I promised yesterday that I would do a post about the benefits of being fat adapted. It is a subject that is close to my heart and something that I consider to have provided me with the most freedom to truly enjoy the outdoors.
Fat adaption - giving me the power to keep going for longer
What is fat adaption?
Popular belief is that the human body requires carbohydrates as fuel. This is true, since carbohydrates provide glycogen that is stored and used by the muscles as energy. However, it is often overlooked that the body can also burn fat as a fuel source.
I believe that this is most often overlooked because of our carbohydrate-rich western diet that we have from early childhood. Pasta, rice, bread and potatoes are the staple bulking foods for every meal. Since the body finds it easier to use glycogen than fat as energy and carbohydrates have always been readily available with stores replenished every time we eat, our bodies have learned to use carbs to fuel everything, from extreme efforts in the gym through to a gentle stroll in the park.
You don't need starchy carbs for energy
In reality, the glycogen in our muscles should be preserved for extreme and sudden efforts. As fat can be so easily stored in large quantities by the body and a little fat goes a long way as an energy source, fat is a much more efficient fuel to use for general day-to-day and endurance activities.
How to convert
Never fear. It’s not too late to teach your body how to use fat instead of carbohydrates as a fuel source. But you do need to be prepared for a little bit of hell while you get there.
The best way to get there is to completely remove the carbohydrates from your life until your body finally resorts to using fat instead. I don’t mean taking out the breads and pastas and fruit (which is very high carb), but really taking out everything. Carrots and other root vegetables join the ranks of banned foods for a few weeks.
I used Fitday to establish the total carbs and the fibre content of all the food I was eating. My body still required some fibre to process waste and keep my gut lining clean, so I worked with a net carbs figure of total carbs less total fibre and kept this under 30g each day. The vegetables that I found I could eat plenty of were mostly restricted to broccoli, spinach, cabbage and brussel sprouts. It’s important to ensure you aren’t restricting your calories. Instead pile plenty of fat sources onto your plate that don’t add too much in the way of carbs –fatty meats and eggs for example.
After a couple of weeks, by which time my glycogen stores were completely depleted, I started to take in some additional carbs directly before a workout. This taught my body that for extreme efforts it was allowed to use glycogen stores. However, it was a couple of months before I started to allow the odd higher carb item back into my diet when I wasn’t working out.
The unpleasant bit
For a few weeks I felt dreadful. My body was convinced that it had nothing to use for energy. I felt tired, limp and irritable.
You can probably imagine that in a household where both of us were undergoing this conversion at the same time there were plenty of arguments and cross words exchanged since we both felt lousy. But in calmer moments we were able to rationalise why we were behaving like that.
By staying strong and focussed through this barrier and by supporting each other as best we could we soon started to feel better. After only a couple of weeks in fact.
Speeding up fat adaption
We actually made the process faster but probably more unpleasant by going straight into it, from a fuller carb diet to a completely stripped down diet, without slowly removing the carbs from each meal. We also continued to exercise as hard as possible.
Gym workouts were a bit of a flop – you need to accept that your performance in the gym is unlikely to improve and may well decline a little while your body adapts. This is not the time to be aiming for those elusive lifting goals. If you’re prepared to put those goals on hold for a month or two, the longer-term benefits of fat adaption make it worth every moment of delay.
Our main exercise, aside from the dreadful gym workouts, was a gentle two hour fasted bike ride every week. The fasted ride combined the carb-depleted state with a fast to force our bodies to learn that it was capable of using body fat to undertake gentle endurance activities. I believe that it is these fasted rides that made the difference to the speed with which we adapted to burn fat.
The freedom of a fat adapted life
Exactly a year ago, in May 2009, Chris and I went on a cycle tour in Yorkshire. The difference between the cycle tour in Yorkshire and our trip last week in Scotland was that a year ago neither of us were fat adapted.
We faced similar problems with shops being closed early and food being unavailable in Yorkshire, but we were also unable to carry sufficient food in carbohydrate form to power our cycling output. Calories in didn’t just equal calories out – we required those calories to be almost entirely carbohydrate in order to get the benefits.
I still have strong and unpleasant memories of trying to cycle along the flat in Yorkshire (the rare moments when we weren’t battling the massive hills), maintaining a measly 5mph in comparison to a normal touring speed of 10-12mph and crying with the effort. I felt horrendous.
As a comparison, in Scotland last week we were able to carry a 300g bag of mixed nuts and a 100g bar of 85% cocoa chocolate to share each day, plus some additional protein bars for Chris. Amazingly, half a bag of nuts and half a bar of chocolate provided us with about 1,300 base calories which, while still a deficit for a full day of cycling, gave us sufficient carbohydrates to replenish any glycogen that had been used for bigger efforts (eg. big hills) and some fat to start to replace any body fat stores that had been used.
The luxury of knowing we can now go anywhere and keep going, even without food, has made out outdoor trips better. We don’t need to worry about where the next village will be or whether it has a shop. We can go where we like, when we like and not worry about whether we’ll find food that day.
I hope I’ve convinced a few people to convert to burning fat as their main fuel source. I consider it to be one of the best things I ever did. Perhaps you will too.
Related posts:
Weight Loss Fanatic » Blog Archive » Fat Burning Pills Or Exercise And Diet? | Healthy Man // May 18, 2010 at 13:15
[...] Lessons learned: the benefits of being fat-adapted [...]