Science, Technology & Health: June 2013 Archives
I've been following a low-carb non-ketogenic diet for about a month now and I'm going to write a few posts on the effects I've observed. This post is about the effect I've seen on my ability to exercise.
My exercise regimen has two primary components.
- Daily running 3-5 miles, 4-5 days per week.
- Weight training every-other day, which usually comes out to 3 sessions per week.
Unfortunately I've been traveling a lot over the past month and my weight training has suffered. However I have been able to keep up with my running, and this is where I've noticed that my diet has had a significant effect.
Even though I'm overweight by BMI, up until I started my low-carb diet I could easily run 5 miles every day without straining. However, once I started eating low-carb I noticed quickly that my energy level was dropping. Running even 3 miles became an onerous trial, and my body felt weak and tired when I ran. It wasn't fun, and it was discouraging because I love to run.
I stuck with it for a while, but it became clear that the low-carb diet wasn't letting my body generate energy quickly enough when I needed it to run. So over the past weekend I started eating carbs before my run, and I noticed an immediate improvement. On Sunday morning I ate 45g of bread (180 calories) about 10 minutes before my run, and I felt fantastic. My run went great, and I had no trouble even pushing my daughter up and down the hills in my neighborhood -- hills that I had struggled to run up solo the day before.
I had heard of "carbo-loading" before, but it was only yesterday that I realized that before my low-carb diet I was living a life perpetually loaded with carbs. No wonder I had so much energy to run! However, I want to diet to be healthy, not just to follow some formula, and so I'm going to start eating carbs before I exercise. 180 calories of bread was enough to rocket me through a 4.5-mile run, and I'm going to experiment a bit to see how my body reacts to lesser amounts.
Low-Carb Diet Series:
Low-Carb Diet: What I Eat
Low-Carb Diet and Exerciseww.mwilliams.info/archive/2013/06/low-carb-diet-and-exercise.php">Low-Carb Diet and Exercise
I've been following a low-carb non-ketogenic diet for about a month now and I'm going to write a few posts about what I've learned. This first post is about what I'm eating.
First off, I'm not attempting an Atkins-style ketogenic diet. My goal is to drastically reduce my intake of carbohydrates while maintaining a varied and interesting diet. Here are the kinds of things I'm eating:
- Lots of vegetables, including carrots even though they are considered "starchy" by many low-carb diets. I also eat a ton of spinach in salads and omelettes. I'll eat pretty much any vegetable except potatoes.
- Fruit. Fruit has sugar, but I still eat it. I'll eat an apple a day, and I enjoy unsweetened berry smoothies. I've stopped eating bananas. I eat avocados, but without chips to eat with them I sometimes struggle to enjoy them as much as I used to.
- Meat: more red meat than I have in the past. Lots of chicken. I have also been enjoying salami, ham, and bacon. My wife just bought a bunch of turkey bacon, which I don't care for.
- I've also been eating a lot more dairy than I have in the past. Cheese in many forms, some butter. Low-ish-carb unsweetened Greek yogurt.
- Nuts, seeds, and legumes, even though these are not acceptable in many low-carb diets. I eat peanuts and almonds, and lots of peanut butter. I eat beans when I eat Mexican food and substitute it for rice.
The things I've eliminated:
- Crackers, chips, cookies. I miss them!
- Bread. Don't miss it much.
- Rice, potatoes, all the filler starches that go with meals. I don't miss these much either.
- Almost all sweets. I'll still use chocolate chips when I make almond flour cookies. The only sweets I eat are home-made to be low-carb. There's practically nothing sweet that's suitable to eat at any restaurant or store.
I've lost about six pounds in the first month of eating this way. I'll tell you more about how I feel in my next post.
Low-Carb Diet Series:
Low-Carb Diet: What I Eat
Low-Carb Diet and Exercise
