How the Best Athletes "Burn" Fat for Fuel - Endurance Metabolism | Nick Sterling, M.D., Ph.D. #2 

Highly predictive of future health.

for real

Thank you!

yes

Thank you!

That is fascinating! Consistency really pays off with it comes to building aerobic fitness. Congrats on all of your hard work and progress.

Thanks so much!

Thanks so much!

Thank you!

That is a really interesting question. You have hit on an excellent topic that I hope to discuss in the upcoming Ironman training series. Nutrition is one of the more controversial topics in endurance sports. One can find evidence supporting the idea that a low-carb diets or even ketogenic (aka fat-adapted) state with introduction of more carbohydrates during or just prior to race time may be beneficial for performance. Other studies seem to indicate that this does not matter. It has been around 2 years since I have looked into that topic specifically, so I will need to do another literature dive. Speaking from my personal N=1, I do not find that I can train well on keto unless I'm around 3 months into it, so that is a barrier. What I have found that works for me is to go low carbohydrate and up the quality fat intake during training (cells adapt to use the fuel that they get) and then increase carbohydrates during race time for a boost. Protein is critical as well, especially throughout training. I will say that during Ironman, I have found one of the greatest challenges is chugging 14 L of electrolyte drink over the day, plus carbohydrate sources. Quite difficult until I started practicing it. So I absolutely think that you're right... training the gut for those long events is critical.

Thanks for your feedback. I will be doing another episode on athlete metabolism and increasing fat utilization capacity in the near future, so I will be sure to go over some of these topics again.

Yes, that is an incredible feat that those athletes pull off. Looks like ~100 mi!