve your body composition and get that have that nice, lean, strong look that we all want. So whey protein has been shown to be particularly effective, and it has a superior effect on fat burning and satiety than other types of protein.
So just know that how much protein powder should you be taking, really, the recommendations vary a little bit here, but 25 to 50 grams per day seems to be fine. If you’re somebody that is not really getting enough protein from your diet, then do a double scoop of protein.
So like 50 grams, typically a scoop is like 20-25 grams of protein. So do a couple scoops of that, mix it up with some water, some milk or almond milk or whatever, you know, floats your boat there. But 25 to 50 grams a day seems to be the recommended amount, total protein recommendations, and this has changed over the years.
But I like to tell people that you should probably be getting point seven to one gram of protein for every pound of ideal body weight. So if your goal is to get to 150 pounds, you probably want to be between 105 to 150 grams of protein per day.
Again, this can be hard for some people, especially women, women seem to have a little bit of a hard time getting enough protein just from food alone. So supplementing is a great way to make sure you’re getting adequate protein to support your weight loss to support your training.
Brands I recommend – there’s lots of great brands out there. I just recommend looking for brands that have few ingredients that don’t have any weird ingredients that you don’t understand that don’t have any added sugar. I’m currently using a whey protein powder by a company called Levels.
And the ingredients are really simple. It is whey protein, vanilla extract, sunflower lecithin, which is a natural emulsifier just improves the consistency when you mix it up. Sea salt, stevia leaf extract and monk fruit extract. That’s it super simple ingredients. I understand what all those are. There’s nothing weird in there.
But look for a brand that you know is in your budget and also because protein can be expensive. Look for something that’s in your budget and that that feels good to you. Okay, just read the labels get good at reading labels.
Okay, last of my big three supplements that I think every runner should be taking is creatine. So what is creatine? Creatine is a natural supplement used to boost athletic performance. It’s not only safe but it’s one of the world’s most popular and most effective supplements for building muscle and strength.
Creatine is a chemical compound that occurs naturally in the body. It’s also found in red meat and seafood. Creatine is an amino acid that comes from other amino acids. So there are Some amino acids that we call essential amino acids, and these are ones that we have to get in our diet, okay?
And so those those essential amino acids can kind of combine and then those produce other amino acids. I think there’s like 20 total amino acids that we need for survival. But then there’s, like 11 other amino acids that are created from combination of the essential amino acids, if that makes sense, okay.
And creatine is one of those amino acids that is created from a combination of other amino acids. So the human body makes creatine in the liver and the kidneys and the pancreas. It’s stored in your muscles, mainly in a form called a phospho, creatine or creatine phosphate. And creatine is involved in making energy for your muscles.
Why should you supplement with creatine? Can’t you just get this in your diet? You can you can actually get enough creatine in your diet if you’re eating red meat and fish, but you would probably need to eat something like two and a half pounds of steak every day to get you to the recommended dosage of creatine which is five grams per day.
Five grams is like a rounded teaspoon of creatine so it’s not a lot, but two half pounds of steak maybe a little bit much for most people. Okay, so it’s much easier to just supplement. Again, these are the supplements that I think are so beneficial, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be supplementing with them, especially creatine.
So what are the benefits of creatine? One it helps to produce helps your muscle cells produce more energy. Creatine increases your muscles phosphocreatine stores, it aids in the formation of ATP, which is the key molecule your cells use for energy and all basic life functions. During exercise ATP is broken down to produce energy.
The rate of ATP resynthesis limits your ability to continually perform at max intensity. So as your ATP as you use up ATP faster than you can reproduce it Okay, so creatine supplements actually increase your fossil creatine stores allowing you to produce more ATP energy to fuel your muscles during high intensity exercise. This is the primary mechanism behind creatine perhaps performance enhancing effects.
So I mean right there, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be using creatine. Creatine also supports many other functions in the muscles. It’s a popular and effective supplement for adding muscle mass. It can alter numerous cellular pathways that lead to new muscle growth for example, it boosts the formation of proteins that create new muscle fibers. It can also raise levels of insulin like growth factor, IGF1, a hormone that promotes increases in muscle mass.
What’s more creatine supplements can increase the water content of your muscles. This is known as cell volumization and can quickly increase muscle size as soon as you start taking creatine you’ll notice a little bit of of water retention and your muscles. Most people see it as a little bit of weight gain.
So they’ll say oh my gosh, I’m starting creatine and I started gaining weight. No, you’re going to just gain a little bit of muscle and water content and your muscles are totally fine. It’s actually good for you to do that. Some research indicates that creatine decreases levels of myostatin, which is a molecule responsible for stunting muscle growth. So reducing myostatin can help you build muscle faster as well. Very, very awesome stuff this creatine, it improves high intensity exercise performance.
So creatine is direct role and ATP production means it can drastically improve high intensity exercise performance. They improve numerous factors including strength ballistic power, sprinting ability, muscle endurance, resistance to fatigue, muscle mass recovery brain performance, unlike supplements only affect advanced athletes.
Creatine benefits you regardless of your fitness level, that is key right there. And one review found that improves high intensity exercise performance by up to 15%. Why are you not taking creatine every day? Creatine also speeds muscle growth, so it’s one of the most effective supplements for adding muscle mass.
Taking it for just as few as five to seven days has been shown to significantly increase lean body weight and muscle size. This initial rise is caused by increases in water content of your muscles fine over the long term though.
It also aids in muscle fiber growth by signal signaling key biological pathways and boosting your performance at the gym. And one study of a six week training regimen participants who used creatine added 4.4 pounds more muscle mass on average than the control group that’s huge, huge, huge, huge.
Similarly, a comprehensive review demonstrated a clear increase in muscle mass among those taking creatine compared with those performing the same training regimen without creatine. This review also compared the world’s most popular sports supplements and concluded that creatine is the best one available. Its advantages include being less expensive and far safer than most other sports supplements.
Again, creatine for the when creatine helps to improve brain function, it plays an important role in your brain health and brain function. Research demonstrates that your brain requires a significant amount of ATP when performing difficult tasks and supplements can increase the phosphocreatine stores in your brain and help it produce more ATP.
Creatine may also aid brain function by increasing dopamine levels and mitochondrial function. As meat as the best dietary source of creatine vegetarians often have low levels of creatine in their system and one study on creatine supplements and vegetarians found a 20 to 50% improvement in some memory and intelligence test scores. When these vegetarians who are starving were on a creatine supplement.
And then for older individuals supplementing with creatine for just a few weeks significantly improved memory and recall ability. And older adults creatine may boost brain function protect against neurological diseases and reduce age related loss of muscle and strength. So just take creatine every day, just from now on. Okay.
One last thing about it is that it helps to reduce muscle helps to reduce fatigue and tiredness. One study they did show that people that had been sleep deprived had reduced levels of fatigue and increased energy levels. And they did a test on cycler cyclists. And they found that creatine reduced the fatigue in athletes taking a cycling test and has been used to decrease fatigue when exercising in high heat as well.
So again, creatine, for the win every day. Creatine is safe and easy to use. Along with all of its benefits, it’s one of the cheapest and safest supplements available. It’s been studied more than any other supplement out there. You can find it just about anywhere. It’s been researched for more than 200 years. Yeah, I know that’s crazy.
And numerous studies supported safety for long term use clinical trial trials lasting up to five years report no adverse effects in healthy individuals. What’s more, supplementing is easy, just do three to five grams of creatine monohydrate powder per day.
So what I’m recommending is creatine monohydrate. That should be the only ingredient so if you’re buying something and it has anything else in it, just don’t get it just stick with creatine monohydrate that should be the only ingredient I use a brand called Optimum Nutrition. It’s great, lots of good reviews. It’s odorless, tasteless, pretty much and and I just add it to my protein shake, mix it up. And then I’m good to go around five grams a day for most people, if you’re if you’re a little on the lighter side, you could probably be closer to that three grams. If you’re heavier, you know, 220 pounds or 250 pounds you could probably go six or eight grams per day something like that.
Most people seem to do well around five grams per day. Cool. Okay, those are supplements that I think every runner should be taking. I hope you got something good out of this episode today. I hope you have some good takeaways and you can start supplementing with abandon because these are these are good ones and I think just about everybody can benefit from these core. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
When it comes to proper hydration, most runners are all over the place. I get it, it’s a little confusing…how much should you drink, how often, should you only drink water, what about electrolytes, …
Continue Reading about 165. The Ultimate Guide to Hydration for Runners →
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.
Hey there and welcome to episode 165 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today the ultimate guide to hydration for runners. So when it comes to proper hydration, most runners are kind of all over the place. And I get it. It’s a little confusing.
How much are you supposed to drink? How often? Should you only drink water? What about electrolytes is Gatorade the best option, etc, etc. Spoiler alert Gatorade to stay away from that stuff. It’s just sugar water. Okay. So today I want to end the confusion for you. I want to give you a very clear understanding of what hydration actually means for runners and how to do it properly. That’s why I’m calling this one The Ultimate Guide to hydration for runners.
So today you’re going to learn exactly what hydration means. The role electrolytes play in hydration, they are very important, by the way, how to hydrate before, during and after exercise, how coffee affects hydration, and loads more. So sit back, maybe grab a pen and paper for this one, because you might want to take notes. I have a lot of numbers for you today. And enjoy the ultimate guide to hydration for runners.
First, let me ask you this, does any of this sound familiar? You don’t need carbs to run, oh, you can’t run without carbs. You can’t lose weight while you’re running. You have to run in order to lose weight. You need to eat six times a day to keep your metabolism going. Eating less often will speed up your metabolism. Have you heard these contrasting ideas?
If some of these sound familiar, if all this sounds familiar, and you’re confused by all this like conflicting, conflicting information out there, you’re definitely not everyone has their own viewpoint and opinion of what works best. But the truth is there is no best way to do this stuff. Okay, the only thing that matters, the only thing that really should matter to you is what works best for you. Figuring that out, though, it’s kind of the tough part, right.
So a key component of my coaching program is putting together a personalized plan that actually works for you, a plan that will get you to your weight loss goals into your running goals much faster than you could probably do on your own. So if you want some expert guidance to figure out what works for you, then I think you’d definitely be a good fit for coaching. Stop the confusion and start taking expertly Guided Action to learn more and apply for coaching. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply.
Okay, let’s talk hydration. I really wanted to get into this topic today. And I’ve been thinking about this for a while and doing some research on this topic because I think it’s very important and something that a lot of runners overlook, or they think they have an idea of what they should do, but they’re maybe kind of misguided a little bit. And so I want to make sure that we have a deep dive in a detailed discussion on hydration. And so that’s why I’m calling this the ultimate guide to hydration for runners.
So let’s get into this. First of all, what is hydration? So hydration is basically the process of causing something to absorb water. Think about a sponge, you know, you take a dry sponge, it’s all like shriveled up and flat and then you add some water to it and it absorbs that water. It’s able to hold that water. Okay, so that’s hydration, very simple right?
Every cell in our bodies is made up of mostly water. So 70% or more depending on the cell but 70% or more of your total cell mass is water your brain all the all the cells in your blood your skin organs, muscles, bones, teeth all contain water. So hydration means that we are providing enough water to ourselves for them to function properly.
Okay, so just understand that at the base level, like hydration, is you know required for every cell in our body is required to be hydrated properly okay? That’s why we need water. We don’t drink water. We will die. You can live by the rule of threes – so three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food, so you could go a couple days without water. But then eventually you’re going to die. So just keep that in mind. Drink your water.
So how much should you drink, though? I mean, this is one of the big questions, right? And people say, oh, you should drink eight glasses of water a day. Well, what’s a glass? How many ounces is that? How big is your glass? Is it sixteen ounces? Is it eight ounces? What is that?
So one of the rules of thumb that we can use, is to just take half your body weight and drink that in ounces per day. So if you weigh 180 pounds, then you know, 90 ounces of water is what you want to get per day. If you weigh 150 pounds, then 75 ounces of water is where you want to be. Yeah, this is for the average adult, right? This is not necessarily for an endurance athlete.
So if you’re somebody who’s training a lot, you’re going to require more fluid intake, you’re going to require more hydration, and we’re going to talk all about that in just a second. But I just want you to understand, at a base level, whatever your body weight is, just have that and that should be around where you want to be at a minimum, from from a water standpoint, just drinking water each day, okay.
So something to keep in mind, when you wake up in the morning, you are going to be dehydrated. And there’s a good way to offset this, which is by first thing in the morning, is by drinking 16-30 ounces of water just to start things off. And it’s recommended that you put some salt or some electrolytes in that water. And I’ll talk more about electrolytes in a minute. So just understand that you will wake up somewhat dehydrated. And how you can determine how dehydrated you are as an individual is by doing a simple test.
So that would be to weigh yourself naked before you go to bed. And then after you get up in the morning and you’ve urinated, weigh yourself again, and just kind of see how much water weight you lost overnight. And that’s a good indicator of maybe how dehydrated you are in the morning.
So being dehydrated is not a good thing. That means our cells are not functioning properly, our brains are not functioning properly, our nervous system is not functioning properly. And if you’re just one to 2% dehydrated, meaning that if you’re just if you’ve lost 1-2% of your body weight, due to dehydration, it can have a significant impact on your athletic performance.
Now I know a lot of people love working out first thing in the morning in that fasted state, I know I do, I don’t eat before I work out, I drink some coffee and then I hydrate before I work out. But if you’re starting your workout, and you’re already, let’s say 1% dehydrated, you’ve lost a few pounds of body weight overnight due to dehydration, and you’re going to start your workout in that 1% dehydrated state.
Getting yourself back to normal is going to be very challenging, like it’s really hard to do that with that hydration deficit that you’re going to be starting your workout in. So let’s say you have a long run, and you got a three hour run, and you’re starting this run at a 1% dehydration. So you’ve you’ve lost 1% of your body weight, it’s only going to get worse, it’s not going to be, it’s not going to get better, it’s going to be very hard to make up for that deficit, right?
Drinking while you’re running, it’s going to be really hard to drink enough to really make up for that. So training dehydrated can have a really negative impact on your athletic performance. So just keep that in mind. It’s great if you like to work out in that fasted state, just make sure you hydrate prior to work out.
So how much are we supposed to drink? Well for running, you know, for exercising. So for short bouts of exercise less than 30 minutes, let’s say you really don’t need to do much, you know, because you’re not going to lose much in the way of fluid. Okay? Typically, though, anything over an hour, you’re probably going to want to consume some fluids.
And this does depend on the weather and you know, the humidity levels and how much you sweat and things like that. But the one thing that I really want to get into here is making sure that we understand that when we talk about hydration, we’re not just talking about water alone, that we’re talking about electrolytes, electrolyte is like an umbrella term.
Basically it means particles that carry either positive or negative electric charge. So in nutrition we’re talking about essential minerals that are found in your blood, sweat and urine. So, when these minerals dissolve in fluid, they form electrolytes positive or negative ions used in metabolic processes.
So the electrolytes that are found in your body are sodium, potassium, chloride, calcium, magnesium, phosphate, bicarbonate. All of these electrolytes are required for various bodily processes including proper nerve and muscle function, maintaining balance, you know, like a pH balance and keeping you hydrated, okay? And so, the main electrolytes that we’re going to be kind of talking about are going to be sodium chloride, potassium and magnesium, sodium and chloride, basically salt, okay, so sodium, potassium, magnesium is kind of how we lumped those three together, okay?
Electrolytes are extremely important, they are crucial to keeping your nervous system and your muscles functioning properly. They help keep your internal environment balanced, like your pH levels balanced, okay? Without electrolytes, you’re really not hydrating properly. Remember, hydration is your body, drawing water into cells. And a critical part of this function is especially sodium.
So salt helps to make sure the cells don’t burst from being too full or shrivel up due to dehydration. So too much water is a problem. And a lot of athletes think that I just need to drink more water, drink more water, drink more water, but they’re not getting enough electrolytes and they’re not getting enough salt to mix with that water. And this can lead to a serious condition called hyponatremia. Hypo means low, na meaning salt, and then tremia is like in the blood. So basically it just means you don’t have enough sodium in your blood.
And hyponatremia can cause dizziness, lightheadedness, nausea, cognitive issues like confusion, or irritability, vomiting, and then there’s some very severe symptoms too with loss of consciousness, seizures, coma, even death. So drinking too much water can literally kill you. So you got to be careful with that, like, we don’t want to be just drinking plain water, you know, you’re out running an ultra marathon, and it’s hot out and you’re sweating a lot.
The more water that you consume, the more you’re diluting your system of sodium. And you will eventually get into some level of hyponatremia. And you have to be really careful with that. So we want to make sure that we are using electrolytes to hydrate properly. And again, electrolytes are required for proper muscle function and hydration and nervous system function and all these things, right. So just understand that we don’t when I talk about hydration, we really need to make sure we’re thinking about hydrating with water and electrolytes.
So how much do you need? How much electrolytes are you supposed to be, you know, consuming? So this is a little bit different for everyone, I’m going to give you some kind of averages here. And you can play around with this a little bit. Okay, and this goes to this whole discussion today. Which is like you have to kind of figure out what works best for you.
I’m gonna give you some ballpark numbers here, but just remember that it’s good for you to to play around with this a little bit. None of this stuff is like set in stone. Okay, so the first thing you need to determine is like, you know how much you’re losing in your sweat because when you sweat, then you want to replace the electrolytes that you lose in your sweat. So that you kind of replace that same concentration of electrolytes that’s in your sweat with the fluid that you’re drinking. Okay.
So for example, in one liter, which is 33 ounces, like one liter of sweat, I know it sounds disgusting, right? But one liter of sweat contains somewhere between 502,000 milligrams of sodium, 1-500 milligrams of potassium, and 0-100 milligrams of magnesium. So the averages in sweat would be somewhere around 1000 milligrams or a gram of sodium, 300 milligrams of potassium and 50 milligrams of magnesium.
Now there’s a product that you can get out there that I love. There’s lots of products for hydration. This one I just happen to love it’s called element LMNT. You can find it on Amazon or whatever. I don’t make any money off of this stuff. I just love it. I think it works great, it contains 1000 milligrams of sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium and 60 milligrams of magnesium. So it’s kind of hits, those numbers are pretty close to those numbers, right.
So basically, for every liter of sweat that you produce, you want to have one packet of LMNT added to water. And so, you know, let’s say, if you sweat out a pound per hour, then every two hours of running, you’re gonna want to have an element. Okay, that’s pretty easy, right? Again, these are sort of ballpark numbers, you need to kind of figure out what works best for you. But this is a good place to start here. Okay.
And then, you know, post exercise, just, you know, we want to make sure that we are, you know, replacing our fluids, you know, post exercise the same way that we do during exercise. Okay, and I’m gonna talk about that in just a minute, like, how to hydrate specifically during exercise?
Well, let me just talk about that right now. So how about this? How do we hydrate during exercise, or specifically, how do we replace lost fluids during exercise, the first thing you need to do is determine how much fluid you lose during exercise. So a great field test, again, is to weigh yourself naked before you run, and maybe go for an hour long run, after the run, dry off where you are again, and then you’ll see how much you lost. So this will give you a rough idea of how much water you know, you lose how much sweat you lose per hour.
So for every pound of water lost, we want to replace that with one and a quarter pounds of fluid. So we want that to be 125% of what we lost through sweat, we want to replace it with fluid that means electrolytes, right? water and electrolytes. So for example, if you weigh 150 pounds before you run, and then you come home from that run, and you weigh 149 pounds, you lost one pound during that one hour run. Okay? Pretty easy to do, right?
Then you just take 1.25 times that and that means that you know, during your next run, you’re going to want to run, you’re going to want to consume 1.25 pounds of fluid for that run. You also have to factor in water consumed during the run. So let’s say you take the same 150 pound person, you weigh yourself before you run, you drink eight ounces during that, so about half, and then you come back and you notice that you’re down to 149, you actually lost really 1.5 pounds total because you replaced eight ounces of that.
So then you would say okay, so what is 1.25 times 1.5? And that brings us to about 20 ounces, right? So 20 ounces every hour is how much that particular individual loses. Okay, so let’s break this down just a little bit more. Take that 20 ounces per hour and divide by four, because we want to know about how much we should be drinking every 15 minutes. This makes it so much easier, right? Because you’re not going to chug 20 ounces every hour, so top of the hour better chug 20 ounces of water. That is not going to be a good strategy for running. Okay.
So that means that we want to break that 20 ounces down over every 15 minutes. So that’s like five ounces every 15 minutes, right? So pretty easy math once you once you do this. Okay, so let me let me repeat, you know, kind of replay this right here. So for every pound every 16 ounces of water last, replace it with 1.25 pounds of fluid or one 125% of the ounces of fluid lost. Okay, that’s it, that’s all you have to remember right there. And then just divide that by four so that you’re, you know, consuming, you know, a little bit every 15 minutes or so. Okay.
Now, there’s another formula that you can use, if you don’t want to do the sweat test where you weigh yourself before and after, you can just take your body weight and divide it by 30. And that’s how many ounces to drink every 15 minutes. This is kind of an easy way of doing this. So let’s say you weigh 150 pounds, divide that by 30. That’s five, five ounces every 15 minutes. That’s it. Simple, right?
I like this one because it kind of jives with you know what most people kind of find there. And it gives you just enough, it gives you probably a good place to start. All right, and then you need to kind of figure out what works best for you and then remember, these numbers will go up or down based on how hot it is outside, how humid it is, and how hard you’re training. So you have to experiment with this, like what works for you may not work for other people, what works for them may not work for you. Okay?
So now that we understand that, when you are done with exercise, you want to have that same formula that 125% of fluids are lost during exercise. So even though you’ve hydrated during, maybe you still come back and you’ve lost some weight because of a little bit of dehydration, even though you’ve been drinking, it’s fine. Not a big deal. Just replace those same fluids lost using the same concentration of water, electrolytes and that 125% rule, okay?
So another way to tell if you’re getting enough fluid and electrolytes, and I know this is a great one for ultra runners, because they’re always asking about their weight, they’re looking at their urine, you want to make sure your urine is not a dark color. You want to make sure you’re not losing too much weight. And then how thirsty are you feeling? So we call this what w u t? WUT?
So is your weight down? How much have you lost in the way of fluids? And then we look at urine; what color is it? Is it clear? That’s a good sign. Is it dark colored? Like stout beer? That’s a bad sign. And like how thirsty are you or do you feel very thirsty or not really? Okay. So if any one of these weight, urine or thirst if you can answer yes to any of these; urine is kind of dark and you’re feeling thirsty? Yes to any one of these, you might be a little dehydrated, okay?
If two or three or yes or three or yes, that you’re definitely dehydrated, okay, so then you need to probably up your hydration game a little bit. So maybe the kidney you didn’t plan for the conditions or something like that. Okay. Now, another way of determining what your salt needs are, is, you know, if you’re craving salt, you may need to eat more salt. If the food you’re eating just doesn’t taste salty at all, and you keep adding more salt to your food and it starts to taste fine, then you probably don’t have enough salt in the system. All right.
So if you’re craving salt, eat more salt, if what you’re eating tastes super salty, and you go for one of these electrolyte drinks. And you’re like, Oh, this is so salty then maybe you’re salted enough. Like you don’t really need to add more sodium into your system. So go by sort of that moat, we call it the salt appetite. Like how is your salt appetite? Do you crave salt, you want more salt, and maybe you need a little bit more. But if you’re not, then you might be okay.
And keep in mind the RDA, the recommended daily allowance for sodium intake is like 2300 milligrams a day. So that’s for people who are eating a typical American diet, who are eating maybe a lot of carbohydrates, a lot of processed foods. When you eat a clean diet, when you’re maybe doing sort of a lower carbohydrate intake, you’re doing lots of endurance activities, where you’re losing a lot of sodium through sweat, you can probably up your salt game, you can probably up your salt intake, from that 2300 milligrams a day to 3000 milligrams a day, maybe even up to 5000 milligrams a day. Depends on you as an individual.
Now, if you have pre hypotension or hypertension, you have to be careful with salt. Talk to your doctor about what numbers are right for you. Chances are that you’re gonna have to keep sodium probably a lot lower than some of these numbers that I mentioned here. Okay, so definitely talk to your doctor and see what you know they recommend for you. Okay, yeah, and another thing about processed foods is that a lot of people who kind of switch and start eating a lower carb diet, they’re not getting enough salt all of a sudden.
So they may have been close to that 20 303,000 milligrams of salt per day. And then they start eating really clean foods, they start eating a lot less processed foods, and their sodium intake goes way down and they don’t feel good. You know, they still maybe have a little lightheadedness, headaches, a little bit of brain fog or something like that. So if you eat pretty clean, you might want to just try adding a little bit more salt to your diet to see if you feel better, you’ll probably feel better perform better. You’ll have better brain function, you’ll probably sleep better too. Okay.
And then electrolytes, you know, this question has come up before like, should I use electrolytes only when I’m running or should I use them other times? And the answer is yes. Yes, you should use electrolytes every day. It’s vital for sports performance Yes, but also vital for proper brain function. It’s vital for maintaining pH levels, it’s vital for nerve and muscle functions and all the stuff that I mentioned earlier, okay.
So, you know, just keep in mind that we want to take electrolytes on a daily basis, and make sure that we are hydrating before, during and after exercise. And then really quickly, yeah, how to hydrate before exercise. So a good place to start with this is maybe around 500 milligrams of sodium, right, so what you want to do is 30 to 60 minutes before exercise, go ahead and preload with some salt or electrolytes, and water, maybe 16 ounces of water, so and then over the course of about 15 to 20 minutes, sip that water, don’t just chug it all down at once.
Because what this will do is it’ll help to increase blood volume, it’ll actually give your body more blood to deliver oxygen to working muscles. So this is a very easy and very simple performance enhancing hack, right, just by pre-hydrating before you exercise. So that way, you’re not starting off your exercise in that dehydrated state. So one of the first things I do every morning is while I’m making my coffee in the morning, I add salt to 16 ounces of water. And I drink it. And that’s how I start every day that way. I know that no matter what my exercise looks like that day, whether I’m lifting weights, or running that I know I’m like starting out with some level of hydration. Okay.
Oh, what about coffee? People ask about coffee and they think that it’s, you know, maybe dehydrating. You know, people talk about, you know, caffeine being a diuretic, and it’ll actually dehydrate you. And that is true coffee, or caffeine on its own is a diuretic and will dehydrate you it will cause dehydration.
So if you’re taking caffeine pills, it will probably cause some dehydration. But if you’re drinking brewed coffee, which is mostly water, then the effect of that dehydration is beaches basically neutralized so you don’t really need to worry about coffee being D dehydrating or a diuretic because it really won’t do that to you as long as it’s got all that water. So if you are somebody that takes caffeine pills, just make sure you drink plenty of water with them to kind of offset that and you’ll be fine there.
Okay, and just coffee is a proven performance enhancing compound so use it but not too much. One to two cups of coffee, pre workout seems to really enhance exercise performance. Three plus cups of coffee can start to cause some performance degradation. So, you have to be careful not to overdo it with the coffee or the caffeine. So this is good news. Right? If you like drinking coffee, then you’re good to go there. It’s not dehydrated at all.
Okay, I hope you got something out of this episode. I hope you understand hydration, how to hydrate before, during and after exercise. What electrolytes are, how much to use, when to use them. If you have any questions, reach out, I’m always here for you. But that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
The 2021 Flying Pig Marathon is officially in the books! I did some things differently this training season from a fueling perspective. Some things worked pretty well, some not so much, but I …
Continue Reading about 98. Marathon Recap: What Worked and What Didn’t →
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.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 98 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’m giving you a marathon recap, I’m going to talk about what worked and what didn’t in my recent marathon.
So the 2021 Flying Pig marathon is officially in the books. And it was fun, had a great, great weekend. And I did some things differently. This training season, especially from a feeling perspective, some things worked pretty well, some not so much.
But I definitely learned some very valuable lessons this training season and during the marathon itself. So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to go over how I feel differently for this training season and how I feel for the race itself, what worked, what didn’t, and what I might do differently next time.
And just so you know, I originally recorded this episode, over in the Running Lean community on Facebook. So each week I do a live call where I do some teaching and coaching and answer questions. And so this was one of those calls, this is the call we did last week.
And if you’re not currently in the Facebook group, this call that you’re going to listen to now in this in this podcast episode will give you a good idea of what those live calls are all about.
So I would love it if you would join the Facebook group and join in on the conversation. So just search for Running Lean community on Facebook, and join us over there.
And then here’s a recent message that someone in the Running Lean community on Facebook posted so they posted this right after finishing their marathon. And so this is from Jima and she wrote: “2021 was the year of unexpected achievements. In each race, I was able to experiment with fat-adapted running with excellent results. With this last marathon, I was able to run 20 miles fasted with no bonking and only consumed a slow-burning energy gel at the end just for replenishment. Thank you, Patrick McGilvray, for sharing your expertise and knowledge.”
Also, much thanks to you all in the Running Lean community, as you are all inspiring. Love it. I love those kinds of messages. And congratulations on an awesome marathon season, Jima.
And then people ask how they can work with me. And one way you can do that is to join the Running Lean coaching group. And I’m going to be talking more about that later on in the podcast.
This whole month of November, we’re talking about self-sabotage just in time for the holidays, you guys. So we’re going to learn how to recognize self-sabotage, how to understand what it really is, how to stop it before it gets out of hand, and how to eliminate it from your life for good.
So if you’re interested in learning more about the coaching group, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join. And then as always, you know, I do one on one coaching with people, this is what I do, this is my jam.
So if you’re ever interested in a little expert guidance, support, encouragement, accountability, maybe a little tough love every now and then. Then just reach out. You’ve got to apply for coaching.
So just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply. And we’ll just see if coaching is a good fit for you. Cool. All right. So I’m going to go ahead and play for you. The marathon recap what worked and what didn’t from last week’s Facebook Live.
Hey, everybody, welcome to your Sunday live coaching call. This is something we do every single Sunday afternoon. For the most part, I didn’t do it last week, because I was running the flying pig marathon. It was Halloween. And I thought we’d all take the afternoon off.
But today what I want to do is kind of give you guys a little bit of a recap of specifically sort of how I did my training, how I fueled for my training this marathon training season, how I fueled specifically for this marathon, and I did some things differently than I have been doing in the past. And I want to talk a little bit about that.
Some of it was, you know, there were some positives and there were some you know, I wouldn’t say negatives, but there were some things I would recommend doing maybe and some things that I’ll probably do again, and there were some things that I maybe won’t do again.
So let’s get into this whole marathon training, thingsthat I did differently, I want to talk about what I did differently this time and share some of my insights with you guys. I get a lot of questions about what I eat and how I fuel for these things. And I’ve talked a little bit about some different fueling strategies in the past.
And I’ve talked about how I’ve done several marathons and even an ultra marathon, completely unfilled, like just not needing any kind of fuel at all. And then I did things a little bit differently this training season. And I want to talk about that.
And I want to explain to you guys why I made the decisions that I made. And what I was trying to do with all that. A lot of the stuff that I do here is just to like, share the data with you guys, you know. So just to kind of give you guys a little perspective here, everything that we do is a is an experiment of one.
So everything that we’re doing in here when it comes to how to fuel properly for a marathon, or what’s the right diet for weight loss. When people ask these questions, I always just say, like, try something and see if it works.
That’s it like just try something and see if it works. What works for me may not necessarily work for you. And I don’t even know what works best for me. I’ve tried all kinds of things, and I keep continuing to try different things.
I do different fueling strategies and training, different fueling strategies for long runs. Sometimes I’m carb-loading, sometimes I’m not. And all this stuff is to just find out how I feel and how my performance is affected by these different strategies. Okay.
And I’m always learning. And I don’t know it all, I’m just going to tell you guys right now, I don’t have all the answers. But because you know what the answer is within, you know, the answer is within each of us the right answer as to what is the right fuelling approach for you as an individual.
So but what I want to do today is give you guys a little bit of a look a little snapshot of what this looked like, for me though, this training season and some of the lessons I learned, so that maybe you can like start experimenting with some of this stuff on your own. Okay, so that’s kind of my high level to look at why I’m talking about this today.
And what I’m hoping that you get out of this today. Okay. So I have a question. I want to ask you guys and feel free to answer this in the comments. Because this is just kind of a funny question. Could be a serious question could be a funny question.
But what has been your best or worst fueling strategy for a marathon or half marathon? Like, what’s something you did that worked really well? Or what’s something you did that just went horribly wrong? Those might be more entertaining. So drop your answer in the comments, and we’ll get to those later.
I also want to let you guys know that if you have any questions about anything that I’m talking about here today, just ask away, ask in the comments, and I’ll get to all your questions. before we’re finished here today.
Okay, so if anything comes up for you, and you’re like, you know what, how did that work? Or what do you mean by that? Like, just ask, ask away, okay, that’s what we’re here for the interaction, okay?
I do this podcast or I’m talking into a microphone. I like these lives where we get to have a conversation, okay, where you get to ask the questions, and I can answer them live. That’s super fun for me. So feel free to ask questions. Okay.
So, what did I do differently this time around? So, like I said, most of the last year and a half of training for me, I’ve done now.
Two, I’ve done through three marathons and a 50k. So three marathons and an ultra marathon in the last year basically, and all three of these, or four of these, events have been you know, done as a low carb fat-adapted athlete, okay.
Within that, you know, those parameters of being fat-adapted and low carb, there are lots of different ways of doing things. Okay, so it just doesn’t mean like you never eat anything, it just doesn’t mean you’re eating nothing.
But you know, steaks, you know, for your training and stuff like that. Steaks and sticks of butter, although pretty delicious. Melt some butter on a ribeye steak, there’s really nothing better. So the fueling strategies can be different for all these different kinds of events.
But within the parameters of a low carb endurance athlete, a low carb fat-adapted runner, I’ve done some things a little bit differently. So last year, I did a marathon at this time of the year. Zero calories I did a 50k zero calories, and then I did my marathon in the spring, basically zero calories.
And those three events were fantastic. I felt amazing, especially the last marathon that I did. And I ran that one a little bit harder actually had sort of a time goal. And I felt amazing. So that last marathon was sort of the culmination of for me what it felt like to be a truly fat-adapted athlete, and not really needing any fuel.
So for me, and I’m not crushing goal times here, I’m not qualifying for Boston or anything like that. I ran a 4:15 in the spring. And that was really good for me. And I was pushing the pace. And I had to step up my game a little bit for that one. And I felt amazing.
And again, no, like carb-loading before that event, actually, my ramp-up to that event, I made a point to like, pretty much eat zero carbs. So I talked about this on a podcast called Zero Carb Marathon Training.
And I basically went carnivore for about 40 days leading up to that marathon. And felt amazing, and it was a great experience, okay. And so when, when it came time to do this next marathon, I thought I could do the same thing, and feel the same way and sort of stay in that carnivore sort of mode, and just see how that goes.
But I didn’t want to do that I was actually really interested in getting some carb adaptation, okay. So when you’re fat-adapted, and you’re really good at burning fat and your low-carb athlete, if you want to start incorporating carbohydrates back into your strategy, you have to practice with it and do it for a while.
So you have to sort of get yourself carb-adapted again. And so I made a point to add more carbs in for this training cycle. So what does that mean? Like, what am I talking about?
Was I eating a bunch of cupcakes and stuff like that? No, it’s not that kind of carbs, I wasn’t eating sugar, I’m not eating processed flour and stuff like that.
I was eating more salads, I was eating more avocados, I was eating more yogurt, and some berries, like I love like yogurt with strawberries, and blueberries, nuts.
And then the day before or two days before and the day before my long runs, I would incorporate more slow-burning carbohydrates like wild rice, and sweet potatoes, that’s kind of my go to has been my go-to.
So this was a pretty intentional strategy for me over the last 12 weeks or so, you know, maybe longer than that. Really just to kind of ramp up during this marathon training, because I wanted to make sure that my body could also use the carbohydrates as fuel.
So when you’re really good at burning fat, and then you start introducing some carbohydrates into the mix, you’re not really efficient, and bringing the carbs and having the carbohydrates in the system kind of shuts down the fat burning the efficiency of the fat burning.
So we just have to be careful with this sort of approach. Like if you’re a super fat-adapted athlete, and you’re like, oh, I just want to like run harder, run a better time or something like that.
And you start adding in a bunch of carbs, like just the day before your marathon or something like that, and you haven’t been training this way, you’re not going to have a good experience.
And this was my take when I first started introducing carbs back into my training, I noticed a little bit of a downturn in my performance. So that was one thing that I would say was a negative.
And that was something that I did not enjoy. I didn’t enjoy adding the carbs in and then having this more of a sluggish feeling. Okay. So I pressed on, though, because I’m like, okay, I need to really do this. And I know it’s hard. And I know it doesn’t feel good, but I’m just gonna continue doing it.
Kind of like we do when we get fat-adapted, you have to kind of push through, there’s like three, four weeks of really tough running. Well, I kind of experienced the same thing when I started incorporating carbs back into the mix. So I found that very interesting.
And I’ve done a bunch of reading on this a bunch of research on it, and it’s totally normal. It’s like, part of the process. Okay. So, if you if you’re desiring to add carbohydrates into your marathon training strategy and into your marathon fueling strategy, you have to train with them for I would say a few months leading up to this, okay.
So that’s something that I just wanted to make sure you guys kind of understood and that it is something you can’t just you don’t want to just like incorporate it in the last minute.
Like, you know, you’ve been training super low carb all season and then all of a sudden, drop a bunch of carbs into the mix the night before your marathon and think it’s going to help you because it could really hinder your performance, at least for that one event. So that was interesting.
And the other thing that I started doing this training season and I experimented with, I started using a line of products called S fuels. So S fuels makes endurance, fuel for endurance for low carbon dirt, athletes fuel for low carbon endurance athletes, so the fuel that they have is mostly kind of fat and protein-based.
So MCT oil, amino acids, electrolytes, and they have different types of fuels. So they have a product called Train, which is something you add to water, it’s got a very, you know, water-like consistency, tastes great, and fat and amino acids and electrolytes, great for like, you know, two, three hour runs four or five hours, whatever it is, you can just kind of take that as you go.
They have another product called Race Plus, which has some slow-burning carbohydrates in there, as well as the fat and protein. And electrolytes, that would be something that you would, you know, kind of practice with and use for your events that you want to like run harder and run a little bit faster.
Okay, that’s really not my strategy to run super fast, but I played around with the fuel just to try it out. And then they make another product called Life Bars. And the life bars are basically well, they’re delicious. And they’re like chewy bars are made with like, almond butter or nut butter, cacao nibs and they have the MCT oil and amino acids and things like that.
So it’s kind of like the equivalent of like the fat and protein like you would eat almond butter or something like that. But it’s a little easier to, you know, chew up and swallow.
The almond butter can be a bit of a problem because it’s super thick. And if you’re trying to eat that, while you’re running, it’s difficult.
Somebody posted a comment about that. I think today, they were like I had to drink a lot of water with that almond butter just to get it down. It’s like yeah, it’s a bit much.
So S fuels makes a whole line of products, they make a recovery drink with like a protein powder. And listen, these guys don’t sponsor me or anything like that. I should talk to them about that though, right? Yeah, I probably should.
But, um, so I’m not like getting I’m not trying to like get you guys to go by this, I’m just giving you an example of something that I use that works pretty well for me.
Okay, so I practice with these fuels during the training season. And I enjoyed them I think they are spot on because what you’re doing is you’re adding the fat and the protein in which is what you really want as a low carb athlete.
You want that sort of exogenous fat, the fat that you eat, and the protein helps to keep your keep you feeling good and, and keep the fat-burning going.
So when you’re efficient at burning fat, you can burn the fat that you’re eating as well as for fuel, right. So that’s why we want to keep our fuel intake to the fats and proteins and not the carbohydrates when we’re trying to stay fat adapted and stay in that fat burning zone and really maximize fat burning. Okay.
So for the race itself by I did a life bar beforehand. And I did the Train product and some electrolyte drink. And I did some of the Race Plus beforehand. So I had a little bit of carbs in me, I did some carb-loading the days before I did a bunch of sweet potatoes and wild rice and stuff like that.
And I really wanted to like prime the tanks with glycogen, you know, make sure that I topped up my glycogen levels and got into the marathon. And I have to tell you – so this is the one thing that I noticed that was different from the last three long events that I did.
Where I did them unfold basically, the one thing that I noticed is that I felt very sluggish for the first half of the marathon. Like the first 12-13 miles I was not feeling it.
And you know, I was maintaining a decent pace and listen, we were out there just to have a good time. We had done the 10K and the 5K the day before. And so this was sort of just a fun run for us. Me and some friends we hung out together. We had a great time. It was super fun.
We all helped each other get across the finish line, but I just wasn’t feeling it for about the first half. The longer I was out there, the better I felt. And so this tells me something, this tells me that I probably had more glycogen on board at the beginning.
And as I burn through that, I got more efficient with the fat burning. And I felt better. And I had more energy and more stamina. And I just, I finished feeling much stronger than I did at the beginning of the event. So that was something I thought was really interesting. And I did not like that.
So for me, my biggest takeaway from the actual marathon itself, was that next time, I’m probably going to do away with the carb-loading and the training with the higher carbs, you know because it didn’t give me the boost that I thought it would.
I thought though, beginning half of the marathon, I would have like more energy and feel better. And then the second half, I would, you know, sort of be feeling a little bit more tired or whatever. But it was exactly the opposite. It’s very fascinating.
Again, now, this is an experiment of one. So this is my experience with this, I’m not saying you would have the exact same experience if you did the same thing. Certainly, try it and see how it works for you.
So if you’re if your goal is to run a super fast marathon, maybe some sort of carbohydrate loading would be a good strategy for you to try. For me. I wasn’t trying to run a super fast marathon just like slow and steady, and it didn’t really work for me. Okay, just keep that in mind.
Okay, so definitely try something, some of these things, and see what works for you. But my biggest takeaway was that I didn’t like the feeling of eating the carbs, you know, the sweet potatoes and the rice and stuff like that prior to the event.
I did enjoy the s fuels, I think they helped. And I think that’s what sort of got me like through the event. I did take another life bar with me because I wanted the extra fuel. But I didn’t want to have to mix a drink. I didn’t want to carry a water bottle with me.
And I was trying to do this as like as Spartan as possible. So the only thing I took with me was salt tablets and the life bar. And that was like my fueling strategy during the event.
Now, here’s my other very interesting takeaway. I usually fuel with Elementi Element, the electrolyte mix from Elemental Labs. I love this stuff, I’ve been training with it for a couple of years now. Never had any problems.
I decided, for this training season, I was going to practice using like, what is it called salt stick tablets, like the little capsules with electrolytes, because I didn’t want to have to carry a water bottle with me. During the marathon again, I was just trying something different. So I practice using the salt tablets and they were okay.
Honestly, I do better with more sodium, electrolytes, sodium, potassium, magnesium, the element product has just a very high amount of sodium – 1000 milligrams of sodium per packet. And something like 400-600 milligrams of potassium and magnesium.
So the electrolyte profile is very high. And something fascinating I learned recently is that when we’re exercising, when you’re out there running a marathon, you lose something like 1200 milligrams of sodium per hour, per hour.
So you need to be replacing that and the salt tablets that I was taking either I probably wasn’t taking enough of them, or they didn’t have enough sodium so the sodium content was lower, and I didn’t take as many.
So I think I did something like two salt tabs every four or five miles maybe two every hour or something like that, every 45 minutes or two an hour and I thought that would be sufficient.
I kind of did the math but because the electrolyte profile is different in those things. I don’t know, I probably could have done better with a water bottle just carry a water bottle and take my own electrolyte drink with me.
So there are different ways we can do this stuff. I was just trying to like not have to carry a water bottle with me. You can carry a backpack, mix up your electrolyte drink in your Camelback or whatever. And then you can just like sip on it the whole during the race.
You can carry it in a water bottle and keep refilling it if you want to. That’s what I’ve done in the past and has always worked really well for me. But again, I was just trying some different things this time just to see what works so that I could share it with you like I’m doing right now. So that’s something else I would do differently.
Next time, I’d probably just carry my water bottle like I’m used to doing, it does take a little bit of extra time at the water stops to, you know, unscrew the top, open up the packet, pour it in, get the water, and you got to sort of dork around with that at the water stops.
But you know, if the electrolyte that you’re using isn’t really working for you, you need to fix that, like, it’s super important to make sure that we’re getting enough electrolytes during these events. It was a great day, it wasn’t super hot, but still, we sweat out, like, close to 1200 milligrams of sodium per hour. So you got to be replacing that up there.
Okay. So, all in all, I’m gonna say this, we had a super fun time at the event, I felt better the second half of the marathon than I did during the first half. And I have to tell you guys that, you know, we did this thing where we ran the 10k and the 5k, the day before, so I was starting this marathon on tired legs already.
And so that has to be sort of factored into all of this too. Okay, so that’s typically not recommended to do like a nine-mile shakeout run the day before your marathon. So that has to be sort of factored into all this stuff, okay.
But what I would do differently next time, I think next time, I’m going to stick with my low carb during training season and not introduce the carbs and not try to do any carb-loading or not try to become more metabolically flexible.
So metabolic flexibility is where you can use more fat and carbohydrates more efficiently, but you got to like work through that and you got to really get good at that. And maybe I didn’t do it the right way.
Or maybe I didn’t do it long enough. Whatever the case is, for me, the way that we’re I’m sitting here today, looking back on the last year of events, the ones where I did the best is where I didn’t do any carb-loading and I didn’t do any fueling during you know.
I would say you know, maybe the next time I just add the s fuels products, which I think are pretty amazing. And nothing else. So just kind of stick with those. And that way I’m just getting a little bit of extra boost you know, that might help with the longer distance stuff especially when you start getting into like a marathon distance.
So that’s kind of the recap I’m going to go through your questions you guys and find out kind of what questions you have.
So Gene says, “Fat for fuel, no glucose.” Good job. Awesome. “Ran three marathons fat-adapted, no fuel just electrolytes and water felt good.”
Yeah, me too. Gene. I’m with you on that approach. Okay.
Let’s see Bill says. “Sorry 10k is the farthest I’ve done.” Don’t be sorry 10k is awesome! “Always fasted so started training that way and will continue.”
Awesome. Yeah. Never apologize for your resistance distances right you guys like our people say oh, I only ran the half. Like team, you ran a half marathon! That’s awesome.
Let’s see Zoey says, “Fueled and hydrated better on days leading up to the second marathon compared to first.”
Yeah, lighter meals less carbs had less gels. Ricard also, yeah. Lots of whey isolate chocolate shakes.
Yeah. I do a little protein supplement here, especially after hard strength sessions for sure. Denise did a gel, wants to try peanut butter cups, wants to carb bounce protein wraps. These are all solo marathons or ultras, there is no difference to water only interesting. But I ran my first in-person marathon in December. Thanks for your vices. Absolutely, Denise.
Yeah. So that’s interesting. So you’re actually trying a bunch of different things. And I think this is super important. You’ve got to figure out what works for you. You know, and so, I think we put too much emphasis on like, we have everything has to be perfect every single time.
I purposely do things just to find out like, how does it how’s it gonna feel? You know, I may crash and burn. That was definitely a possibility. The way I was fueling for this marathon, I was like thinking to myself like this may not go well.
Especially that first half I was feeling kind of sluggish. And I was like, oh, this may not go well. But I was like, you know what, I’m gonna just try it. I gotta try different things.
Josh says, “Trying to consume less carbs for my train this time.” Yeah. Give it a shot. Denise says, “I can relate to this. I ran 400 miles in October.” Nice job. “So I just did some carb loading because I thought it might help to maintain the training load, now a week later still feel sluggish. Oh, yeah. I’ll get off the sugar again and see what happens.”
Yeah. Here’s the thing. If you want to get off the sugar like it’s a process like you got to get fat adapted you have to go through that, that sluggish period, where, you know, you get off of sugar, processed carbs, and you’ve got to keep your carb, you know, intake pretty low for anywhere from 2-6 weeks. You know it averages about three weeks, 21 days or so. And that’s where training is very sluggish. It’s very hard.
Don’t do this a couple of weeks before your event, like make sure you start this process at the beginning of your training season or in the offseason, get fat-adapted, and then start your training for your big event.
Because once you’re fat-adapted, the training is going to be so much easier, you’re going to get stronger, faster, and you’re going to be like, super efficient at burning fat and you’re just going to kick ass at your event.
Let’s see. Kim says, “Hi from Canada. I love my element. And I’m excited to start trying s fuels.” Yeah.
And then Marianne, “Any suggestions for after the race food feel like I should be allowed to eat anything? But I get tummy trouble doing that?”
Okay. So that’s such a good question, Marianne. So here’s my take on it. After a marathon, I do give myself a little bit of permission to indulge a little bit. But here’s what I mean by indulging.
Okay, you guys are gonna laugh because here’s me indulging. So after the marathon, it was Halloween. And so I went to my son’s house and in the main room and Halloween, with the family and stuff like that.
And they made his big batch of chili, you know, with ground beef and stuff like that, but it had beans in it. And I’m like, I’m eating beans, I’m just going to go ahead and eat all these beans, this thing was loaded with carbohydrates right in the form of beans, well, I’m gonna eat it.
So that was me, carb-loading or whatever you want to call it, like carbing it up after my marathon. But that’s, like, that’s not a big deal. That is not a big deal, right? Usually my go-to would be something like tacos, I love tacos. So we’d go out and have chips and salsa and tacos or something like that. That’s going kind of off the deep end for me.
But listen, you get to decide what you want to do for yourself. And so if you want to indulge a little bit, here’s my suggestion for you. Plan ahead, just make sure you’re planning ahead.
And you’re not just you know, giving into the moment, you know, because if people are eating pizza and ice cream and a bunch of junk around you, and you’re like just getting into that and stuffing your face and it makes you feel terrible.
Don’t do that. Okay, plan ahead what you want to do. So if your post-marathon go to is something like tacos or whatever do that. Honestly, for me, like an indulgent thing for me, or something that really makes me feel good is eating a big ribeye steak and eating that.
And I do this pretty often. And so that’s sort of a way of treating myself and it tastes great, but it doesn’t throw me off my game. You know, it’s a fun thing to do. It’s indulgent. And it’s part of my plan.
And I plan it and I just keep doing that. Bill says, “Yeah, it hurts not to be perfect.” Yeah, he’s talking about the 10K’s. Yeah, but you’re awesome, so there!
Kristen says, “This is my first marathon fat adapted. And I felt great. Even with the racing the day before.” Super awesome. Kristen, you did such a great job, too. And Kristin went through the whole fat adaptation process. And she, her running improved like crazy.
She became this badass runner that she knew was inside her. And she was like, I’m determined to make this happen. And she did. And then she showed up. Kristen actually lives in Cincinnati, and I saw her after the marathon. So that was super fun. So good stuff, you guys.
I hope you all learned something from this. I hope you got a little something out of this. I hope that me taking one for the team here helps you guys kind of learn maybe what to do maybe what not to do, or maybe something some things that you can try for yourselves because it is fun to try this stuff. It’s fun to experiment.
Listen, we take ourselves pretty seriously. Sometimes we take running pretty seriously sometimes. And I’m at this place in my life where I’m like, I just want to have fun with this, you know, and if that means trying a different feeling strategy, see how it goes. Just so I can like, share my experiences with you guys. So be it. It’s fun for me to do this stuff.
Okay. Next time though, I’m going to kind of go back to my more low-carb ways and more. Just kind of sticking with the non-carb fueling strategy that I’ve done in the past that’s just worked so well for me and increase the electrolyte intake.
I think those are my biggest sort of fuels you know or biggest takeaways from my dueling strategy. Cool. All right, you guys. Well, everybody, enjoy the rest of your amazing Sunday afternoon.
I don’t know about you guys, but here, it’s just gorgeous. You know, it’s something like 63 degrees, super sunny outside, the leaves are changing colors. It’s this amazing time of the year. I love it. We’re getting into the holidays.
And in the coming weeks, I’m going to be talking about how we get through the holidays. This is going to be a good topic for us coming up. Okay. How do we survive the holidays?
You know, what does it mean to get through like Thanksgiving, which is all about indulging in food, right? Like, how do we get through a holiday with that without totally losing our minds, you know, without totally like, screwing up everything good that we’ve done for ourselves up to this point, right?
So we’ll be getting into topics like that. And then how do we get through the winter because it’s gonna start getting colder and darker. And how do we get through the crazy holiday season that is looming just in front of us?
Okay, so you guys all have an amazing day. We’re going to have some fun over the next several weeks here. Okay, if you have any other questions, drop them in the comments here and I’ll get to them soon. Okay, great seeing you guys all on here. Everybody. Have a great afternoon and talk to you soon. Bye.
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Runners love to get their drink on! They are especially passionate about coffee, beer, and their magical sports drinks. In this episode of the Running Lean Podcast, I’ll be covering a few …
Continue Reading about 60. Beverages: The Good and the Bad for Long-Distance Running →
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.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 60 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’m talking about beverages, getting our drink on runners love to get their drink on. And they are especially passionate about certain drinks like alcohol, coffee, and their magical sports drinks.
So in this episode of the Running Lean podcast, I’m going to be covering a few of these beverages, the ones that seem to get the most attention, namely, alcohol, coffee, and water. And these seem to be the ones that are most talked about amongst runners, the ones with some misunderstandings, alright, so by the end of this episode, I want you to have a much better understanding of what’s good and what’s bad about these drinks, and how they will absolutely affect your long-distance running.
So if you haven’t already checked it out, come find us on Facebook, we’ve got this amazing Running Lean community on Facebook. And right now, we’re kind of in the middle of our February, low carb challenge, it’s a 28-day challenge to just ditch some of the problematic carbohydrates.
You know, I’m kind of biased here, I talk a lot about low carb running a low carb approach to endurance sports, and, and weight loss. And it’s a really great fit for a lot of people. It’s not for everybody, I get that. But I want to expose more people to this.
So I created this challenge in the Facebook group. And a lot of people that have never done anything like this before are jumping in and trying it out. And some people are having some great results. They’re feeling good, they’re losing some weight running starting to get easier.
And so that’s why I do things like these challenges in the Facebook group. So we can have a place where we can kind of come together and try some of these things, and get the support and the encouragement that we need from like-minded runners.
And so we’re all in this together, right? We are all doing this together. It’s a challenge. It’s called a challenge because it’s hard. It’s hard to get started with something like this. But if you want to jump in, you can still jump in and we can talk about that. And you can ask questions and get the support that you need. Just go to Facebook search for Running Lean community, and join the group.
And the other thing I wanted to mention quickly is that what I do here on this podcast and in my Facebook group, is to help spread the message about becoming healthy, as healthy as we can be as endurance athletes. You know, I think there’s this misconception that just because you run a lot means you’re super healthy. And that’s really not the case, you know.
And so my message here is that you know, I experienced ill health, I got really overweight and sick and fat and I was really unhappy as an endurance athlete as an ultra runner. And I had to make some changes in my diet and in my mindset. And that’s what I teach here. And that’s what I do in my coaching programs to help people make changes in their life.
I help people, I guide people towards better health, you know, mentally, physically, and emotionally. So if you’re looking for something a little more than just what you get from this podcast, or maybe in the Facebook group, then I’m here for you, okay, you’re working one on one with me, you can get the individual guidance and support that you need.
You know, we can put together a metabolic profile for you, we can dial in your macros, we can help you become fat-adapted, and we can work on your mindset. And we can do this in a way that supports you and your long-term health and fitness goals. I’ll be there for you. I’ll be your guide. I’ll be there to encourage you. I’ll be there to help you do things you don’t want to do so you can become the person that you want to be.
Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/coaching and you can apply to work one on one with me we’ll jump on a call with see if it’s a good fit for each other. There’s no cost there’s no obligation for this call. It’s just a chance for you and I to talk and see if it’s a good fit. Okay, and if it’s if it’s a good fit great if it’s not no big deal, runningleanpodcast.com/coaching to apply.
And here’s a recent five-star review of the Running Lean podcast. I love reading these, by the way. And this was from TFabula. And she says, “Inspiration, knowledge and a complete package, Patrick gives you a full bodied approach, that might be the inspiration you need, from your mental approach to your physical goals. Pick a few and listen in I promise you will learn something to improve your life.”
I love these kinds of reviews. Thank you, T Fabula. And if you feel like sharing the love, I’d really appreciate it. If you enjoyed this podcast, if you get something out of it, it would mean so much to me if you could just take a moment to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. And I’ll read it right here on the show. Cool. Awesome.
All right, let’s talk about these beverages the good and the bad for long-distance running. And the first one I want to talk about is water. So water is one of those things where we’re like, Well, yeah, obviously, you have to drink water or you will die, right? But there’s a little bit more to it, especially when we talk about endurance sports.
Okay, so I want to get into this a little bit here. The truth of the matter is that most people just don’t drink enough water. Right? You know, they say, oh, you got to drink eight glasses of water a day. And that may not be right for everybody. But water plays a very huge role in our, in our health. And it’s often overlooked.
Okay, so here’s a little bit of background, which I think this is really fascinating. Every single cell in your body contains water. In fact, your cells contain around 60% of all the water that’s in your body is in your cells, okay. And then different parts of your body contain different percentages of water. And this is the part that I found super fascinating.
So your brain is anywhere from 80 to 85%. Water, your muscles are somewhere between 70 and 75%. Water, your skin is also 70 to 75% Water, your blood is half water 50% Water, even your bones contain 20 to 25% water. This is crazy. Every part of your body contains water, everything in your body needs water to operate efficiently.
If you don’t give your body enough water you cannot function properly. We know this right? But here’s something maybe you didn’t know, water can actually help you with your weight loss. And with your fat burning. There was a study done in the journal obesity, and found that drinking adequate amounts of water can actually trigger the release of stored body fat.
So water will actually help pull your body fat out of fat cells. Another study found that water can actually increase your resting metabolic rate through a process called water-induced thermogenesis. And basically, the way this works is that if you drink about 16 ounces of water within a few minutes, you can temporarily boost your metabolic rate by as much as 30%.
And this increase in your metabolic rate seems to last for about 30 or 40 minutes. And you could do this several times a day. So basically, every time you drink about a pint of water, you’re increasing your metabolic rate a little bit. So drinking water, which is completely calorie-free, actually causes you to burn calories. Fascinating, right?
Well, let’s talk about performance and drinking water because one thing we know is that dehydration is a problem and is not good for endurance athletes, right? Dehydration can severely impact your performance. And here’s something I want to talk about when it comes to drinking during endurance activities.
So a lot of times we just focus on these like sports drinks, right? And a lot of sports drinks are just nothing but sugar. Okay. So they have done these studies and they found that if you’re consuming more carbohydrates than water during exercise, this can actually cause dehydration.
Sugar in the blood like high levels of sugar in the blood will actually cause water to move out of cells in order to equalize the water sugar balance right to equalize the concentration of sugar in your blood. So this can result in potentially dangerous dehydration.
So it’s kind of recommended that athletes during endurance activities lasting anywhere from 45 minutes on, should consume water, obviously, but nothing that’s more than 8% carbohydrate. Okay, so just keep that in mind.
Okay, so a little bit, you know, maybe helpful. But a lot can be very can actually be dangerous, right, so you got to be careful with that. One caveat I want to mention here about sports drinks, because sports drinks typically contain very high amounts of sugar. And liquid sugar, the liquid form of carbohydrate is probably the worst thing you can put in your body. Most sports drinks are not much different than like, Mountain Dew, right? They’re just full of sugar.
And the reason why they’re so bad for you, any kind of a soft drink or super sugary drink is that your body does not recognize the calories that are coming in. Like, if you drink a big Monster energy drink with whatever it is, I don’t even know how much sugar they put in those things.
But I saw a comparison and there was something like 27 teaspoons of sugar in one monster, that’s a lot of sugar, right, you could not eat that much sugar even in you know, crystallized form, like you, couldn’t eat a bowl of just like sugar granules like that. But you can drink it very, very easily. This is very dangerous.
This is why so many people become severely overweight and obese by drinking their sugar. Because your body doesn’t recognize the calories coming in, you can consume massive amounts of carbohydrates, all that stuff gets just stored as fat. And it’s a vicious cycle. So you got to be careful with the liquid sugar.
All right, this raises your blood sugar like crazy when you drink this stuff. Insulin goes up like crazy, you’re just like in fat storage mode all the time drinking this stuff. So you got to be careful. I’m not saying you can never have a sports drink or whatever like you got to be careful with it though.
If you’re somebody who’s overweight or you’re having a hard time losing weight, you may want to like reconsider these things, you know, or dilute them heavily or just ditch them altogether in favor of something else. And I’ll talk about an alternative in just a moment.
Okay, so that’s kind of the whole like sports string thing. We do need to drink water during exercise, right? It’s obviously important, we don’t want to get dehydrated. One other kind of side of this is drinking too much water like there’s actually a thing where you can drink too much water.
And this came to light, you know, a few decades ago and endurance athletes were starting to suffer from something called hyponatremia, which is basically you don’t have enough sodium in your blood. And this is mainly due to overdrinking water. Just plain water without any electrolytes in it.
When you over-drink water, you dilute your blood of sodium. And if you are drinking way too much water during an endurance event, and you’re sweating like crazy. And you’re just consuming tons of water and not replacing the electrolytes you can risk getting dangerously low levels of sodium and that’s called hyponatremia.
If you start getting headaches or feeling nauseous, you’re feeling confused or heavy fatigue and not just the fatigue from like running a marathon but you know, like really rundown, this is the sign that electrolytes are out of balance and you need to fix this right away. Okay, so make sure you’re getting electrolytes and this is kind of the key here to water consumption during sports activities is making sure you’re getting the right electrolytes.
So we evolved as humans by drinking you know, water that was naturally occurring from springs and things like that. And there was heavy, heavy mineral content and salt content and they were fine like and it was great. Today though, all our water is super treated filtered.
My water coming out of my tap sometimes just it tastes like chlorine. It’s gotta like figure something out with this because it is it does not seem like it’s all that healthy. So I’m working on that, I prefer mineral water. And if you can get some good mineral water, that’s probably better but if you’re getting your water tested I might have my water tested and see what’s going on in there.
But most municipal water is probably not super awesome. And hey, listen, if you work for the Cincinnati, you know waterworks, you know, no hatred for you or anything like that, but I don’t know why my water tastes like chlorine anyway, that’s a little sidebar, but get good water, you know, make sure you’re drinking good water.
And the other thing is like, we got to make sure we’re replacing the electrolytes, especially during exercise, right? You have to replace the electrolytes, right? We’re talking mostly about sodium, magnesium, and potassium. And when you’re participating in some sort of long-distance running, and you’re sweating, even if you don’t feel like you’re sweating a whole lot, you could still be losing a lot of these necessary electrolytes.
All right, so a couple of the products that I really love and talk a lot about the first one is LMNT by elemental labs, like I don’t get paid to like talk about this, but it’s just a good product. And I use it and I recommend it to people. And basically, it’s just those three electrolytes sodium, magnesium, and potassium with a little bit of stevia and some flavoring. So there’s no sugar in there at all.
Noon, N-O-ON makes a product that’s similar, but you just got to make sure you get the ones that don’t have sugar added to it. I don’t know if Noon has some that contain sugar or not. But I know LMNT does not. So just be careful of the sugar content in this stuff.
But these powders or tabs, the noon or tabs elementi is powder, you just add them to your water and take it on your run. And you’re good to go. You know you need to like kind of dial in what’s going to work best for you. But especially if you’re like a low-carb athlete, which is like something we talk about a lot here, right?
Since our insulin levels are lower, your kidneys may be excreting more salt and potassium, and magnesium. So you want to make sure that you are replacing that. Now, of course, you can eat more foods that contain these micronutrients, like avocados, almonds, dark leafy greens, stuff like that.
But it’s a good idea to just go ahead and supplement with something like LMNT, especially during those long-distance activities where you’re going to be depleting your body of some of these key electrolytes, right.
So the other thing people ask is like, well, how much water should we be drinking, Patrick? The whole eight glasses a day? Is this the right amount for everybody just in general? And honestly, yeah, here’s the here’s a good way you can kind of figure out how much water you should be drinking.
Just take your body weight, divided in half. And that’s how many ounces you should try to drink each day. That’s pretty close. Like, for me, I weigh 165 pounds. If I divide that by two that’s 82.5 ounces of water per day, or around five pints or 16 ounces in a pint.
So I have this pint glass, which I got for finishing my 100 miler. It’s got the hallucination 100 logo on it, it’s cool. So that’s what you get, when you run 100 miles you get a pint glass, oh, I got a belt buckle too which is amazing. But anyway, so I have this pint glass and I just tried to fill it up and drink it down like five times a day. And I’m good to go.
Another good idea is just to carry a water bottle around with you and just you know, keep it full and just you know drink around your weight divided by two, that’s how many ounces you should be drinking per day. Right? That’s a pretty good estimate.
Because the eight glasses a day doesn’t really work for everybody. How, how big is the glass, you know? And depends on your body weight. And as well like you could be six foot six, you’re gonna need to drink more water than somebody who’s five foot two, you know what I mean? So that’s a good way to just kind of figure that out.
And what about during exercise? How much water should we be drinking during exercise? Well, it’s recommended to drink some water, like maybe 14 to 20 ounces, around two hours before exercise, and make sure you’re hydrated going into your endurance activity. And then somewhere between six and 12 ounces every 15 to 20 minutes during.
Now, obviously, this is going to vary depending on your body composition. How much you sweat, the environment. Is it hot? Is it human? Is it dry? Is it super cold? how intensely are you running? What’s your nutritional status like all these things matter?
So you need to experiment during your training. Don’t experiment on race day, right? Experiment during your training and see what It works best for you. And then you can just include some of these electrolytes in the water and, and you’re good to go.
Another good thing to do with water is to start your day with water. So we tend to kind of dehydrate ourselves while we’re sleeping. Unless you’re one of those people that gets up in the middle of the night to drink water some people do, it’s fine. But the first thing you do when you get up in the morning, it’s a good idea to just drink a big glass of water.
So I do this every single day. First thing I do when I wake up, I get up and I mix in a little bit of sea salt, like maybe half a teaspoon of sea salt, and a little bit of apple cider vinegar in a big 16 ounce glass of water and I just chug it down, I do this while I’m making my coffee.
And it’s a great way to rehydrate and start my day. You know, you’re rehydrating your muscles, your organs, your brain, everything. And so that’s, that’s a good way to start your day. Okay. So that’s my, my take on water, it’s important, we have to have it, we probably don’t get enough. And the electrolytes are kind of the key, especially for us long-distance runners.
So the next beverage I want to talk about, and this is the one where I’m probably gonna get some people that like, are not happy about this, but I want to talk about alcohol. And I thought about doing a whole podcast just about alcohol, and I thought this is going to be too much of a downer.
People aren’t going to like this. So um, I’m squeezing it in the middle here. But here’s the thing, the chemical compound, and alcohol that makes it what it is called ethanol. So this is the primary compound that makes alcohol, you know, alcohol. Ethanol is also used as fuel for cars. Alright, because it is highly volatile.
The molecule ethanol, we’re just talking about at a molecular level here. Ethanol is a toxic compound. Obviously, the dosage matters, though, right? This toxic compound affects everybody negatively to some degree. Right? Some people can handle it fine. Other people cannot, it has a problem, they have a big problem with it.
I want to make sure that you understand that I’m really just talking about the science behind alcohol here. And not really, this is not a moral thing or anything like that. And I’ll talk a little bit more about my experience with alcohol in a minute and drinking in general.
But just know that this isn’t a moral discussion. And this is not about, you know, whether or not you should drink, like you get to decide for yourself but I want you to have this information. And this is, especially as it relates to long-distance running. Okay. So you know, some people can handle alcohol and some people can’t, but just know that it is a toxic compound, and it has a negative effect on us to some degree.
And here are some of the things that that I’ll mention some of the negative effects of alcohol. So alcohol is kind of, it’s kind of turned into fat, right? When you drink alcohol, the byproducts of that metabolizing that alcohol are converted to fatty acids, which are stored in the liver and stored in your bloodstream. This is not good. This could put you at higher risk for heart disease.
But this alcohol that gets turned into sugar, it like spikes, your blood sugar spikes your insulin, it puts your body into that fat storage mode. We know that when insulin is high, you’re in fat storage mode. So it’s basically like drinking sugar in a way, right? It’s basically like drinking carbohydrates. But it’s it has, it’s much more potent.
In fact, you know, alcohol is fermented carbohydrates, right? So the way you make alcohol is you take some carbohydrates like grapes, or grains and you ferment it. The crazy thing is though, during that process of fermentation, you basically intensify the caloric intake of those carbohydrates by 175%.
So alcohol delivers 175% more calories than the pre-fermented source of carbohydrates. So that’s something interesting. Alcohol was also an anti-nutrients. So since alcohol is void of any nutrients, vitamins, and minerals, it ends up robbing your body of the micronutrients, so it can assimilate and metabolize the alcohol, right?
So this depletes your body of essential nutrients that you need to maintain good health. So alcohol sort of pulls these things out of your body, right? Alcohol seems to diminish your body’s ability to absorb other nutrients as well. And I think of it like this, like, why are we going to spend all our time eating healthy and having a super healthy diet, and then drinking alcohol, just to pull a lot of these nutrients out of us? Right?
It kind of undermines the effort that we’re doing, we’re trying to eat healthy, okay. So this fact that we’re pulling nutrients out of our body as well will make us more prone to premature fatigue during our next exercise session, too. Okay, so this is one of the negative effects that alcohol has on running performance.
So some studies have shown that aerobic performance was diminished, especially the day after alcohol was consumed. So a study in the journal nutrients showed that drinking alcohol could reduce muscle strength. Another study showed that alcohol negatively impacts protein synthesis, meaning that, you know, if you’re trying to build muscle, it could throw out your progress.
Drinking alcohol actually impedes recovery as well. Especially if you drink too soon after a workout. It increases dehydration, it interferes with glycogen replenishing. And it inhibits the repair of muscle tissue by suppressing your production of HGH, human growth hormone, and testosterone.
The toxic impact of a single drink depresses the endocrine system pretty dramatically. So if you drink right after intense training, and exercise, the recovery from that training is basically canceled until your body metabolizes the alcohol and gets back to homeostasis. So when I see people run and they go out there and they do this, this awesome workout, and then they drink a couple of beers, right afterward, you know, a little party in the parking lot after the rmorning run.
You’re kind of undoing all the good work from that workout. Okay, so again, no judgment here. I just want you to know that alcohol can negatively affect your running. And we just have to be mindful of this.
rOkay, now, I am not trying to be a Debbie Downer about alcohol here, I’m not anti-alcohol, I think it’s fine. If you can handle it, do it, it’s fine. Just be careful. And just know that like, you can do too much. And it can be a problem. Now, I have to say this, I have not had alcohol in like 14 years, I’ve been sober for 14 years. I don’t drink anymore. But I used to drink a lot. I know how alcohol works, I know the effect that it can have on the human body, and I understand how good it makes you feel.
You know, it affects our brain, right? It releases dopamine, we get this buzz going. It helps us to relieve stress, it relaxes the central nervous system. And some people can tolerate it without any problems at all. Just know that some people cannot. And if you’re one of those people that cannot tolerate it, then well, even a little bit of alcohol can be a problem for some people, then I just want you to have this information and know that there are alternatives, you know, you don’t have to drink alcohol.
And sometimes I asked my clients, you know if when we start out working and we’re going to change their diet and get on a nutrition plan. And I say hey, would you be willing to give up alcohol for like 30 days, maybe? And sometimes they get a little freaked out. But then sometimes they do it and they just find it’s no big deal. They just don’t need it anymore. They don’t miss it.
If you find it hard to give up alcohol, you can always reach out to me, I can absolutely help you with that. The bottom line here. This is what I want you to know about this if you can tolerate it in small amounts without any issues, totally awesome. Do your thing.
But if you’re having a hard time losing weight, if your endurance is inhibited, if you’re not recovering well, if you’re not as strong as you’d like to be these all might be signs that you could use a break from alcohol and see what happens. All right. So again, don’t send me hate mail. I’m not anti-alcohol, but I think we need to be careful with alcohol, especially for long-distance running.
Okay, and then the last beverage I’m gonna talk about here. Now we’re gonna switch gears. We’re gonna get on a happy note. We’re going to talk about coffee. Okay, coffee is nature’s perfect drink. It’s nature’s perfect beverage if you ask me. We all know that coffee gives us energy everybody understands this right, but there are a lot of other benefits, especially for endurance athletes.
So one of the things I love about coffee is that it actually improves focus and concentration. And I know that you guys know what I’m talking about here, I absolutely love my morning coffee, that’s when I get the most creative work done. That’s when I feel the most alert the most on-point, you know, I can do my work, and I can concentrate really well.
And it’s really, really good for that focus and concentration. In fact, US special forces use coffee and caffeine especially to enhance their performance and awareness. So if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me. Coffee actually helps you to burn more fat too, which is just a bonus, I love this.
So coffee aids in fat burning and therefore helps you to lose weight. They did this study in the Journal of Nutrition, and they found that light to moderate coffee drinkers, so people who drank like, maybe one to four cups of coffee per day, had the lowest amount of visceral fat, that’s the fat that’s like, around our organs inside us, right?
Not the fat that we see on the outside, you know, under our skin, that subcutaneous fat, we’re talking about visceral fat, this is the really, this is the bad kind of fat, right? So people who drink one, four cups of coffee per day had the lowest amount of visceral fat compared to non-coffee drinkers, or compared to heavy coffee drinkers like you don’t want to go too far to that other end, you know, you don’t wanna be drinking, you know, 8 to 11 cups of coffee a day, like one to three, one to four seems to be kind of the sweet spot.
Another study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition shows that coffee can actually increase your metabolic rate anywhere from 3 to 11%. And most of this increase, they have directly linked to fat burning. So the way this works is that when you drink coffee, you release this certain type of stress hormone, it’s these hormones are called catecholamines.
And they’re like epinephrine, norepinephrine, or what used to be called adrenaline. So catecholamines help to release stored body fat, so it can be used for fuel. So in my opinion, if you want to become a fat-adapted athlete, then drinking coffee will really help this process, right, it’ll help to release the stored body fat that’s locked up in your fat cells. And allows you to use that for fuel, which is exactly what we’re talking about when we want to become fat adapted.
And there’s this other study, and this is kind of early research. But they did this study, where drinking coffee before exercise actually increased the release of stored body fat by as much as 30%, like a 30% increase in the amount of stored body fat that can be used for fuel. That’s pretty awesome, right?
So this is all good news, especially if you want to become a fat-adapted runner. Right? Drinking coffee seems to promote fat burning, and it should speed up your fat adaptation period. Right. So that’s all really good. Another thing that coffee helps with, is reducing inflammation.
Researchers at Harvard Medical School have shown that people who regularly drink coffee have lower levels of the inflammatory biomarkers. Which is amazing, because like inflammation is not good, right. And the scientists at Stanford actually recently showed that coffee helps to defend the body against a certain type of inflammation, which is age-related inflammation. They found that people who drank a few cups of coffee actually lived longer.
And were generally more healthy than noncoffee drinkers. And the caffeine in coffee helps to suppress the genes that are related to inflammation. So inflammation is a big problem. If you’re an endurance athlete, right? The act of running, just going out and running long distances will cause inflammation, and this is normal.
This is you know, your body trying to repair from a hard workout, right, you get a little bit inflamed, but that’s fine. If you can recover and then you’re not inflamed all the time. Chronic inflammation is a problem. This comes from doing too many hard workouts, not enough recovery time in between you’re not getting enough sleep.
Maybe your performance starts to decline your immune system becomes compromised, this could lead to burnout, even injury. So inflammation is not good, it can lead to a lot of problems. So anything that can help to reduce inflammation, I would say is good. Now, obviously, you don’t want to overtrain your nutrition has to be spot on, you got to get enough rest between workouts.
You gotta manage your stress, but coffee can definitely help reduce inflammation. I love this. Coffee has also been proven to improve endurance performance. Many, many studies have been done here on this, like, you cannot go on the internet without finding a study on the efficacy of caffeine and sports performance. One particular study showed that endurance runners who drank coffee were able to run 1.3 to 2 miles longer than the placebo group. That’s awesome.
And then in a study on cyclists, caffeine was shown to be more effective than even carbohydrates for improving their energy and performance. And then they did this 1500 meter run this time trial run. And they had two groups of people, one group drank coffee, the other drank decaf, so they didn’t know which they were drinking if it had caffeine or not.
And the coffee drinkers were on average, 4.2 seconds faster than those drinking decaf. That’s cool. And something interesting is that coffee helps to reduce your RPE, your rate of perceived exertion. So your rate of perceived exertion is a scale from like one to 10, you know, one being no exertion at all 10 being as hard as you can go.
And so coffee actually helps to reduce your rate of perceived exertion, which means you can work harder, you can run a little harder, a little faster without feeling like you’re working harder, which is amazing. So you can actually run faster, but not feel like you’re running faster. Who doesn’t want that?
Coffee also helps to spare muscle glycogen from being burned. So coffee promotes the mobilization of fat from fat stores to be used for energy, right, so you’re not tapping into your muscle glycogen as much for energy. So you will be able to carry more muscle glycogen so you can have more muscle glycogen available for longer periods of time.
Which is an amazing bonus for endurance athletes because if you can stave off using your stored muscle glycogen for fuel, you’d be able to run longer and harder without bonking and coffee just helps to enhance this whole process, you know, so you can burn more fat more efficiently.
And it spares you from you know, tapping into the muscle glycogen which is really cool. But what about if you hate coffee? What if you’re just like Patrick, I’m not a coffee drinker. I hate that stuff. I honestly I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I cannot relate. I love coffee. I love love, love my coffee and it’s important to get good coffee, you got to get good quality coffee I buy single-origin beans from Central America and I’m just in love with my coffee and love it, love it.
But if you cannot stand coffee, I get it I get it you know there are just some things that you don’t you just can’t get your arms around. There are other options like green tea, black tea both seem to have similar benefits right some of it is the caffeine but some of it has to do with things like catechins which are antioxidants in green tea.
That helps promote fat loss as well very similar to coffee but the bottom line around this one is that coffee is a great aid in fat loss fat burning weight loss it’s a great aid in endurance and long-distance running it’s also a great aid for faster running you know if you want to run a faster race so that is my take on beverages you know the good and the bad we got to drink water, alcohol yeah take it or leave it, just make sure you’re not overdoing it. Though coffee is good definitely good.
But all these things can be problematic in too much you know too much water can be a problem. You know too much alcohol is a problem too much coffees problem. We want to be mindful of these things. Okay, we can use these things to help us we can use these things to help our sports performance and help our mental state and help our weight loss but we just gotta be mindful. Okay.
I hope you all have an amazing day. I really, really do. And if you enjoyed this episode of the podcast and if you got something out But I would love it if you could share it with a friend. As always, lots of love, keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
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