Unfortunately two weeks, instead of one, in the Alps was enough to really mess with my body.

No eggy breakfasts

Food in the Swiss Alps – breakfast

In the Swiss Alps food is not Paleo if you are eating out rather than cooking for yourself, and we were staying on half board for the full fortnight.  Meat is expensive and bread is cheap. 

Breakfast consistently involves:

• Bread – sliced and rolls, most often white but also rye once you cross to German-speaking Switzerland.
• Jam
• Museli with milk

It often also includes yoghurt (my standard breakfast most of the time was museli with yoghurt instead of milk followed by 4 slices of bread with jam) and, in a few rarer places you’ll get the following offered as part of the buffet:

• Cheese (just a couple of slices each)
• Processed sliced meat (usually a little ham and salami, but again, only enough for a few slices each)
• Fruit
• Pastries, such as croissant and pain au chocolat

Food in the Swiss Alps – dinner

Half-board dinners invariably contain four courses in the mountain huts and hostels, reduced to a three course version missing the soup in the hotels, and most often follow this pattern:

• Soup (the less good the quality and availability of drinking water is, the more watery the soup is, providing you with liquid in another format instead – the meat course also becomes more filled with liquid in this situation)
• Green salad (usually just lettuce) with a French dressing (it comes with the dressing already on it, so there is no “leave the dressing off” option – the dressing invariably has gluten in it as well as being very strongly biased towards vinegar)
• Meat casserole or sliced meat (often pork), just a couple of spoonfuls or slices, with pasta (depending on how remote the place is you might get a few vegetables too and on one night we had the treat of potatoes).
• Pudding: most often a scoop or two of ice-cream or a dish of egg custard

As you can probably tell from that, trying to stay Paleo would have resulted in extreme hunger, possibly starvation, and certainly our bodies going into a “famine” mode, given the amount of walking we were doing each day. 

You might get half this amount of meat...

Effects of the diet during the trip

While I am used to eating a higher carb level on my hiking trips, topping off my dinners with extra helpings of chips or crisps in the British pubs, the British breakfast still shines through with its emphasis on sausage, egg, bacon and similar protein-rich foods.  I am not used to having such a carb (and wheat)-rich source of food for all the meals while hiking.

• Bowels:  The effects were almost instantaneous.  Movements became scarce and difficult after day one, despite good hydration, and didn’t improve again until several days later.  I think the problem for that mostly came from the poor levels of soluble fibre in the diet and lack of significant fats.  The occasional poor-hydration day didn’t help.
• Endurance capabilities:  Perhaps the most interesting.  On about day four I found myself hitting the wall partway through the day.  This is something that hasn’t happened to me for some time.  I was fasting from breakfast through to dinner each day but I started seeing spots, feeling like I had a vacuum-packed stomach and a sense of queasiness.  My rational thought became distinctly foggy too.  All common signs of carbohydrate withdrawal.

  When this got really bad, or if we were trying to cross technically challenging ground at the time, I would have a quarter of a protein bar.  These were excessively powerful, yet surprisingly low carb, bars packing in about 400 calories to a bar.  The rest of the time I tried to grin (usually failing, poor Chris) and bear it.  After pushing through for about an hour with this unpleasant sensation I seemed to switch over to the fat burning systems.

This latter problem persisted for most of the rest of the trip, with how bad the effects were depending on how strenuous and taxing the walking was each day.

Post-trip diet recovery

By the end of the holiday I was physically repelled by the sight of bread.  In fact even now, a week and a half later, I still don’t feel tempted by sweet or bready products. 

I decided the best thing to do when I got back, after falling into large bowls of meat with side portions of greens, was to go straight back to a strict Paleo, low carb diet with fasting each day.  This was a problem on two counts:

• I was completely out of energy by early afternoon, struggling to burn fat instead of carbs.
• Hunger had me seeing stars and feeling faint by early evening.

On Thursday, after a horrendous workout, I had a post workout carb intake.  I wanted to show my body that it was allowed carbs but to connect them to specific events.  On Friday morning I felt better than I had all week. 

How I felt through most of the week

Finally, on Friday, I saw sense and had a snack in the early afternoon.  Omelette with a tin of tuna.  It made all the difference in the world.

Now I’m taking it a bit more gently.  Feeding if I need to, timing certain foods to certain events.

Lessons to learn

Here’s a few brief lessons from this:

• Don’t try to go through a full carb withdrawal diet when trying to recover from a physically demanding event.
• Re-teach your body to connect foods to events: excessive hunger = protein and fat; training = carbs.
• Nobody who is converted to fat-burning is immune to converting back in certain circumstances!

Related posts:

1. Lessons learned: low-carb diet for endurance exercise
2. Blog-watch: low carb diets
3. Blog-watch: high protein diets

Unfortunately for my powerlifting a trip away is rarely anything other than a thoroughly active time, usually involving some sort of extreme levels of endurance exercise.  I suppose that is only to be expected since Chris and I work for a walking company, reviewing their routes for accuracy and to check for changes to the route, when we go away.  It’s exactly what you don’t want when trying to retain all that lovely strong muscle built up in the gym.  However, I accepted a little while ago that the things I enjoy are not completely compatible and that I will have set-backs in powerlifting progress in return for enjoying other activities.

The glutes and hamstrings I've been working on seem to show in my Ronhills - as well as the fat I've built up over the last two months...

I haven’t been away for longer than a week since 2002, so going walking in the Alps for two weeks was a wonderful experience.  Interestingly there has been so much stress and exhaustion in my life recently that it was several days before I properly started to relax so I was particularly glad of the extra week this time.

The weather was splendid and, in true mountain style, every morning (until the last three days, which were full of rain and mist) arrived with clear blue skies and roasting sunshine, clouding over a little by the middle of the day and eventually breaking with rain in mid- or late-afternoon.  Many days finished the show off with spectacular thunderstorms too, flashing, crackling and rumbling into the late evening.

I'm sure the flowers up in the high, rocky areas appreciate the rain

I continued my habit from the last walking trip of following a basic “intermittent fasting” protocol each day.  It made the days easier since we could load up on breakfast and then walk through with only brief breaks to make notes and swig water (and to allow Chris time to inhale some chocolate or fruit).  If our destination for the day had a supermarket we would invariably then fall into it, buying up enough food (tinned tuna in a couple of places, but more often fruit, bread and soft cheese) to keep us sat on our beds, contentedly munching and snoozing, until dinnertime arrived.

A rare but appreciated working break

For those who are interested in such things and have a map of Switzerland handy, here’s our itinerary.  There were no days off, we just walked every day for 13 days, starting just over the border in France and finishing about halfway across Switzerland, a few days into the German-speaking region.  I’ve included details of how long each day was and my footwear each day.  This was the first time I’ve been to the Alps since I’ve had my Vibrams.

Classic mountain scenery

• Argentiere to Trient – 5.5 hours (a warm-up day with boots all day)
• Trient to Champex – 9 hours (boots all day)
• Champex to Villette – 4.5 hours (a rest day done in Vibrams)
• Villette to Cabane du Mont Fort – 6 hours (uphill all day, no downhill at all, not even a sniff of it, with the whole day done in Vibrams)
• Cabane du Mont Fort to Cabane de Prafleuri – 7.5 hours (boots all day – this was rocky terrain)
• Cabane de Prafleuri to Arolla – 8.5 hours (boots all day – I’d been going to change for the last hour or so but then it started raining and there wasn’t time to stop without getting soaked)
• Arolla to La Sage – 3.5 hours (another rest day with Vibrams all day)
• La Sage to Grimentz – 7.5 hours (boots to begin with then for the last 2 hours I changed to Vibrams until the last 20 mins when the bruising from the rocky tracks finally got to me and I swapped back again)
• Grimentz to Zinal, over the Col de Sorrebois – 5 hours (we took a bus partway up to miss the first 3 hours of walking since we knew what was coming over the next few days – another boots day)
• Zinal to Gruben, via the Hotel Weisshorn – 8 hours (boots until the last hour when I swapped to Vibrams)
• Gruben to St Niklaus – 7.5 hours (boots all the way – it was raining too hard all day to risk Vibrams on a wet and steep descent)
• St Niklaus to Europahütte, via Gasenreid – 8.5 hours (another boots day, we were crossing steep exposed rocky slopes and moraine fields most of the day where the grip on the boots was needed)
• Europahütte to Zermatt, via Randa and the valley route – 5.5 hours (boots for the first 2 hours, Vibrams for the rest)
  

  This is not Vibram-friendly terrain!

My feet took a severe pounding and, even switching to Vibrams for the ends some days didn’t always help.  Often we were walking over ground that was so stony that my feet got bruised in Vibrams, but after 6 hours or more of walking in boots, I was usually hobbling from severe cramp across the balls of my feet anyway and ready to take the bruising instead.

Oh, and some evil insect of doom took a good suck of my blood on the day into Zinal and two days later it still looked like this:

Insect bite of doom! That's my thigh and a contact lense blister pack next to the bite to give you an idea of the size of this painful thing...

All in all a good but tough trip.  I wonder how far backwards I have gone in the gym as a result?

The Matterhorn, looming over Zermatt as the sign of the end of a good trip

Related posts:

1. Powerlifting progress 2010: week forty-five (fat loss: week seven) – holiday
2. Powerlifting progress(?) 2011: week twenty-nine
3. Powerlifting progress 2011: week twelve (holiday)

Alli McKee - you don't get a back like that without training hard!

NJAMW:  Lots of your training programs are up on your website already so I’m not going to ask you to repeat yourself (everyone – go and read the blog!).  Instead I’ve got a few specific questions. 

To meet your Figure goals you were often training six days – a few years ago this included two sessions on most days – one cardio and one strength – while your more recent training seemed to be four strength days and two cardio days.  Which approach have you found to be more effective and why?

AM:  It’s a bit hard for me to recall the specifics of each prep.  I do remember however, when I was training with Nick, we actually did less cardio than the average competitor.  We hit the conditioning hard after my strength training sessions, but that was interval based and often ranged between 4 minutes and 12 minutes depending on the intensity objectives of the day.  If I can recall correctly, in previous shows, Nick and I would train strength four days per week plus an additional day for “vanity” muscles (biceps, triceps, extra shoulder work, calves and abs.)  We relied on a sound diet and hard training to get the job done.

Under Carter’s care, I also had four strength training days, plus two days for ab / arm / EEW (Carter prefers the term Energy Expenditure Work rather than cardio).  With him however, I was doing morning EEW often.  For the final 60 days of my prep, six days a week I was doing morning EEW coupled with an afternoon lift. 

I think both strategies worked favorably.  It was certainly a time demand to do all the additional EEW, but my body remained healthy and I wound up achieving my leanest measurements for the Arnold Competition while under Carter’s prep.  Every prep is different I think it is a synergistic effect of where you are mentally / emotionally, plus of course the program design and the dietary strategies and compliance.

Alli McKee at the Arnold Classic 2011

NJAMW:  EEW is a great term for it!  I completely agree that how successful you are in trying to get lean is affected by your mental and emotional state.  For cardio training, when trying to meet a figure goal, do you recommend high intensity interval training, steady state cardio, or a blend of both (if so, what sort of amounts of each)?

AM:  I am a fan of both. I favor running, so a morning run is enjoyable to me.  I personally, would recommend about 30-40 minutes of an easy to moderate cardio effort in the mornings.  I think the high-intensity interval training (post strength training) is a very favorable approach to fat loss considering the metabolic effects you can accomplish.

In addition to my personal enjoyment for each style, I like them both for attaining results and the variety of intensity and activity.  If you were to ask me to chose one method however, I would vote for the interval conditioning coupled with a strategized strength program and a sound diet.

All of that considered, I encourage finding ways to vary movement, intensity and make recovery efforts a priority.  We can’t manage extremely high intensity training day-in and day-out. That’s tough on the nervous system and our body.  Try to mix things up by cycling movements (ie: Airdyne bike versus sled work versus running) and intensities (work to rest ratios, the level of intensity and overall time of energy expenditure work).

NJAMW:  I’ve previously always been a fan of high intensity intervals but I do find they grind me down if I’m leaning out for more than a four or five week block.  Mixing it up sounds like excellent advice.  Speaking of high intensity work, back in 2009 you were raving about using sprints as part of your conditioning.  It’s something I’ve been thinking of trying but haven’t yet got round to.  Do you still use sprinting as part of your conditioning? Why do you think it works so well and how does someone like me get started?

AM:  Personally, I think sprints work so well because it’s essentially a style of interval training which incorporates tremendous power output and demands intensity of the sprinter.  Sprints are also all encompassing.  Picture, propelling your body forward with maximal force, pumping your arms, driving your knees and putting explosive force into the ground.  So all in one movement, you’re including your delts, lats, abs, erectors, glutes, hamstrings, hip flexors, quads, and calves all at once.

Beginners should make sure they have proper mobility and strength to sprint correctly before they attempt maximal sprinting at all.  Beginners should also ease into things gradually to avoid excessive soreness and the likelihood of injury.  Starting out at 60% speed and ramping up to 100% over the course of time.

Most importantly, it may be conservative, but I normally wouldn’t recommend a sprint beyond 20- 40 yards, primarily, for injury prevention.

With regard to work to rest ratios, you can manipulate different ratios for sprints to work different energy systems.  For a beginner however, I would encourage them to rest until they felt 80 percent recovered before beginning the next sprint.  Then time yourself — see how long it takes you to complete the sprint and then see how long it takes you to recover.  Start learning your body and system.

NJAMW:  I really do need to give it a go.  I know a lot of coaches also recommend starting out with sprinting uphill to ensure good form.  Moving onto strength training now, I know you believe in doing heavy lifting and in a recent post you referred to the need to do higher rep work for the next competition you were aiming for.  Do you usually still continue some low rep heavy work through your Figure training to maintain high strength levels or do you find that the restrictive diet means that you can’t manage low rep strength work as well?

Alli proves she knows how to squat

AM:  I love to lift heavy.  To me, feeling strong, feels amazing (and I think it looks badass).  I’ve lifted heavy in all of my Figure preps leading up to the Arnold.  With Nick, we did a weekly undulation for the bulk of our training weeks cycling a high rep scheme, a medium rep range and a low rep range.

In my last prep, Carter had specific strategies as well, but we kept most of my lifting between 3 and 12 reps depending on the exercise itself, the placement of the exercise in the program, the muscle group worked and actual training phase / agenda.  I found that my strength went up in all movements with his prep despite a restricted diet. It was awesome!

*****

I’m going to call a halt there and make everyone wait before this interview gets wrapped up.  However, since parts three and four are both training related I’ll post up the final part tomorrow.  In the final installment I’ll be moving on to some specific exercises, so if you want to know where to get started for high box jumps or sprinting or if you want to know what Alli is going to do next you’ll have to wait just a little bit longer.

Related posts:

1. Interview with Alli McKee (part 4)
2. Interview with Alli McKee (part 1)
3. Interview with Alli McKee (part 2)

I’ve gathered together various running-related articles and posts below that should provide food for thought, whether you are a hardened long-distance endurance runner, or a sprinter who believes that endurance running is the worst thing you can do to your body.

• To start the debate, Mark Sisson recently featured a “testimonial” from Jonas Colting, a long-time professional triathlete who lives the primal lifestyle and seems to do well on it.  If you are looking at this from the evolutionary perspective then this would suggest that we certainly have the ability to be endurance runners on a more paleolithic diet, even if we aren’t really designed for it.
• Continuing on the theme of whether we are genetically designed to run, a recent study suggests that natural endurance runners are more likely to have variations of the NRF2 gene than elite sprinters.  So it’s possible that a few people really are designed to be endurance runners and should go for it whole-heartedly.
• If you are going to run, then you need to be aware of the injury risks.  Eric Cressey has put together five resistance training myths that continue to be believed in the running community.
• Moving onto sprinting, a recent study by Debré et al has shown that sprinting significantly increases testosterone levels, so sprint training could be a real complimentary boost to your resistance work in the gym.  It should be noted that the study was carried out on adolescent boys.  I would be interested to see how large the effect was in women or men in their thirties.
• Science Daily recently covered a study that suggests women are more affected than men by air pollution when running marathons.  So if you are a female endurance runner perhaps you should avoid the more polluted cities to get your best results.
• Writing about women doing marathons, Linda Quirk, having completed the seven continents marathon challenge (running seven marathons in seven continents) is now planning to try to be the first woman to complete the harshest desert ultramarathon races in the world in under a year.  You can read more about the marathons she’ll have to run in the article on That’s Fit.
• Alternatively, Christopher McDougall believes that we are all born to run, and has even written a book to explain why.  He’s a barefoot runner and seems to really live by the belief that we are a species evolved to run.
• Finally, moving onto the food aspects, Mark Sisson has featured a comment he received from someone who lives on a low-carb diet and is an endurance runner (by the nature of being a pig-hunter).  He’s found huge benefits from being adapted to burn fat since he no longer has to carry food with him while out hunting.  I couldn’t agree more with his comments.  This is one of the big benefits I’ve found for both cycle touring and long-distance walks – being fat-adapted has made a big difference to my pack weight and efficiency while on the move.  It’s also a debate I often have with a friend of mine who is a marathon runner.  He frequently tries to tell me that while being adapted to not eat carbs in quantity may be fine for me as a cyclist (he clearly hasn’t tried cycling all day while still being adapted to need the carbs), he’s a runner and therefore it is a necessity.  I’ll be sharing this link with him!

So, lots of food for thought there.  In particular, there’s a surprising amount that seems to support the idea of endurance running, though we obviously need to consider the injury issues and make sure that those are being addressed at the same time through appropriate strengthening exercises for the supporting muscles.

Personally, I think there’s a big role for sprinting for muscular development so I’ll be continuing to pursue that and stick with cycling for my endurance exercise.  What do you think?

Related posts:

1. Blog-watch: should women run?
2. Blog-watch: barefoot running update
3. Blog-watch: barefoot health

The first was a question on one of my old posts from someone who wanted to know how I dealt with the problem of being glycogen starved while training in the context of having converted to a low-carb paleo diet.  The second was a high-carb v low-carb debate that I frequently have with a friend of mine who is a long-distance runner (regularly competing in marathons, half-marathons and 10km races).

My personal experience of converting

For a long time after I converted to a low-carb diet I continued to be high-carb for the purpose of my weekly long distance bike rides, because it was easier that way.  Eventually though, I decided that I couldn’t keep compromising my health.  I knew it was possible to be an endurance athlete on a low-carb diet having read various testimonies.  I’d also heard about Chris Carmichael, the professional cyclist and former coach to Lance Armstrong, who advocates a low-carb diet for athletes.

To convert, I found a period of a few weeks when I felt able to put my weekly long-ride on hold.  Instead of a long ride, I went slowly round a local 30 mile circuit in a completely fasted state before breakfast.  This taught my body to burn fat for fuel.

The first time I did it I felt horrid and ran out of energy about 10 miles from the end.  Fortunately on a bike you can change gear and spin the pedals with minimal effort – you don’t go very quickly but you can keep going enough to crawl home.  By the third or fourth week I could get round the full 30 miles and, although hungry, I had enough energy to work hard on the hill climbs.  The subsequent benefits to my long distance rides were worth the effort.

The benefits of being a low-carb endurance athlete

The key differences that I saw have been noticed by others too, such as a pig-hunter who commented on Mark Sisson’s blog.  I’ve listed below the biggest benefits to me.

• Not needing to eat as frequently – I can now survive on a snack every 3 or 4 hours when out cycling or walking, rather than needing to put in some food every hour.
• Not needing such large snacks – fat goes further than carbs, so I don’t need to eat as much when I do stop to eat.  A handful of nuts or a square of dark chocolate can be sufficient where I would have previously needed a whole flapjack or banana at each break.
• Being able to keep going when I run out of food – it’s not pleasant, but if I run out of food I can keep going when I used to be left exhausted, sat by my bike at the side of the road.  I will always carry some body fat, and I can burn that fat for energy in an emergency.

Feeling the benefits of a light-weight pack

Arguments in favour of staying high-carb as an endurance athlete

My friend, the long-distance runner, puts forward the following arguments in favour of staying high-carb which, from his perspective, are equally valid:

• When running it is difficult to digest most foods (due to the bouncing vibrations through your stomach) whereas a sugar glucose drink can go through the system with relative ease.
• There are psychological benefits from putting something sweet on your tongue, not just physical benefits.  My only argument against this is that these benefits have been seen even when gargling the sugary liquids, so you don’t need to ingest them to get the psychological benefits.
• An organised run usually includes regular feed stations where they provide energy drinks and other sugary substances.  With this in mind, why go through the unpleasant conversion process when you would then have to start carrying more of your own food?

The problem with advocating low-carb endurance training

Almost all of the success stories about being a low-carb endurance athlete are just that.  Personal accounts.  Most dedicated athletes play around with changing their diet but few will write about the change unless it was successful.  So while we know that being low-carb does work for some endurance athletes we can’t extrapolate that it works for everyone.

Turning to science, there have been studies comparing low-carb and high-carb diets but when you are addressing something as fundamental as long-term diet it is difficult to do a fully controlled trial. 

If you are comparing different groups of people (eg. comparison of a non-western tribe to a standard western population) there are too many other aspects that may skew the data, such as activity levels or genetic differences.  Meanwhile, scientists have noticed that if people are asked to convert their diet to something that is perceived as “healthy” for a scientific trial, they will often make changes to other areas of life too, such as activity levels, because they feel healthy.

Make your choice to suit your preferences

My friend and I are unlikely to ever agree. 

He has strong reasons for not converting.  He doesn’t have a problem with the potential health issues from the high-carb foods that he consumes, he is concerned about trying to digest anything that isn’t in liquid form while running and he doesn’t need to worry about being able to carry his food since he is competing in races with food stations.

Personally, I am more concerned about the long-term health issues that could compromise my biggest life-goal.  I also often have to carry any food that I want to consume and, when you are carrying 6 days of food on your back in a rucksack while crossing wilderness terrain, being able to carry less food is a benefit that outweighs everything for me.  It’s also good to know that if I run out of food several hours from a food source (as happened once in the Cairngorms), I can keep going on reserve fat.

The important thing is to make your own decision based on your specific facts and circumstances and addressing the things that are of most importance to you.

Related posts:

1. Lessons learned: primal endurance diet
2. Lessons learned: primal endurance footwear
3. Lessons learned: exercise and the menstrual cycle