No eating before or during running?

I think this is a really

I think this is a really intersting idea that I will probably try at some point, but I think my stomach will reach capacity well before I eat enough for an entire day (in a one hour sitting). Maybe I will try the 20/4 split and eat 2 meals 3 hours apart. I would imagine this would also get difficult with any sort of extreme training when you need to consume north of 5000 calories a day.
 
mykroberts wrote:I think

mykroberts said:
I think this is a really intersting idea that I will probably try at some point, but I think my stomach will reach capacity well before I eat enough for an entire day (in a one hour sitting). Maybe I will try the 20/4 split and eat 2 meals 3 hours apart. I would imagine this would also get difficult with any sort of extreme training when you need to consume north of 5000 calories a day.



I do think it gets harder north of 2500 calories - there is just only so much you can eat in one sitting. I am a rarity, though, most people have windows for eating of 4 hours or 6 hours and eat a few times in those windows. I find when I need to be doing some extra repair because I've pushed myself, I need to eat outside the window. It still does not feel like hunger, but more like a deep primal need. It's an interesting sensation.
 
Janine, I've been following a

Janine, I've been following a 20/4 fasting cycle on and off for the past 10 years. Most recently I've gone back to it on the paleo diet. Glad to hear there are others on this site who don't think I'm crazy for trying it. It seems to be a real compliment to the paleo diet, and it makes days when I cheat on the diet a lot less stressful on my body.
 
Yeah I would imagine it would

Yeah I would imagine it would be difficult to eat more than 2,500 on a pure paleo diet. That is about the max I can eat in one sitting when consuming juck food. I can't imagine throwing veggies and fruits in there.

Saypay roughly how many calories a day do you eat? I think we do about the same amount of training and I am curious if I am eating too much?
 
No, I think it's great, not

No, I think it's great, not crazy. It saved my husband's sanity - going low-carb helped with maybe 50% of his hypolgycemic episodes and "brain fog" and fasting got rid of the rest. It also forces you to choose your food wisely. If you know that you just have this one meal, you are not going to waste your time eating empty calories. You have to eat nutrient-dense food. I eat Paleo + potatoes.
 
Saypay, I don't think you're

Saypay, I don't think you're crazy either- my fasting is usually about 14-15 hours, and up to 20 if I run very long. I'm interested to read that I'm not crazy to reject that whole "small meals often" suggestion. Like Janine's husband, my blood sugar completely stabilized on a high protein, veggie, fat diet. No dairy, no beans, rarely grains, and no sugar except what I get in red wine and bananas or other occasional fruit. I also have lately started to reduce portion sizes and have found that I have more energy. If I need to eat more, I let my body tell me but otherwise, 80% full is where I put the fork down.
 
everyone's nutritional needs

everyone's nutritional needs AND caloric needs are different- the numbers are based on a combination of activity, health, height, weight and body composition.. the ONLY way to tell what a person truly needs (as opposed to an educated guess that we then modify based on weight gain/loss/stability) is to do indirect calorimetry.

If the fasting thing works for you, more power to you. I have rarely seen a person that it worked for in person, and again, there is minimal research to support it, so I wouldn't suggest it to a client.. but thats me. I stick with what is tried and true, because randomly suggesting things on heresay isn't evidence based and Dietetics as a field focuses on evidence based practice. We do try hard to get a lot of research sponsored and done in areas that are not traditional.

Honestly- there are things I do in my own diet because they work and have for years (I have IBS and hypoglycemia) that are not fully proven, but I don't recommend them to clients as medically based. I tell them that it is an option they can try.

Amie
 
khyricat wrote:everyone's

khyricat said:
everyone's nutritional needs AND caloric needs are different- the numbers are based on a combination of activity, health, height, weight and body composition.. the ONLY way to tell what a person truly needs (as opposed to an educated guess that we then modify based on weight gain/loss/stability) is to do indirect calorimetry.

If the fasting thing works for you, more power to you. I have rarely seen a person that it worked for in person, and again, there is minimal research to support it, so I wouldn't suggest it to a client.. but thats me. I stick with what is tried and true, because randomly suggesting things on heresay isn't evidence based and Dietetics as a field focuses on evidence based practice. We do try hard to get a lot of research sponsored and done in areas that are not traditional.

Honestly- there are things I do in my own diet because they work and have for years (I have IBS and hypoglycemia) that are not fully proven, but I don't recommend them to clients as medically based. I tell them that it is an option they can try.

Amie



Would love to know how many people you've gotten off insulin with that approach? What is tried and true about an approach that is helping more and more people in this country end up as insulin-dependent diabetics? And I mean the big picture of nutritional advice, not individual cases. I find that the only people I know who have found true health are those who are willing to get truly radical in their approach.
 
Abide, I really don't keep

Abide, I really don't keep track of my calories, but I probably eat in the 3000 calorie range per day on a training day. On rest days, I'm usually not hungry at all, and probably won't eat more than 1500. My one meal per day isn't much bigger than it used to be. For example, if I ate a burrito bowl from Chipotle (no rice...maybe beans) for dinner before adopting an IF diet, I probably eat more like 1.5 to 2 burrito bowls in one sitting.

I'm amazed at how little food I eat these days and still maintain my fitness. But you are right, I am more likely to cheat on the paleo aspect of the diet now that I'm doing IF regularly, just because filling up on the paleo diet in one sitting is incredibly hard. But if I do cheat, I still go for potatoes and legumes and steer clear of grains whenever possible. I've always incorporated dairy into my diet, because I do a lot of strength training and I want to maintain my weight...not lose it.
 
Commenting on the original

Commenting on the original post...

I did an experiment last year where I'd run an up-and-down trail loop with some steep hills in the early evening for 1 hour on day 1, 2 hours on day 2, and 3 hours on day 3, repeating the cycle after 3-4 easy days. Every run was about 4-5 hours after a small meal of lentils and raw carrot, mixed with olive oil, muchi curry spices, and black sesame. During the first 3 hour run I bonked hard around 2 hours and 40 minutes. After that I had no issues whatsoever completing the workouts without eating, including one where I'd had to fast the whole day before running for two hours. My conclusion: I became fitter and completing the workouts didn't have much to do with what I did or didn't eat before or while running.

This year I'm learning that if I don't fast as much before and during my workouts I can put in more miles and recover more quickly. Looking at how I perform during any given run or short cycle isn't nearly as useful as looking at how consistent I am over a longer period of time.
 
Janine shared this thread

Janine shared this thread with me last night, and since she talked about me so much, I feel like I've already been here...

IF is a situation where conventional wisdom about what to eat runs up against some very real practical concerns: I've been told from time to time that I should eat "bulky" vegetables full of water and fiber so I'll "feel full." Of course that's the exact opposite of what you need to do if you're trying to get all your nutrition in a short time. I consume the densest forms of nutrition possible: Last night for dinner I had 2 hamburgers, 4 hard-boiled egg yolks and a juicy steak, all drenched with homemade mayonnaise. Now before you go off thinking I never eat any vegetables, let me assure you, I also had some parsley! :D

I was a bit hungry when I went to bed though. I prefer to have meat broth and liver, which both tend to be more satisfying than muscle meat.
 
A) I tell people to eat bulky

A) I tell people to eat bulky foods when they are trying to lose weight or reduce caloric intake, I go to nutrient dense foods when telling them to gain/fighting to maintain weight in a patient.

b) one thing to consider with the IF: metabolism increases in people who eat more frequently and reduces in those who eat less often (once-twice a day). If it works for you, great. From experience, a lot of people who try those types of diets wind up in worse shape.

c) Aaron has a really good point- sometimes things work for us with one type of routine/exercise and NOT with another. I can get away with NOT eating 6 times a day easier when I am running (same caloric intake), but when I am not running for more than a few days I find I have to go back to that, or my blood sugar dips return. Exercise alone is a HUGE factor for ME in controlling hypoglycemia. For many of my patients that is NOT the case.
 
Hmmm, I hear you, khyricat,

Hmmm, I hear you, khyricat, but I think I am going with the people who can run for hours in wind and snow and heat and rarely end up in the hospital :) -- and look like the picture of health I want to achieve. I mean, Saypay is hardly suffering on his 10 year IF "experiment". When I ate like you recommmend, I had the worst health of my life. My body is my evidence and it's the only body of evidence for which I can control all the variables, so I'm going to go with my rock solid data that's right here in my tissue, in my blood.

I'm still crying inside for your 350 pound patient who obviously needed as much saturated fat as she could get to balance something in her nutritional profile. I lost 80 pounds and turned around a million small health problems drinking pints of heavy cream, eating steak, basically eating as much saturated fat as I could get my hands on. My body has balanced out more now that I have restored some of the basic nutrients I was very deficient in, but I got here by gorging on fat and protein.The way I see it, your patient has a nutrient deficiency and you are not allowing her to listen to what her body is telling her it needs. As I said at the beginning of the thread, I'd sooner give a diabetic a stick of butter than a dinner roll. That's not a joke.
 
jschwab wrote:I'm still

jschwab said:
I'm still crying inside for your 350 pound patient who obviously needed as much saturated fat as she could get to balance something in her nutritional profile. I lost 80 pounds and turned around a million small health problems drinking pints of heavy cream, eating steak, basically eating as much saturated fat as I could get my hands on. My body has balanced out more now that I have restored some of the basic nutrients I was very deficient in, but I got here by gorging on fat and protein.The way I see it, your patient has a nutrient deficiency and you are not allowing her to listen to what her body is telling her it needs. As I said at the beginning of the thread, I'd sooner give a diabetic a stick of butter than a dinner roll. That's not a joke.
I'm not sure I even realized how sick I was until I started eating Paleo (with dairy). I think I had gotten so used to certain long term health issues, I just thought they were part of life. For example -- seasonal allergies. Before, I just thought that I was one of those unlucky people who had allergies. I haven't had a hint of allergies since going Paleo. And my digestive tract is as healthy as it was when I was a kid. This by far the healthiest I have ever been, period. Not bad for a guy in his 40's. And the cool thing is that my health is still continuing to improve.
 
Matt - I hear you on the

Matt - I hear you on the allergies thing. Mine were getting worse and worse as the years went by and it seemed I was becoming allergic to more things as well.

Last year I only needed to med up one time (and it was fairly minor), and this year I haven't been impacted at all yet (cross my fingers)

I can still tell when there is a high pollen count since I get a little stuffy but I haven't had any sinus issues or sneeze attacks for quite some time now.
 
You guys re lucky. I have not

You guys re lucky. I have not dropped my allergies but I did clear up a case of asthma I'd developed in my 30's. Maybe if I really dropped some of the other Paleo "no's" (I stil eat potatoes and peanut butter).