#runonfatmovie - Blog

keto & altitude - a new paradigm for performance?

Fri, 03 Feb 2017 11:21:09 GMT

"10 days after coming off of the low-carb diet he obliterated the Canadian record in the 50 kilometres by over four minutes."

When it comes to performance nutrition, the "logic" behind the science is relatively straightforward - "Change diet, measure performance. Change diet again. Measure performance."

So, when a recently published study of elite distance walkers found that a low carbohydrate diet "impairs exercise economy and negates the performance benefit from intensified training in elite race walkers" that was quickly held up as proof that low carb just doesn't cut it.

But look what happened next.....

I have previously referred to ketogenic and/or low carb diets as potentially powerful "tools" for athletes here - not necessarily an "all the time" thing but certainly a "sometimes" thing. For example, if we know that elite gymnasts can improve body composition, lose weight and retain strength and power after 4 weeks on a ketogenic diet, why has NOBODY proposed that approach to an elite jumper for example? No other sporting discipline is so purely dependent upon optimising the power to weight ratio to improve performance.

As an ex high jumper, I have to ask (again) is sports science only about endurance and stuff you can measure in a lab? Do athletes kissing 8 feet with their ass not warrant investigation? It is 22, 24 and 26 years respectively since the world records in the men's triple, high and long jumps have been broken.

Where's all the "sports" science on that?

Success in any jumping code is ALL about height, trajectory and the transfer of speed to vertical height. Knocking a percentile OFF the weight being transferred is not a minor thing - it is potentially an "every" thing for a jumper sniffing a record.

When he set the existing world high jump record at the Salamanca Invitational track meet in 1993, the great Cuban Javier Sotomayor required only four jumps: he took his first jump at 2.32 metres, passed at 2.35, cleared 2.38 metres on his first attempt, then had the bar raised to a record height of 2.45, which he cleared on his second attempt. A loping style meant that his run up was not particularly fast or energetic.

Sotomayor's explosiveness was technically confined to those magical final few steps before planting the take-off foot that make or break the high jumper's ambitions. Even if we are generous, he would have taken no more than 10 to 12 "demanding" strides during those 4 leaps on his path to greatness. That's hardly glycolytic! Physiologically, there would be no requirement for glucose as fuel to meet such short term, explosive requirements.

It begs the question - if there is no requirement for glucose to break a world record, and there may be benefits to taking a glucose "time out", why has that not been investigated?

Sotomayor was 6' 5" and 82 kgs at his best. Had he been 80 or 81 kgs, we can only speculate how much higher he could have gone. Could he have cut weight strategically using a ketogenic phase of dieting - without compromising power?

All of which brings me to the Canadian walker Evan Dunfee's destruction of the Canadian national record in the 50km walk - by over 4 minutes - 10 days AFTER he completed the keto phase in the aforementioned trial. At the end of that keto phase, Dunfee's performance had dipped - considerably so - but Prof Tim Noakes is adamant that we need to reconsider assessing athletes on such acute measures as performance DURING a trial at a specific point in time. If that makes sense intuitively, then it is Dunfee who has perhaps crystallised it quite superbly by comparing his period in ketosis to altitude training.

“Altitude is a perfect analogy,” Dunfee said. “And when you come back off the diet, you have adaptations that are advantageous to perform better under ideal conditions with carbs. So that’s the idea, and it could be quite game-changing in terms of sports nutrition guidelines, and what’s recommended.”

In the human body, there is very real lag effect that no "acute" testing can catch when a subject leaves the lab. This is most evident in drug use where athletes dope at one strategic point in time to gain an advantage at a later date - by which time the drugs have left the system.

In all of this, we would do well to remember that sport is first and foremost about athletes and when it comes to performance gains - illegal or otherwise - those on the front line will pretty much always be ahead of the chasing pack.

With his altitude analogy, Dunfee may have taken keto to the top of the hill by redefining how it should - and could - be used.

Now. Go to your doorway. Look at the mantle above the door. Add a foot or so to that. Yes, you may be at the ceiling. That’s where all 82kgs of Javier Sotomayor used to hang out.....

Altitude and keto.

Damned if I didn’t think of it myself. I love it.

August 23rd, 2016 - the BJSM BLOG

Tue, 23 Aug 2016 07:51:30 GMT

The BJSM - the world's #1 Sports Science Journal - recently invited me to share my story with them. I was delighted to take the opportunity to do so.

Check it out here.

what triathlete mark allen ate (when he ruled the world)

Fri, 06 May 2016 15:08:46 GMT

“There is a gap between what science knows and what happens in the real world, and this man has proven it without a doubt!” Prof Tim Noakes

Kudos to Mark Allen for sharing his food preferences during a stunning career which yielded 6 World Ironman Titles. You can read the great man’s article in his own words here, but I thought it might be worthwhile to layer some additional thoughts on there.

Bottom line, I found myself asking if this guy was 20 years ahead of the pack, or were the rest of us just 20 years behind Mark Allen?

Although he never had a coach in the strictest sense of the word, a relationship with Phil Maffetone is reflected in his comments; so too a pretty firm rebuttal of the carb loading mantra that would have been prevalent at the time (those 6 World titles came between 1989 - 1995).

A major in biology probably influenced the intuitive decisions Allen seems to have taken just by listening to his body as well. He wasn't just fast. He was fast, smart and finely tuned in to his own physiology.

Throw in the fact that he notoriously trained slow (relatively speaking) and you have an athlete primed to burn fat and avoid the inflammation, niggles and breakdowns associated with elite performance requirements. His superhuman consistency points to one very clear conclusion - he created the perfect storm to perform within his own body.

In this context, a very genuine mutual respect between Prof Tim Noakes and Mark Allen is not surprising. I have not met Allen personally but Tim Noakes lights up at the mention of his name - which will inevitably lead to a discussion around the retrospective, intricate energy analysis his team in Cape Town have conducted into Allen’s performances. Pegging on a 2:45 ish marathon to the back end of a world title fast Ironman points to an exceptionally astute fueling strategy of course.

However, what was not entirely clear was exactly where Allen could be getting his energy from when the glycogen tank had pretty much run dry? In the context of what was understood and accepted about the limitations of fat burning for performance at that time - that the rate at which fat is burned for fuel is too slow to support a hard, fast Ironman effort - that Noakes quote up top appears accurate.

When Noakes's “Lore of Running” was first published in 1986, the table was well and truly set for carb loading for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Not for Allen though. He seems to have picked and chosen and played with a variety of expert opinions on nutrition and training methodologies before settling on his own protocol - at all times listening to his body.

If Noakes’s expertise in the physiology of endurance performance is unparalleled, Allen’s body nonetheless lead him to a different conclusion on the subject of fueling the body at that time - albeit one that Noakes now shares (and openly laments he missed at the time).

As is the gift of the great mind, Noakes can now describe a very complex piece of physiological trickery very simply indeed. “We were looking on the wrong side of the curve back then!” As glycogen levels depleted, how could Allen have maintained such power and pace through the marathon phase of the race?

If the gap between his performance and what science knew about glycolysis seemed impossible at that time, flipping that same chart today reveals only one answer, and that answer is fat.

In Cereal Killers Movie (2013), Noakes physically ripped out the carb loading chapter in his tome. “I’m responsible for writing all this, and I don’t believe it any more” he told us. The next edition of “Lore of Running” will catch up with Allen. I expect it will explain the role of insulin sensitivity, expand upon the work of Phinney, Volek et al and reframe the physiology of fat burning for endurance as only Noakes can. It will close the gap that the FASTER Study has recently bridged.

And after that, we have no more excuses.

no sleep, no pasta, no problem - the hipster marathon

Fri, 15 Apr 2016 12:56:39 GMT

Amid much speculation about the (im?)possibility of a 2 hour marathon - and man’s general push for new performance frontiers - a statistic of much more relevance has been largely forgotten.

When 127 hardy souls lined up at the start of the 1970 New York Marathon, they wore the beards (55 men but no women finished the race) and the shoes (flat sneakers) of the modern day hipster, with baggy socks and brandless cotton vests to complete a timeless “runner hip” look. Gary Muhrcke, a NYC fireman, decided to run the race that morning after completing his night shift. There was no pasta party and no sleep, but he won it anyway in 2:31:38.

The era of Prefontaine, Nike and the jogging boom were not yet borne, but they were coming....

Today, over that rainbow era of running, we are lead to believe that improvements in shoes, “performance” wear, nutrition, biomechanical analysis and training methods are pushing us on to bigger and better things, new horizons and - naturally - faster times. The truth is somewhat different.

Elites aside, marathon runners are fatter, slower and more injured than ever before. Heck, the rise of the hipster means it's even questionable if today's runners are better turned out than Gary & co back in the day! But as sports scientists concern themselves pretty much exclusively with that 2 hour benchmark debate, the pack is being left behind. No-one really cares what they're wearing, what they're eating, or why they're getting slower.

Just 2% of all marathons run today are completed in under 3 hours and the fall off in absolute numbers (as opposed to % of finishers) achieving the “sub 3” has steadily - and quite dramatically - declined since the 70s.

So what’s going?

Any analysis of these figures that I have seen tends to stray right into mileage territory.

“They don’t train as hard, run as long or get into that hurt locker like we used to do back in the day.”

But that just doesn’t add up. In the 70s, marathon running was the ultra race du jour. It was THE craziest thing you could do as a runner. Today, Ironman and ultra running are the growth sports. If anything, the frontiers of human performance have gone way beyond anything we could have possibly imagined. The hurt locker is bigger. The races are longer. The numbers are bigger.

And yet we get slower.

So here’s my stab at it all.

It seems to me that the 1970s created a perfect storm for the future downfall of your “average” marathon performance - and human health in general. The Swedes original research into carb loading was coming to the fore thanks to the mighty marathon performances of the great British athlete Ron Hill - a carb loaded European Champion & 1970 Boston Marathon winner.

Eat pasta. Run faster. Look at Ron. QED, right?

That message would of course marry quite beautifully with the ongoing demonization of fat and its ultimate put down in the shape of the (low fat, high carbohydrate) food pyramid. The narrative was impeccable.

Run a marathon to save yourself from heart disease! Eat pasta and run it even faster!

Of course, we now know that diet is a very individual matter, so the prospect of 50,000 entrants gorging themselves at a pasta party before hauling themselves around the streets of New York seems fairly illogical these days. That less than 1,000 of these runners will probably complete a “sub 3” makes it even more nonsensical.

3 hours is a damn good marathon you see.

To get there an athlete must have a very good endurance base with a helping of speed in the legs. Good mechanical form also goes without saying. What doesn’t is the ability to efficiently convert your choice of fuel to an optimal running output for the duration of the race. The wall (or bonk) awaits for those who get it wrong - and it can happen at any level.

If the pasta party approach is beautifully simple, so is the book on bonking. You can store a maximum of circa 2,000 cal of energy from all that pasta. You take that easily accessible fuel with you to the starting line. As you run, you deplete that tank but you know this, the science knows this, and Gatorade knows it too, so you do your best to top up your tank with sports drinks and gels along the way. If you miscalculate, you bonk. Game over. That can happen because you run too fast and/or your body cannot convert the fuel you are supplying efficiently enough to meet demand.

So here’s the rub. Of the 50,000 on that start line, 49,000 or so are not very good endurance runners at all. Through any combination of ability, age, weight or poor preparation, these folks are running 26 miles on a spectrum of pretty good to flat out awful. The one ability they all share is a complete inability to run fast. And when you can’t run fast, your requirement for fast, sugar based fuel should be vastly diminished for a whole host of reasons.

If carb loading makes you run faster, why bother with it when you can’t actually run fast in the first place?

Endurance training is not a license to eat whatever as “fuel”. Although they swore it blind back in the 70s, endurance training will absolutely not stop you having a heart attack (Tim Noakes was the spoilsport there). The health impact of utilizing sugar as fuel for anything but highly glycolytic activity (that sprinting you never do because you can’t) are now legion so you don’t get that pass unless you’re a) sub 3 and b) a proven insulin sensitive type - at a minimum check your HbA1c/triglycerides and see if your old school pants still fit at the waist. If you want to get really down and dirty go get your fasting insulin measured.

Anyway, wherever you are on the spectrum of endurance performance, the ability to increase your body’s ability to burn more fat offers health benefits beyond the clock - more on that here. And if you’re within 15 minutes of that magic 3 hour mark, I’d wager that a switch back to the real foods (start here) those running hipsters would have habitually eaten back in the day may well do the trick.

When you do that, come back and let us know. The carb funded scientists will say you’re just an anecdote of course. Nothing to see here. Move along. We’re all about the 2 hours.

But hey, you just broke 3 hours - do you really care? Thought not.

p.s - Just to be clear here - completing a marathon is a monumental achievement for anyone at any speed. The point here is there may be better strategies to do so than those we're being fed by carb interested research and advertising dollars. In a nutshell, if you're not elite, then elite strategies are probably not for you.

3 reasons i do not eat kerrygold butter

Mon, 14 Mar 2016 13:53:33 GMT

In the land of lesser carbs and running on fat, grass fed butter enjoys a stratospheric view from the top of the pile.

The merits of Vitamin K, as first lionized by Weston A Price, are inversely proportional to its scarcity it seems. Grass fed butter ticks that box - and many others.

No question. That view is warranted!

Back in 1997 - when I knew none of this of course - I recall attending a meeting in a Hilton hotel in Jakarta to discuss the merits of hosting a major badminton event the following year. Indonesia boasted the top ranked shuttlers in the world so this was big business down there. The funny thing is, when I think of that meeting, the first thing I remember is butter - not badminton.

As the inevitable bread basket arrived with lunch, so too did the butter. It was presented in those annoying single serve packs which are too cold for spreading and too small anyway. I remember being astonished that the butter was Kerrygold - all the way from Ireland - and truth be told I felt kinda proud that our lot had made it that far!

Now if you fly in a straight line from Dublin to Jakarta that’s 7,500 miles. It’s pretty impressive to think that each butter portion had traveled all that way without melting, just so I could butter my bread in a very foreign country with a very local product from back home. Back then I was fueling my triathlon races according to the carb gospel so the bread - and the butter - didn’t last very long.

Kerrygold was launched in 1961 by the Irish Dairy Board, but with all the hype you would sometimes think it’s the latest, greatest low carb invention. That’s great news for Kerrygold of course. They have embraced the Bulletproof Coffee bandwagon and marched relentlessly beyond Indonesia to the ends of the earth - and of course right across the U.S of A.

Of course, Kerrygold is a very good product indeed and we live in a global marketplace, so none of this is a surprise really. The surprise actually lies much closer to home, wherever that might be for you.

European (EU) legislation requires that “grass fed” ruminants must be fed on grass, hay and silage for at least 90% of their life. In the U.S that number climbs to 100% if you stick to some of the better grassfed certification labels.

Here in South Africa, the legal requirements are as loose as Prof Tim Noakes pants from 5 years ago. To that end, I have researched producers, visited farms and tried a lot of different butters in my time here. The winner is a farm 2 miles up a dirt track outside a town called George where dogs, cockerels and the owners greet you warmly. It’s called Red Barn. There is no gold foil, multi million $ advertising campaign or single serve portions, and you won’t find it in Jakarta, New York or London.

Bottom line, you get a block of brilliant butter for less than half the price of Kerrygold. They spend more money on barns than branding, but their butter is insane. This is old style, grass fed goodness. There is no 90% compliance at play here. There is no compliance necessary. This is just what these folks do. It’s a passion. A connection to the land and the animals they pasture raise thereon.

Why wouldn’t I give their product precedence?

Wherever you are, I’ll bet there’s a Red Barn equivalent near you somewhere. The farmer who practices what you think you’re getting when you buy Kerrygold butter will be waiting for you. He/she could probably point you to the cow they milked last week to make the butter you’re about to buy to support a small, passionate, pastured farming operation - and the family who runs it.

All of which leads nice and neatly to the 3 reasons I do not choose Kerrygold butter (in South Africa) -

1. Red Barn’s butter is of equal (if not superior) grassfed quality
2. Red Barn is half the price of Kerrygold
3. Ireland is 6200 air miles from here but I still have the shit on my shoe from the Red Barn farmyard.

If you're running on fat, maybe have a think about that ;)

ps. I have no relationship with either Kerrygold or Red Barn and the reference to Tim Noakes's pants has yet to be rigorously tested.

#runonfatmovie #cerealkillersmovie

the "great 8" fatty foods

Fri, 19 Feb 2016 10:59:50 GMT

3 years ago today I first published this blog post on a prep site (www.letfatbethymedicine.com) for our first movie - Cereal Killers. It breaks down the rationale behind my 28 day food plan for that movie and ultimately lists the foods I consumed. So, is it standing the test of time? Let's see....

First published Feb 19th, 2013.

The “Drop Dead Healthy Plan” you will see me undertake in Cereal Killers evolved organically throughout a 2 year period of trial, error and omission.

How did I identify my go to foods?

It really was a case of self-experimentation on a grandiose scale with more than a sprinkling of complete ignorance. At no point did I consult any practicing medical or dietary professional and my personal research was conducted from a standing start.

As a lean, fit (5 times a day) carbo loading, low fat food advocate, I figured the medical fraternity would baulk at my quest to drop dead healthy and avoid the heart disease and diabetes prevalent in my family.

Medicine as an industry is reactive you see. It is the business of sickness with little regard for pro-active outliers focused on not getting ill in the first place.

“Doctor Doctor I want to never get sick.
I see. So are you sick at the moment?
Not at all.
So why are you here then?
Because I don’t want to see you again. Ever.
I think you need to relax. I’ll prescribe you some Prozac.”

You get the picture.

So, as I set out on my journey to drop dead healthy I encountered some radical issues right out of the blocks.

Bread may be bad for you! WTF!? Who knew?

And then there’s that whole cholesterol bag of tricks. Which I now know to be just that. A bag of tricks.

But the biggie for me was FAT. Fat makes you fat, raises your cholesterol and clogs up your arteries, right? Well….no actually. Sure, the right naturally occurring fats will raise your LDL cholesterol (the misunderstood bad guy?) but they will also improve your LDL particle size (the real bad guy) no end and raise HDL (the very good guy) into the bargain. When you know your way around cholesterol that actually equates to a LOWER risk of heart disease. And no it doesn’t clog up your arteries.

Turns out Rocky Balboa was right as well. There’s no way he beat the crap outta Apollo Creed eating Weetabix. Did they even have it back then? It was the raw eggs! In the end I couldn’t find ANY studies into eggs with negative metabolic implications. Turns out the perfect way to start your day increases both your LDL particle size and HDL numbers before you can say amino acids. Yes, the closest thing to the perfect food has lots of those too. So I ate 20-25 per week.

Fortunately there were some easy wins along the way. Oily fish rocks, but we all knew that anyway. It’s an Omega 3 Olympian! So does Olive Oil. And how about those Avocados? A monounsaturated masterpiece if ever there was one!

There were a few Eureka moments along the way, particularly when my research into the different types of fat and their roles in the body lead me to a sleeping giant.

The mighty macadamia nut is 80% fat, nearly all of it of the monounsaturated variety. It has anti inflammatory qualities we have yet to fully appreciate and the best Omega ratio of all nuts (which are typically heavily skewed towards an Omega 6 imbalance). Roast them for 15 minutes and your life will never be the same again. I ate 1kg per week during the filming of Cereal Killers to prove the point – approximately one third of my calorific intake.

Red meat is a tricky one. Lots of studies apparently link it to heart disease so I took some time to familiarise myself with the various methodologies used to test such dramatic claims before diving in. Fancy terms like Cohort studies, Meta analysis and Causality are all part of the long grass that is medical research. My synopsis is simple. Read the small print! The ability to spin research and results 180 degrees to foster an agenda is a thriving dark art. Turns out someone already spotted this and she has dissected some of the major studies way better than I ever could. Denise Minger take a bow.

The small print in the latest red meat will kill you scare pointed out that meat eaters were more prone to smoke, drink and not take any exercise. Oh yes, they almost forgot to mention that the meat eaters’ risk of overall mortality (a fancy word for death) was actually LOWER than everyone else as well despite all that. But hey, this about heart disease and red meat. Death doesn’t count. Roll the headlines – “Red meat gives you heart disease.” What’s wrong with “Meat eaters live longer?”

So I put 2 kgs of quality red meat on my plate each week for the filming of Cereal Killers to see what would happen. Some, but not all, was 100% grass fed. I learned that grass fed meat has a nutritional profile more comparable to a wild salmon than its feedlot, stand in your own crap cousin. That really pissed me off.

Just what have we done?

Which takes me neatly to butter. In a head to head with eggs for the title of THE most vilified foodstuff of the last 40 years, I’d have to give butter the nod. Oh la la! Seems everyone but the French fell for this one. They’re just so smug, slim, impossibly chic and erm, bottom of the heart disease charts in Europe for a very long time. They were so wrong but oh so right that we even coined a brand new term to account for their dietary stupidity. “The French Paradox” anyone?

It goes something like this. Eat butter, cheese, drink red wine and you’ll be fine. Allez!

Coconut Oil rounds up my Great 8 Fatty Foods very neatly indeed. This natural oil with a very high heat tolerance makes it a great option for cooking while the lauric acid – a Medium Chain Triglyceride (MCT) – it offers up is turning heads for an ability to positively impact cholesterol markers. A litany of additional benefits the length of your arm includes improved thyroid function and blood sugar control. You’ll be glad to know it doesn’t smell like the Tropicana Casino Resort in Las Vegas or taste like suntan lotion. My morning cuppa would be pretty vile if it did! I call it the C3 by the way. That’s Coffee + Cream + (1 tbsp) Coconut oil. Throw in a few eggs any style and you’ve got yourself a real Cornflake Killer. If you make just one change to your diet, make this your breakfast.

Oh yeah. If you’re a bloke and you’re questioning if this is for you or not, there is something else you should consider. A high fat diet can raise your testosterone. Dramatically. From the age of 40, you’re losing 1% a year. So that matters. Lots. The symptoms of low testosterone read like an old age manual and are best avoided. Let Fat be Thy Medicine boys.

OK. Let’s wrap this all up shall we.

1. Macadamia Nuts
2. Red meat (ideally grass fed)
3. Eggs
4. Avocados
5. Oily fish
6. Coconut Oil
7. Olive Oil
8. Butter

Voila! The Great 8 Fatty foods I turned to for my Cereal Killing food plan.

coca cola banishes epic "anti obesity" fail by sponsoring world #1 jordan spieth

Sat, 16 Jan 2016 10:07:37 GMT

The announcement last week that Coca Cola has deployed its considerable financial muscle to sponsor the world’s #1 golfer gets us back to business as usual after their ludicrous “anti obesity” campaign lost its fizz. This is refreshing news indeed for shareholders and the folks in Atlanta.

The Coke deal places Speith ahead of Tiger Woods as the world’s highest earning golfer. It also places him #1 in the “He did WTF?” fairway gossip stakes. Assuming he is being well advised, there is just no conceivable way Spieth would not be aware of the growing backlash against sugar, soda et al.

The boy wonder is a sponsor’s dream and this is a massive coup for Big Soda. Somebody, somewhere can expect a very handsome bonus for bagging this spectacular multi year deal on their behalf.

Spieth assures us that he “loves that Coca-Cola has always been associated with iconic sporting events and some of the world’s greatest athletes.”

Hmm.

In January 1998 I was working with the sports management giant IMG and my job took me to the back of the 17th tee at Blue Canyon Resort in Phuket, Thailand. (C’mon, someone had to be there!)

A kid called Tiger (our client) walked on to that tee for a playoff with Ernie Els in the Johnnie Walker Classic. The Big Easy swooshed and his drive did what I had seen it do so many times on TV. Sweet!

Your turn kid....

I was close enough to Woods to observe that he was built more like an elite 400 meter runner than any golfer I had ever seen.

There was no swoosh this time. Just a crack. Like a starter pistol.

Although 4 inches taller, the Big Easy walked off that tee a much shorter man. He was fully 80 yards behind the Master’s Champion.

Woods didn’t just beat the rest. He diminished them.

Everyone wanted a piece of him. As the sponsorship suitors lined up, I enjoyed an inside track on the strategic management of this spectacular new sporting “asset”. On IMG’s watch, Woods would go on to earn a billion dollars.

Spieth probably will too, but when I see him tee it up with Coke, I wonder what IMG’s founder Mark McCormack would think about that. To great mirth in our stable, McCormack commandeered me to create a ballroom dancing division because it will be “the next big thing on TV.” That was 1998. Turn on your TV today and it’s hard to avoid sequins and waltzes.

We - and I - should have known better.

McCormack didn’t just think strategically you see, he was so far ahead of the game you would forget he was the guy who started it all. He could see around corners and navigate accordingly. The UK Premiership? Made by Mark. Wimbledon as we know it? Made by Mark. The business of sport itself? Made by Mark.

Golf is 4 hours of low grade movement with an emphasis on maintaining cognitive performance and the mechanical ability to hit a ball 70 times with varying degrees of physicality. If you started with a blank page you would struggle to find a sport better designed for the fat adapted practitioner. At 22, that won't matter to Spieth.

Yet.

The bigger point is this. When your name is Jordan Spieth, you get to choose how to make a billion dollars. He - and those around him - should have known better.

With $50 million changing hands here, Coke has not beaten him, but they’ve certainly diminished him.

i run, therefore i am fat??

Tue, 15 Dec 2015 14:30:43 GMT

Have you ever wondered why you see so many middle aged folks in amateur endurance events who are just plain “fat” around the midsection?

The answer probably lies in an area under a curve you have possibly never heard of. That curve can only be charted by way of a very specific test you have probably never heard of either - unless you are a borderline or diagnosed diabetic.

In the making of Cereal Killers, I undertook an Oral Glucose Tolerance Test (OGTT) to paint a picture of my ability to control blood sugar - or not. In a nutshell, you fast overnight then drink a sickly sweet elixir and draw blood every 30 mins for the next few hours to chart your body’s abilty to manage the onslaught. That gets sent off to a lab for analysis and comes back as a neat graph (mine is on page 6 here).

When Tim Noakes reviewed my results, he beamed and took great delight (as did I - or was that relief?) in telling me they were excellent. What's interesting is this - if we went back to do that again today, we would no doubt be discussing those results from a slightly different perspective.

Three years later, Noakes - and others - are now adamant that it is our Insulin response (as opposed to the simple Glucose response) to the OGTT that should be the focus of attention. It is Noakes’s firm belief that insulin resistance is the cause of all those middle aged marathon runner midriffs - and much more sinister metabolic disorders to boot.

Insulin resistance is a state where the body requires the release of more and more insulin to effectively manage blood glucose levels in response to a given level of food (principally carbohydrate) intake. It increases with age and in simple terms it is the reason why your 50 year old self cannot habitually slam a loaf of bread or a slurry of sports drinks without the distinct possibility of midriff exapansion.

Exercise - resistance training in particular - is proven to increase insulin sensitivity, but the food and drink we consume is the real driver.

If you are insulin resistant, the chances are it will catch up with you sooner or later (with or without exercise). This is where middle age spread meets that half marathon starting line. Equally, if you can find a bookie offering odds on someone with heart disease NOT displaying the signs of IR, take the bet. You will win.

The really interesting (and sinister) thing about IR is it’s ability to fly below radar for decades before eventually striking - like a health stealth bomber. In Tim Noakes’s case, that strike took the form of type 2 diabetes, the complications of which had claimed his father’s life.

Looking back at data from studies he had conducted some four decades ago, Noakes recently noticed that his own insulin response - at age 28 - CLEARLY demonstrated severe, underlying insulin resistance. In his own words, he had dismissed it at that time because he was carb loading to fuel a sub 3 hour marathon training regime. Sure, the tests showed he could get his blood glucose under control, but the insulin required to do that was (literally) off the scale.

In his not so ignorant bliss, Noakes (kinda) outran the carbs - and diabetes - for the next 20 years but then the weight crept on and his performances eventually reached the point of embarassment (for him - it’s all relative).

The stealth bomber had struck.

If feeding highly refined carbohydrates to a diabetic does not make much sense at all, then feeding them to a 45 year old insulin resistant amateur athlete shouldn’t either. The problem is, most amateur athletes have no idea they’re being stalked by the IR stealth bomber in the first place. The belief that they are outrunning whatever diet they choose is so prevalent that an additional inch or two round the waist won’t be setting of any alarm bells.

As for the elite athletes, Noakes holds the opinion that an integral piece of their pathology may well be insulin sensitivity. The ability to perform at super human levels requires an incredibly efficient fuel system (and a whole lot else of course) so any carbs available for performance in such an environment would get utilised optimally. This is yet to be proven but it is certainly an interesting hypothesis. Of course, as elite athletes age, all bets are off as IR may naturally increase anyway.

My own insulin response to the OGTT was measured for Cereal Killers so out of interest I fired it over to my fellow Irishman Ivor Cummins (aka the Fat Emperor) for some feedback. Ivor is an engineer/bichemist with an astounding grasp of all things insulin and a lot, lot more. His forthcoming book on the topic should enlighten many and most importantly shine a light on the remarkable life’s work of the 90 something (and active!) Dr Joseph Kraft.

That Kraft’s work has been largely ignored is not unusual. In fact, John Yudkin and sugar springs to mind. When we researched Cereal Killers, Yudkin's classic "Pure, White and Deadly" was not even in print. You see, Yudkin's views were not very popular at all for a very, very long time indeed but then they became very, very popular indeed after that. Today, he is the sage of sugar.

If Kraft is not very popular at all - yet - his time is certainly coming.

In the interim, stay tuned, remember the name, get up to speed on insulin.....and if you’re keen to banish that marathon midriff, just Run on Fat.

is tim noakes a cowboy?

Mon, 23 Nov 2015 13:41:20 GMT

In 1954 the advertising agency Leo Burnett set out to “man up” filter cigarettes and an icon was born. The Marlboro Man sucked us all in for decades, but the science knew better. The case against smoking gained momentum as the medical facts stacked up steadily against the spectacular visuals of a lone, rugged cowboy.

There was no smoke without fire.

Perhaps incredibly, that lone cowboy held firm against the slings and arrows of the chasing pack for several decades. The vast resources of Philip Morris outmuscled medicine, bought the narrative and rode off into the sunset. By the 1990s, it was estimated that 90% of American children knew who The Marlboro Man was.

It was all very knife to a gunfight stuff until 46 U.S states decided to collectively tackle the issue. After years of sparring, the knockout blow was dealt in November 1998. The four major tobacco companies in the US were legally outmaneuvered and ordered to pay $206 billion compensation in the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement (MSA).

It was the largest civil litigation lawsuit in legal history.

As high noon loomed for tobacco, Philip Morris looked across the prairie to pastures new. Golden fields of wheat, barley and sugar cane promised the subtle addictive qualities - and profits - necessary to shore up strategic share price growth.

In 1988 the tobacco giant acquired Kraft Foods for $13.1 billion.

On November 2, 2015, fully 34 years after an initial study by Steve Phinney (unexpectedly) flagged the potential of fat as an efficient fuel for human endurance performance, the FASTER Study was formally published by Jeff Volek - with Phinney as a co-author.

The implications for sports nutrition are profound.

Today in Cape Town, South Africa, the sparring continues. Prof Tim Noakes begins a 7 day trial for medical “heresy” after a complaint by the President of the Association for Dietetics to the Health Professionals' Council of South Africa. Noakes’s legion of low carb supporters are wearing red - the color of Marlboro - to mark the occasion.

Processed food, sports drinks and sugar are in the dock this time. High noon is approaching.

It didn’t come fast enough for the 5 Marlboro Men actors and millions of others who have died from smoking related illnesses - but there is always hope.

Noakes has a 7 hour, 360 slide presentation prepared for his defence on Friday next. There is smoke. There is fire. And there is sugar money in here too.

Noakes is not the cowboy here.

The knockout blow is coming.....

all blacks, no sugar please

Sat, 07 Nov 2015 15:14:58 GMT

The All Blacks stunning success at the 2015 Rugby World Cup has thrown up all sorts of superlatives - and rightly so. The best team ever? The fittest? The strongest? The most skilful? Is Dan Carter human? Such debates will fuel conversation amongst rugby folk for many years to come but only history and hindsight can provide objective answers. By 2035 the prism of time should have taken care of the necessary details and resolved the matter.

In the interim, let the games begin! One of those games is already revolving around the nutrition strategy adopted by the world champions. So...

Were the All Blacks low carb, kinda low carb or not at all low carb?

In this context, Prof Grant Scholfield's interview with the team's Strength & Conditioning Coach Dr Nic Gill here is probably as revealing as it's gonna get.

“I’d say most professional sports teams are now at least low sugar, lower to low carb. That’s not always high fat, but its healthy fats. Nutrition for sport is really changing fast.” Dr Nic Gill

While Gill is clearly indicating that the team have dialled back their sugar and carb intake, I would not expect him to reveal their habitual diets in forensic detail.

Why should he?

In 2007 I was very fortunate to have a guided tour behind the curtain of Irish rugby. I spent 12 months completing the IRFU's Certified Conditioning Course as a guest of Dr Liam Hennessy - the sports scientist who guided Ireland's physical transition to the professional ranks with a remarkable eye for detail. When professionalism loomed, the southern hemisphere teams were at least 5kgs heavier per man than their Irish opponents. Liam knew that this was an enormous (and typically insurmountable) power handicap against the big guns so he set to work building men made for the modern code.

That a typical Irish rugby debutant had a "training age" of zero was down to the lack of a development program at that (pre-pro) time. Liam shared with me the stats, the diets and the physical preparation the players were undertaking on his watch. My conclusion was that players lived in a superbly managed environment of excellence - as one would expect for a professional code. He was the first scientist (to my knowledge) to make systematic use of cryo chambers - in Poland as there were none in Ireland at that time - for pre season training blocks. The chambers apparently reduced recovery time between sessions, thus increasing the number of training units the squad could undertake in any time critical training camp. Mo Farah would approve.

This information was carefully protected - for a lot longer than it would have been in today's twitterverse of course (but still only a season if I recall correctly). It was in such margins that Liam was looking for the elusive edge to creep ever closer to the All Blacks et al. His tenure climaxed with a Grand Slam win in 2009 - Ireland's first since 1948 - by which time the All Blacks were of course prepping for their 2011 World Cup win.

The mighty All Blacks do not stand still.

In "Run on Fat" Dr Peter Brukner suggests that a real food/low carb intervention is a 1% er in the professional codes.

It is an edge, not an everything.

Of course, science does not "know" what low carb actually means - there is no clinically accepted definition for research purposes - but the Nic Gill's of sport do not care. Likewise, Tim di Francesco at the L.A Lakers isn't waiting around for double blind trials to tell him that a sweet potato beats a sports drink as a superior glycolytic fuel option. Both coaches have dialled back the sugar within their respective environments of excellence.

How about the Australian legend David Pocock? He lined out against the All Blacks as a contender for player of the tournament and World Player of the Year (one of 6 nominees). Not bad for a guy recovering from blown out knees. Had the Wallabies pipped the All Blacks the focus may well have been the contribution his habitual diet played in a remarkable sequence of performances.

When I met him earlier this year in Cape Town, he told me a low carb high fat approach was working for him. A very low carb (<50g/day) strategy left him lacking punch, so he upped it a bit to a level that felt right. Gaelic footballer Andy Moran has done exactly the same thing. So too many Australian Rules footballers and one European soccer team.

To those scientists who scream foul and "this is not low carb at all" I would ask this - what the hell is it then? When Pocock's team mates are smashing >500g/day is 150g low enough for you? This is a world class power athlete who has lost 2kgs of body fat while retaining lean muscle mass - and burst back on to the world scene for good measure.
"No athlete requires more than 200g/carbs per day" Prof Tim Noakes

And that's the thing. There is no one size fits all. Fat adaptation is not a black and white issue. It is an n=1. And every athlete out there is an n=1.

The All Blacks win - and Pocock's return to eminence - may not provide any scientific proof that "sugar is bad", but the dial is clearly moving away from sports drinks and junk fast fuel sources.

It was 1991 when Tim Noakes first sounded the alarms bells on the dangers of over hydration in endurance sports. What was controversial then is accepted science now - even if the message remains capped by billion dollar sports drink brands.

By the time history has decided if this All Blacks team is the greatest rugby team of all time, there is a very strong chance that Noakes will have been proven right - again.

"You don't need sports drinks, eat less carbs and isn't this All Blacks team the greatest of all time?"

Throw that line out down the pub tonight and who knows, you may get to tell your mates "I told you so" in 2035.

If you're running on fat, you should be around to enjoy it and all.