Is High Carb Fueling Bad for Your Health? (#299)

If you're fueling with high carbs during training and worrying about diabetes, weight gain, or gut issues, this episode will change how you think about sugar. Coach Adam Pulford breaks down why your body handles carbohydrates completely differently during exercise than at rest, clears up one of the biggest nutrition myths in endurance sports, and gives you a simple, practical fueling framework so you can stop being afraid of carbs and start performing at your best.

Free Cycling Training Assessment: https://trainright.com/cycling-training-assessment-welcome/

RESOURCES

• Gut Training for Athletes:
  • https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28332114/
  • https://www.gssiweb.org/docs/default-source/sse-docs/jeukendrup_sse_178.pdf?sfvrsn=2
  • https://www.mysportscience.com/post/2017/03/25/training-the-gut-for-athletes
• Gut Training & Microbiome:
  • Can the gut microbiota be trained?
• Stephanie Howe:
  • Stephanie Howe - CTS Ultrarunning Coach
  • https://www.instagram.com/p/B76N6l7Bw8k/?hl=en&img_index=1
  • About – Stephanie Howe

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HOST
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for nearly two decades and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.

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Transcript

The Big Sugar Myth

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If you're an endurance athlete pounding 60 to 90 grams of carbs per hour and wondering if you're wrecking your gut health or speeding toward diabetes, this episode might change the way you think about sugar. Because here's the truth your body's interaction with sugar during exercise does not behave the same way it does when you're at rest. There's so much bullshit out there in the world. About everything, but namely sugar and its role in the body. Let me clear up one of the biggest myths circulating out there in the endurance world. By the end of this, you'll be able to understand whether pounding carbs during training is quietly increasing your risk of diabetes, weight gain, and gut issues, or if your body's handling it completely different than the way you think. I'm Adam Pulford, head cycling coach at CTS. I hold a degree in exercise physiology and have spent the last 20 years coaching full-time, helping junior riders, amateurs, and professional athletes perform at their best. Now, let's break down what's really happening when you fuel high carb during exercise. Carbohydrate metabolism is different during exercise than at rest. There's a lot more to this than anyone can cover in a short 10 to 15 minute rant, but let me try to make it as simple as possible. During exercise, you're in breakdown mode for sugar, technically using glycogen and glucose. Use now mode is all your body cares about. All your systems are using this. Your brain, muscles, blood, metabolic functions, everything. Hormones change, and this is key. Insulin goes down, epinephrine goes up, glucagon goes up. And the main goal for your body is quick ATP production. That means go fast, drain the tank, and used stored as well as exogenous fuel. During rest, this is different. Now you're in storage mode. Use later is the code inside your brain. So this means when you eat carbs at rest, they are converted to glucose and stored in the body as glycogen for later. Some glucose is used for the brain, red blood cell oxygenation and basic metabolic function, but mostly storage from depletion of your past workout and to be used later for future workouts. Hormonal change is opposite from during exercise. This means that insulin goes up at rest. Epinephrine and glucone go down. The main goal of the body here is to stock up when this crazy person does that crazy thing again, so we're ready, sort of thing. Probably the biggest point to make here is that the mechanisms and hormones that regulate carbohydrate metabolism are fundamentally different during exercise than at rest. And therefore, eating a bunch of sugar while you're exercising will not make you fat or cause diabetes. Now, you want to make sure that when you're exercising, you're exercising hard enough for this. And it's really not all that complicated. It's about zone two and higher. And fueling your body during exercise is generally better than not. So should you eat all the carbs while training? No, there's a limit to that. Your problem won't be diabetes or weight gain, but GI stress or gut rot, meaning your stomach starts to cramp, digestion slows, and you could experience vomiting, excessive diarrhea, or both at the same time. Not too much fun, in my opinion. So, how many carbs, how much fuel? To fuel best, start with 60 to 90 grams of carbohydrate per hour during exercise on moderate to hard days when you're riding for 60 to 90 minutes or longer. Adjust that based on how you feel and what works best for you. And it's as simple as that. My advice for the more advanced rider, and these are strategies I have developed and put into place with my athletes, is more specifically, on your performance days, aim for 35 to 50% calorie intake of your burn rate measured in kilojoules from your power meter. For example, if you burn 700 kilojoules per hour, take 40% of that, that's 280 calories, and you divide by four to get 70 grams of carbohydrate per hour. Performance means 90 minutes or longer with hard intervals or races, long hard endurance days, and the majority of calories coming from carbohydrates for that fueling strategy. On your shorter or easier endurance days, aim for 25 to 33% of your calorie intake of your kilojoul burn rate. That means one to two hours at zone two, no real hard intensity, and stay hydrated. Fuel can be a mix of macronutrients on those days, but mostly carbs. I've done a ton of podcasts about this and will likely be creating more content around it. I've linked to more resources about all of this below, such as an article by Oscar Zhukendrup on gut training, where you can actually teach your body to take in, absorb, and use more fuel over time. He goes over the mechanisms in detail, but it's in part your body's receptors becoming more receptive, and your microbiome may actually change, perhaps to utilize simple carbohydrates more readily. It's pretty wild. Read it. Now let's talk about calories in versus calories out versus calories needed during exercise. In particular, how weight gain actually works. On a simplistic biological level, weight gain and weight loss are more of a math equation than anything else. If calories in equals calories out, you should maintain body weight on a regular basis. If you want to lose weight, eat less or burn more calories or combination with those two elements, then you consume in the course of several weeks. You should be losing weight. However, there are other aspects at play here in the human body. In a hormonally normal person without a genetically predisposed abnormality with appetite control, weight gain, and weight loss are more of a math equation than it is a mystery. So if you're like, I've done that math equation, Coach Adam, and it ain't working for me, yeah, I hear you. I've worked with athletes that have Hashimoto's disease, type 2 diabetes, and body types that seem to look at pasta and gain weight. It can be trickier than simple math. And I don't mean to discredit anyone whose experience would say otherwise. But this is where you need to go beyond the podcast guy and talk to your doctor, or better yet, consult with one of our CTS coaches who are certified nutritionists. They can start to unravel the complicated layers of your challenges to unlock weight loss or weight gain, if that's your goal, and increase your performance through fueling strategies. One such CTS coach I turn to often is Stephanie Howe. So let's look at some pro tips from Coach Stephanie. The first one is think of your food as two different fuel types. You've got fast fuel, and that's during exercise, slow fuel, and that's during rest or the rest of life. Fast fuels are your gels, bars, drinks with the two to one, one-to-one, or one to point eight ratios that carry well, digest easily, and get metabolized quickly by the body during exercise. Bananas and other low-fiber fruits, crackers, and the right whole foods have their place here, but with less fat and protein, higher carbs, and usually at low to moderate intensities for the whole foods during exercise. Slow fuels are your grains, meats, fruits, vegetables, oil, and yeah, even some desserts. Colorful food, diverse food, combinations of our macronutrients, proteins, fats, and carbs, when you're not exercising. Here's where fiber is great, and eating only one macronutrient should be avoided. Our bodies rest and digest best with all the macronutrients together. Stephanie encourages her athletes she works with, and everyone for that matter, to think about your food as two fuel types because it matches the different metabolic changes or avenues that carbs take during different speeds of your life. During exercise equals fast movement equals fast fuels. During exercise equals slow movements equals slow fuels. In summary, keep it real simple like that. Train properly, sleep a lot, keep stress low, and you won't get diabetes or something worse from your high carb training sessions. That's it for today. Hope you liked it. If you want more or to take it to the next level, you know where to find us. TrainRight.com.