My Christmas wish list currently includes The Paleo Diet for Athletes by Loren Cordain and Joe Friel. I’ve read the summary paper and I’m looking forward to finding out what the detail is behind the conclusions. However, I’ve been thinking a lot about recovery recently, so here are some of my thoughts.
What’s the best diet for recovery?
I have found that my recovery has been better than ever since I moved onto the paleo diet.
I believe, therefore, that the paleo diet is superior in terms of recovery to a more traditional grains-based diet, at least for me.
I struggled to recover properly on a traditional diet
I used to struggle to recover, especially after long endurance training sessions.
In the summer, I often go for 75-100 mile cycle rides, sitting on the bike for anything up to 7.5 hours. Invariably, during these long rides I would eat flapjacks, malt bread and anything else that packed well and could be eaten on the move. The majority of these snacks were thick with grains (bananas and dried figs being the main exceptions).
However, I would come back from these workouts and often be unable to do any training for a couple of days afterwards. If I tried to train too soon I would often find myself injured or just unable to perform. I can recall standing in the gym trying to move a warm-up weight that had felt feather-light the week before and finding I couldn’t even get it out of the rack.
I struggled to recover even more on multi-day walking trips. We often based our food on dehydrated soy mince and couscous for wild-country expeditions because it packed light and rehydrated easily. By the end of the third day I was usually in very bad condition, finding that 10 hours of sleep left me feeling no better than I had felt when I first crawled into my sleeping bag. Most noticeably I would also routinely lose a week or two of progress in the weights room on my return, having to go back to a weight I had been using a few weeks before we went away.
Improved recovery on the paleo diet
Since moving full time to the paleo diet all of these problems have passed. Memorably, I found myself in the gym just 3 hours after a 90 mile bike ride one weekend, because that was the only time I could fit in all my workouts that week. I managed to squeeze out a personal best on my deadlift. I could never have achieved that before.
Similarly, this summer included a week of trekking in the Alps. We were walking 6-8 hours each day and were able to stay paleo thanks to the small villages we passed through.
We bought fresh fruit, vegetables (mostly tomatoes and salad), meat and cheese. For the first time on a walking expedition, I woke each morning feeling refreshed and recovered. On our return home, I went straight back into the weights room on the weights I’d being lifting before the holiday.
Carbohydrates, grains and inflammation
The nature of the paleo diet (cutting out grains, wheat, pulses and dairy) tends to result in a lower carbohydrate diet.
While most research into the impact of carbohydrates on inflammation have been centred on obese test subjects or those with type 2 diabetes (in an effort to learn how to prevent or eliminate these problems), the results from the studies seem to be agreed that higher carbohydrate levels in the diet increase inflammatory markers and seem to increase inflammatory tendencies in the test subjects [The case for low carbohydrate diets in diabetes management, Arora and McFarlane, 2005, Nutrition & Metabolism; Low-Carb Diet Reduces Inflammation And Blood Saturated Fat In Metabolic Syndrome, ScienceDaily, 2007].
Additionally, grains in particular cause inflammation, neatly summarised by Dr. David Seaman in his blog article “Grains and Inflammation”. This reason, perhaps even more than the lower carbohydrate nature of the paleo diet, is likely to be the reason my recovery has been so much better since I moved to a paleo diet.
After seeing all these benefits, I struggle when I’m on active holidays and can’t easily stay strictly paleo. But I’m also comfortable knowing that sticking to a paleo diet is the best way in the long run to improve my athletic performance while helping my body deal with the resultant damage.
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