It’s great to be able help people get leaner, stronger and faster on a daily basis. But it never ceases to amaze me (OK frustrate me) how people love to demonise one macronutrient. It used to be fat. Now it’s carbohydrate (protein’s next!). A ton of heavyweight evidence (i.e. Harvard Medical School metastudies) shows that a balance of 15-20% protein/20-30% fat/ 50-65% carbs is the one most likely to be effective and adhered to, whether for weight loss or performance. (Although Kenyan runners eat 75% carbohydrates- they seem to do OK on that – they hold 40% of the world’s distance running records).
At the moment the demon of the day, the unternutrient is poor old carbohydrate. It was formerly fat, but now a very well designed study has shown that a lower fat diet is more harmful than a Mediterranean diet containing nuts and/or olive oil (which are high in fat). So much so that in the following study where low fat was compared to Med style, they had to pull out the “low fat diet” people because of the blatantly higher risk of a cardiovascular event (ie the people on low fat were having many more strokes and CVD events than the med diet people). That’s a pretty clear and damning indictment of the lower fat approach. It was a big study too-there were 7400 people involved http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/779831
Obviously refined white sugar and white flour is not good for your teeth or your waistline, but going below 40% carbs has been shown to be catastrophic for sports performance and leads to much higher dropout rate on weight loss plans than the ratio above. I outlined this in my post (“Are Carbohydrates the Enemy? below) http://www.intelligentfitnessuk.com/2/post/2013/02/are-carbohydrates-the-enemy.html. Be sure your carbs are above 50% and ideally nearer 60% if you exercise regularly.
One cautionary tale though. One of my PT clients, the extremely fit, strong and powerful Anna Donald (10/10/10 test 41 seconds Leg Press 194kg 1RM) who has played football and hockey at a high level for many years, ditched 10lbs in a month using the Free Myfitnesspal app. But her performance began to suffer. Her energy levels during football training dropped to 3/10. We checked her Carb % and sure enough – it was 50-60%. But the problem was that on around 1500 calories per day and doing heavy training sessions, her carbs had dropped to less than 250g/1000 calories of CHO per day- which dropped her below the critical 4 grammes carbs kg per kg bodyweight needed for more active individuals. The simple addition of more carbs throughout the day and some well-timed sports drinks immediately increased her energy back to 8 out out of 10. So if you notice consistent deterioration in performance- check your absolute carbs levels.
Remember, if you are doing 5 hours of exercise per week and you notice nasty dips in performance – please check your carbs – it’s easy using the Myfitness pal app (home page). So if you weight 65kg – you should be eating 260g carbs daily at least – or even 6g per kg of bodyweight day. Ideally these should mainly be in the form of more complex unrefined carbohydrates such as oats, wholemeal products, brown rice, potatoes and sweet potatoes. – but fruit, dried fruit and juices or sports drinks can be useful to top up carbs levels.
Please Note that while Nuts and Oils and Wine (???) may reduce your risk of CVD- unless your diet is calorie controlled- you won’t lose weight in a reliable fashion. Use free app Myfitness pal to monitor calories. So don’t just scarf down the oil, nuts and wine – be sure it’s energy controlled if your goal is weight loss.
As always, your diet should be one which you enjoy and which works- so be sure to keep the carbs in (in a specifically controlled way) and see if your energy levels – and enjoyment-increase.