I must make a note to pop in more often, had 67 carbs today, over on cals but I have counted a very large V&T I will have later, it is Saturday, my weekly treat.

Switching to lower carbs than before has resulted in me FINALLY getting under 30% body fat. I am pleased with the progress so I am going to try and stay around 100 grams carbs

DonP, I assume you know about SuperStarch:
http://www.generationucan.com/super.html

Peter Attia seems to like the stuff.

DonPendergraft wrote: »

I'm on the fence. I totally believe in the health benefits of the LCHF lifestyle, but full blown keto may not work well for my weekend long runs. I can stay below 25g/day during the week and go to 10 miles. But if I try 20 miles (or more) fasted, I don't know. It's not working. I can experiment some more. Perhaps I'm not fully adapted. Speaking of experiment, what I may try is staying very low during the week, eat some carbs before bed Friday night and go for a long run on Saturday morning and see what happens. It's still an experiment in progress. Even with the experiment, I'm fretting about what kind of carb to "load" with before bed. I hate the idea of carbs that spike the insulin, but then, I guess that's the idea if you want to ingest a lot of carbs. It would be hell to try to eat say 100g of carb by way of lettuce. Back up the truck! Easy with a bowl of pasta though. Yuck. Insulin coma. Probably make me sick. OK, sorry I'm rambling. Still experimenting...

I see two potential problems with what you're currently doing:

1. You're trying to run close to marathon mileage without any amount of relatively easily accessible fuel. 20 miles is around the time that a carb-dependent runner bonks, so what makes you think you could do that or more, completely fasted, especially if you haven't gradually worked up to that amount? You can't just jump into a marathon, fasted, without first working up to that level. It's roughly equivalent to loading a barbell with weights that put the bar at or above your bodyweight, then trying to squat with it, without having lifted even half your weight.

2. You said it yourself -- you're not fully fat adapted. At least not for the amount of physical activity that you're trying to do. If you keep doing your weekend runs with increased carbs, then you're not giving your body the chance to adapt to doing it without. Yes, your distance and/or speed is going to have to reduce for a month or two, but it's not unlike changing from a hindfoot strike to midfoot strike -- different parts are being used, and they weren't being used before. They need time to get up to speed.

It can be done, you just have to give it time and take a couple steps back.

http://eatingacademy.com/how-a-low-carb-diet-affected-my-athletic-performance
http://www.reddit.com/r/ketogains/comments/1wa6w2/how_to_fuel_during_long_runs_while_doing_keto/ (make note of darthluiggi's posts, he's a prominent person in the keto and athletic communities and has been doing keto for close to 15 years)

DonPendergraft wrote: »

I'm on the fence. I totally believe in the health benefits of the LCHF lifestyle, but full blown keto may not work well for my weekend long runs. I can stay below 25g/day during the week and go to 10 miles. But if I try 20 miles (or more) fasted, I don't know. It's not working. I can experiment some more. Perhaps I'm not fully adapted. Speaking of experiment, what I may try is staying very low during the week, eat some carbs before bed Friday night and go for a long run on Saturday morning and see what happens. It's still an experiment in progress. Even with the experiment, I'm fretting about what kind of carb to "load" with before bed. I hate the idea of carbs that spike the insulin, but then, I guess that's the idea if you want to ingest a lot of carbs. It would be hell to try to eat say 100g of carb by way of lettuce. Back up the truck! Easy with a bowl of pasta though. Yuck. Insulin coma. Probably make me sick. OK, sorry I'm rambling. Still experimenting...

I am interested in your ideas on this a bit more.

I try and eat to my activity to a degree. I started HIIT in 8x3 minute cycles for 24 minutes total of a blasting workout. I shoot for 30 seconds of 90% max heart rate per cycle. It got me dropping pounds again pretty fast

And as you mentioned I do eat a few more carb calories on those day. A slice or two of organic seed wheat bread for about 15 net carbs and 160 calories. Net carbs seem strange though

It seems to help have more energy to survive the last few waves of
HIIT.

Any advice from anyone doing this type exercise would be great. I have only need doing HIIT for about 4-5 months

I have also started doing weights with that method. Doing jumping jacks between sets and checking my heart rate monitor to get to about 80% max heart rate at times

Anyway

Awesome thread and it is great to see so many others using carbs specifically for high activity periods

Almost like high octane fuel...

Ha

wabmester wrote: »

professionalHobbyist wrote: »

Awesome thread and it is great to see so many others using carbs specifically for high activity periods

Almost like high octane fuel...

That's exactly what it is. Specifically high-octane anaerobic fuel. You can fuel low-intensity exercise with mostly fat, and becoming "fat adapted" allows you to increase the intensity somewhat, but you still burn glucose for higher intensity exercise.

As you can see in the Peter Attia experiment, he shows how much glucose he burned at 60% VO2max (which is pretty low intensity -- about the same as a HR of 130 for old guys). He went from burning 95% glucose (which is high, and due to his insulin resistance) to 22% (which is probably better than average).

So fat-adaptation is great for "jogging," but even at that pace, you'll burn sugar, and you need more for HIIT.

I know I'm ignorant of much of this

I think my trainer guided me to success quite honestly.

Thank you for the explanation

I am going to read up on the info bookmark for new low carb group members