I'm a runner and I am soooo confused!
 

there are a million different opinions and i am really looking for some experience based advice. i am a runner - i recently adopted the LC lifestyle again. when i did it before i wasnt athletic at all, now i am. i am having such a hard time with energy. i am tired all the time, i cant complete nearly the miles i once could - 7-10 miles used to come easy, now i have to stop and walk after 3... i dont train any differently, its truly related to my food intake. i could use some peoples real experience here! thanks in advance for your help. :)

jamie

Welcome Trailrun..

Are you are induction? where you are limiting your carbs? That could be the culprit..I run as you do..But I have a protein shake in the morning about an hr. before I run..It gives me the energy but doesn't weigh me down food wise..Can't handle that..

What about vitamins? How often do you run? Daily/Weekly/how many times a week? If you just started..the lc life style..U might want to back off of the high energy running till you can get use to the low carbing..I know by reading different posts..Many ppl have that problem..Trial and error..

Best of luck to ya..It will come soon..Good luck on your weightloss endeavor

There are folks on this site who say that your body will adapt to a ketogenic diet for running. I think there may even be an ultra runner on this list whose body has adapted and also another woman who does ultras who does use carbs, but maybe only for races, not for training. I am trying to get mine to adapt now, because as soon as I up the carbs I gain. I've never gotten to really long runs - in training the most I do is five but I will go for more to prepare for a half marathon this fall. It is getting better and I am adapting but still kind of wonky - I just started running again after a hiatus of two months so only some sprinting and two three mile sessions. I don't know if I could do a race on very low carb. I have a 5K coming up and I am not sure if I will attempt it or not. I'm definitely slower. I would probably not attempt any race more than five miles with very low carbs, but in training I'm going to try. I will definitely let people know how it goes - for me it's all about being able to continue to lose weight while running - it usually shuts my weight loss right down.

Janine

I doubt you'll ever be an elite runner on Atkins alone. I would increase the carbs up to about 25-30% and see how you feel. You'll need plenty of calories as well.

Um, hardly anyone ever gets to an elite runner! I think your formula might work for someone with not much weight to lose, but what would you do if those extra carbs pack on pounds? I try to save my carbs for race day, but its hard to get trained for race day on the carbs that allow me to maintain my weight and not gain. It's a dilemma!

Oops - Capmikee is my husband who was still logged in. Sorry about the mix up.

Janine

I've done maybe 50 marathons and two-dozen ultras. This fat-burning idea really sounded great so I tried Atkins. After a few years of running on lowcarb, this is what I've come up with: We're constantly burning a mixture of carb, fat and protein. When running, the ratio shifts to more carb-burning the faster you go. And shifts back to more fat-burning the slower you go. But without enough carb on board, you will start catabolizing muscle tissue for energy.

You can lose weight on lowcarb but training will suffer. However even walking is training. If you schedule walking breaks during long runs it may give your body time to restock the muscles with glycogen. For 50 mile runs I found the cycle of walking for 2 minutes and running for eight minutes got me to the finish line in decent shape.

To get through the daily run, I suggest carbs that are absorbed fast taken shortly before the workout. Hammergel works for me. After the workout, a protein meal. In time you should find you need less carb to run but you'll never get to the point of not needing carbs.

Some on this site will claim to do tough cardiac workouts on Atkins-style diets. My guess is they're eating huge amounts of protein. Excess protein turns into carb, restocking the glycogen levels of their muscles and liver. That approach never worked for me.

There's a guy who's a moderator on Jimmy Moore's discussion site who's a zero-carb runner. His name is Charles Washington and I bet he'd have some good advice for you.

FIrstly, your body doesn't become a fat burning machine over night. As a matter of fact, it takes quite a bit of time before your body becomes a mighty fat burning machine. Here is my story. I am not athetic in the least but there are times when I attempt 5K runs. My first 5K run was about 15 years ago. I weighed about 30 lbs and I paid no attention to my diet but I was encouraged to eat lots of carbs for energy. The night before the run the participants had a carb loading party. :Puke: I was never able to complete this run...running. I mostly walked the entre distance and I came in butt last.
Now 2 years ago when I was 49 I wanted to attempt this run again as a low carb competitor. I weighed over 150 lbs but I completed the run...running and I did not come in last. I protein loaded the night before and had bacon and eggs for breakfast. I am going to post a profile from another lc site. Charles is a half marathon runner, skinny and does a no carb diet.

http://www.livinlowcarbdiscussion.c...n=profile&uid=6

oops, I should have read throught the other posts...Charles' profile has already been linked. However, he is a good resource.

Sometimes I think there is an athlete's induction phase where you add carbs slowly and at different times and in different ratios until you come up with a performance level you are happy with, not going over your critical carbohydrate level for losing and not going under your critical carbo level for performing. My best race was the day after my daughter's birthday where I ate half her cake!

I've shared this story before but it might be useful to repeat it. I started running last December and while I did have cheats, it wasn't much worse than when I wasn't running - I gained a bit and had a hard time not getting injured if I dropped my carbs to losing levels. I stopped running for two months (did some light pool running and swimming). I lost 7 pounds the first week of no running and then 3-4 pounds a week after that - my metabolism was a furnace. I got 28 pounds off very quickly during my time off (had to fight myself very hard to not be more active). It's stalled now that I've started running and swimming again, but my body seems to function better on lower carb than it did previously, so I don't have cravings. I am still slower than I would be with carbs, I think, but I am just living with it hoping it changes.

Anyway, I just wanted to share that because it was helpful to me to realize that my metabolism problems with running were just that - it was just the running, and when I rested my body I could see the good results of all those months of low-carb.

Hi I am also a marathoner on Low Carb, but I just started Low Carb so don't have any experience yet.

Have you guys heard of "Maffetone Training"? It's getting VERY popular now. Basically Maffetone states that Aerobic Conditioning is the primary factor in running performance for distance races. Pretty much everyone agrees on that, but Maffetone's approach to training is very hardcore easy running, claiming that most people do not have proper Aerobic Conditioning before going into speedwork, and speedwork actually diminishes aerobic conditioning.

He's coached many champion athletes such as Mark Allen. This training approach is starting to take on seriously in the marathon and ultra bases.

He preaches running at 75% or less intensity and running high mileage. This will optimize the bodies ability to burn fat as fuel. His science says that if the body is more efficient at burning fat, it will use less carb at higher intensities, making you faster at higher intensities even though you only trained at low intensities.

His book has a dietary plan to complement training called "The Two Week test". Guess what kind of diet he recommends to get the most out of training? Very low carb for 2 weeks, afterwards introduce 1 daily serving of a good carb food per week and increase until the critical point. Sound familiar?


Here's the original article: http://www.rrca.org/resources/articles/slowdown.html

His diet info isn't in that article but it is in his book "The Maffetone Method." Here is a PDF summary of it: http://users.bandzoogle.com/cippian...s/2weektest.pdf

I have heard this type of method advocated - I think one of the track and field women competitors did this and did well. I hate the idea of junk miles, though, and I think I am probably a good candidate for getting into the bad habit of running slow, easy miles without really getting anywhere in terms of fitness. But I would be interested in the reasoning behind it.

Nevermind -- I got this thread confused with the other thread.

A carb intake of around 25% will not pack on extra pounds unless your calorie intake is already at your maintenance level. Maybe you should drop some of the calories from fat and protein to make some room for a few more carbs so you can run at your best.

I found a copy of his book in my library. I'd forgotten I had it. It's hard to take seriously a book with the title:

"The Maffetone Method, The holistic, low-stress, no-pain way to exceptional fitness."

The chapter on diet says some people are carbohydrate intolerant and produce too much insulin as a result. Then there's a subsection titled, "The importance of snacking to burn fat."

His training regime is based on staying in the 'fat-burning zone' by using a heart rate monitor. A better book, imo, is Slow Burn by Stu Mittleman. He stresses sugar avoidance in favor of a diet with fish, veggies and a lot of olive oil. Both books were published in 2000. I imagine updated versions would include more fish oils, but that's just a guess.