Q:  

With all the circling theories around eating, diets, and interventions, I find myself getting pulled in multiple directions when it comes to eating.  While I am serious about my triathlon goals, I am equally focused on balancing energy, improving body composition, and creating a platform of health. I understand the focus on fueling approaches from Purple Patch, but how around aspects such as Keto, fast adaptive, etc.?

A:  

You are entering a world that is a blizzard of confusion, quackery, and promises that can lead to massive challenge, emotional strain, and confusion for all levels of athletes and performance enthusiasts.  It is a great question, but one that requires a book to explain more than a couple of paragraphs. Let me at least try to provide some perspective and guidelines:

You are an athlete.  We cannot cast some nutrition net over every person in the world.  The intervention and approach suitable for a diabetic are vastly different from an elite athlete, so let’s stop pretending there is some magic solution for all people.  Your key mindset must be anchored in primarily fueling training (during and post) appropriately, then building proper nutrition around this fueling. As you will read below, your demands for nutrition and fueling depends on the types of sessions and your level of fitness.

No diet has ever shown to be beneficial when one macronutrient is highly restricted or removed.  As humans, we require carbohydrates, protein, and fat.  This will never change.  Do not fall into considering carbs as the devil, not more than we were told fat was when we were growing up.  It is all about what source, how much, and when that creates out (pardon the pun) recipe. In the lifestyle segment of the general population, we are grossly over-reliant on sugars and starchy carbohydrates, and we typically fail to achieve enough protein and veggies in the diet.  For these populations, a shift toward lower total carb intake and increased protein, fat, and veggies is a good thing.

Athletes require enough carbohydrates.  We are deviants from the normal population and require a higher ratio of carbohydrates to support our training needs.  Interestingly, the higher training load and more elite athletes require not only more absolute carbohydrate intake but also a higher ratio of total carbs in their diet.  The higher intensity and duration requires more fuel. By example, a Purple Patch pro training ~ 25 hours a week (and an FTP of 300W) might need 60-70% of daily intake to be carbohydrate.  A Purple Patch newbie and time-starved performance enthusiast, training 8 hours weekly and with an FTP of 150W, might only need 25-30% of total daily intake to be carbohydrate. The key is that we all need carbohydrates and catastrophic fatigue and health challenges result from ignoring.

With these three things in mind, let’s frame a few important things:

1. Don’t commit to any specific fad diet.
2. Fuel your workouts:  post-workout eating with carbohydrate and protein following each diet.
3. If you stray to the more advanced athlete then commit to a higher ratio of carbohydrates.
4. If you are a lifestyle athlete, ensure you refuel following and include some starchy carbs with each meal but maintain a primary focus of protein, good oils, and plenty of vegetables.
5. Realize fruits and vegetables are rich in nutrients.  As an athlete, don’t believe anyone who tells you that you should limit any fruits and veggies.
6. Be smart with refueling during your workouts (at time of the year also):
1. Very low-intensity training doesn’t require copious amounts of sugar to refuel.  In other words, endurance rides can be fueled with real food (trail mix, sandwiches, etc.)
2. High-intensity sessions always require fueling with easily accessible fuel (sugar).
3. Any session under 60 minutes (and many under 90 min), require no calories.
7. Radically reduce or eliminate packaged and processed foods if possible. Step one?  Dump your microwave and get a steam oven, it will change your habits. We don’t miss ours — ever.
8. Eat plenty and don’t actively restrict calories.  It is a road to peril.

Keep it healthy, balanced and full of support.  

I hope that helps,

Matt