Low-Carb Diets and Cycling

[Steph]

It might be worth the test to check for celiac if eating pasta makes you feel badly. I have hypothyroid and have finally had success with Armour. I also was low on ferritin levels (low iron stores). Both of those things are common in celiacs, but my biopsy was negative. However, I feel better when I limit my wheat intake. If your ferritin is low you will feel cold and crummy no matter what your TSH is. You can check out stopthethyroidmadness.com for some more infor for your symptoms. Hope you get to feeling better soon!

[Triskeliongirl]

I tried the paleo diet for athletes, but found my body couldn't even tolerate fruit. I don't think its wheat, cuz I get the reaction even with fruit. I've been eating a very low carb (i.e. ketogenic diet) during the week, and then allowing more carbs on the weekend when I ride longer. While I feel great during the week, am losing weight (finally) and can handle my commutes, its not working for long rides. I did try to increase my carbs the night before a longer club ride this weekend (had some rice and fruit with dinner), and then some yogurt with granola and banana for breakfast, and ate gatorade and gels throughout the ride, but I had two scary things happen after about 90 minutes (and after I sent my riding buds away cuz I couldn't keep up). At one point I was riding in the road and not shoulder, and asked myself, why aren't you in that wide shoulder, and told myself I thought it was too rough but when I looked at it, while I could see the road I couldn't discern its texture. I stopped to touch it, and then realized I better eat a gel and rest a bit before getting back on the bike. The problem is when you are confused its hard for your brain to decide if its safe to continue or not. Then further on I nearly rode in front of a car, but another car honked at me and made me realize what was happening so I could avoid a collision. At that point I took a very long rest, drank a lot of gatorade, ate a gel, but after about 30 miles I had to have my husband pick me up, I just didn't feel safe out there. It was like no matter how much sugar I would eat, it just wouldn't get into my cells.

I finally had my appointment with the endocrinologist today. I really liked him. The first thing he did was give me a modern glucose meter (for free!). It uses a lot less blood than mine, and you can even adjust the depth of the prick so I can test my blood easily and pretty painlessly. I picked this endocrinologist because he specializes in both thyroid and endocrine problems, and he clearly appreciated it when I told him that in the past when my thyroid was under good control so was my 'diabetes'. I have always been a borderline diabetic, borderline because as long as I was eating well and exercising, the tests would be negative or just slightly off, and then when I was diagnosed as hypothyroid I kind of blew it off and thought that was the problem all along. He told me that its important to find out why my glucose metabolism is disregulated. He had no problem with my controlling it for now with the low carb diet while we sort it out, but then that creates problems for cycling. Rather than just ordering a glucose tolerance test, he is going to order a whole battery of fairly complex metabolic tests (for example, there is another co-hormone that works with insulin inculin I think he said, that he thought might be off that is treatable) and then I'll go to a special clinic and spend the day there for all the testing (he said he is writing an experimental protocol, I thinks he wants to write a paper on me, he said that will also help with testing costs, since insurance won't pay for all the unusual tests). He said instead of just eating 100g of glucose, they will feed me a precise mix of glucose, protein and fat (like in real food), and then measure insulin, glucose, glucagon, inculin, and other hormones over 6 hours. Hopefully this way I won't get as sick as in a traditional glucose tolerance test and he'll still get the data he needs. In the meantime, I am supposed to monitor my blood glucose 1.5 hours after each meal and during exercise (no one will ride with me if I have to stop every hour to measure my glucose levels, but that's OK, I don't feel great having people with me that just worry about me). He also wants me to carb load more heavily prior to a long ride, by eating ~200 g of carb the night before, so I will eat high carb on the weekends when I do my long rides and low carb during the week, and again monitor my glucose levels. I am also going to go back to riding with one of those tanks on bike with gatorade in a sippy straw so I can drink small amounts more frequently (I had to do this before going on thyroid meds). The other thing he did was to change my thyroid medication. Even though my thyroid tests look good, he said I could still have a problem converting T4 to T3 (tests aren't sensitive enough) so he reduced my dose of T4 and supplemented it with bioactive T3, and we'll see if that improves my glucose control (T4 gets converted to T3 as needed by the body). He said he has a lot of patients that are really doing well on this (I used to take 175 ug of synthroid, now I will take 150 ug of synthroid and 5 ug of cytomel daily).

[Triskeliongirl]

If anyone is interested I am doing really well on a cyclical ketogenic diet. I do have poor glucose tolerance so I eat low carb during the week, and then eat high carb friday night to sunday am to refill glycogen stores to support long weekend rides. Its working really well. It keeps my blood sugars in a healthy range, and I have finally been able to lose weight that wouldn't budge otherwise (10 lb in the last month!).

[Dianyla]

Bumping this up to ask a few questions. I want to start following something akin to the Paleo Diet for Athletes where I am eating mostly primitive/whole foods except for occasional carb intake to support exercise.

My biggest dilemma is how to fit this new eating strategy into and around bike commuting. My commute is about 9 hilly miles each way, and I get most of my bike time in by commuting. It takes me anywhere from 35-50 minutes of ride time depending on direction as the main ridge I have to get over is sharply steep on one side and long gradual incline on the other side.

My observations thus far:
1. My commute is long enough to cause me to bonk if I have not eaten enough. A few isolated times that I've tried to go low-carb on commute days I have felt pretty craptastic.
2. When I allow myself to eat high-carb food (in moderation) at any time during the day on every day that I bike commute, I am not able to reduce body fat.

My questions are:
1. I really don't think my commute qualifies as "endurance" exercise that gives one permission to carb-load. Yet it's too long to just grin and bear it. Or, does it qualify?
2. Do I just need to "woman up" and get through the first few weeks of doing low-carb while commuting?
3. Is anyone out there doing something similar? I'm interested in what Triskeliongirl is doing successfully with the cyclic ketogenic diet, but again I'm trying to see how that will fit with daily commuting.

I'm impatiently waiting for my book to arrive from amazon, but I thought I'd post these questions here in the meantime.

[Triskeliongirl]

Actually, I haven't updated this thread for a while, but now I am no longer folowing the cyclical ketogenic diet, since even that was causing my blood sugar to spike too high. Recently I learned that I am a type 1.5 diabetic, and I don't make enough insulin. I follow the diet in Dr. Bernstein's diabetes solution, which means the only carbs I eat regularly are non-starchy vegetables. Even fruit causes too big a blood sugar rise. I also learned that for me, bonking on the bike is caused not by too little carbs, but by too fast a rate of change in blood sugar. By that I mean if I let my blood sugar get too high, then when it starts falling, I will get symptomatically hypoglycemic, even if my blood sugar is in the normal range. To avoid these fluctuations, I have first of all adapted my body to eating a diet that is not only low in carbs but high in protein all the time. Then I eat a high protein pre-ride meal. My body can then slowly convert the protein to glucose by gluconeogeneis. I find I need no carbs whatsover to do a 16 mile commute ride, but it took me time to adapt, because you need to train your body to run on a higher percentage of fat as fuel. I did a very hilly metric century, where the only carbs I ate were veggies in a grilled chicken salad and iced coffee with cream at the halfway point. On the bike I ate hard boiled eggs. Lately, I hit a wall where I can tell I am out of glucose after about 30 miles, but if I eat a single dried figs, it picks me right up. However, 2 dried figs is too much and raises my blood sugar too high. I also snack on carrot sticks, cheese sticks, etc. on the bike. I am now going to see if I can prevent the bonky feeling by eating a single dried fig or prune with a cheese stick after every 20 miles of riding (assuming I have another 20 to go).

However, if you don't have blood sugar issues, you may do better from a performance perspective by following the paleo diet for athletes. I am eating this way to not have to inject insulin and still ride my bike. But, I am sure I am not riding in a way that is optimum for performance, although its great for fat burning. 22 stubborn pounds are now gone.

If losing body fat on your commutes is a goal, just try eating a high protein pre-ride breakfast, a turkey sausage, eggs with canadian bacon, stuff like that. But, you need to eat this way 24/7 for your body to adapt, and yeh, it takes about a week where you have to 'suck it up' so to speak as your metabolism adjusts.

[Dianyla]

Triskeliongirl, I'm so glad you specifically chimed in. I've been curious about how you were doing on that cyclical diet. It is nice to hear that, eventually, after enough sniveling, my body should suck it up and adapt.

[Triskeliongirl]

Triskeliongirl, I'm so glad you specifically chimed in. I've been curious about how you were doing on that cyclical diet. It is nice to hear that, eventually, after enough sniveling, my body should suck it up and adapt.

I think its interesting that you say you can't burn body fat, despite lots of cycling and eating well (but high carb). Perhaps like me, you have impaired glucose tolerance. In my case, my fasting blood sugars were only slightly elevated, say 110, but my response to carbs is much too high for much too long (3 pancakes with syrup outs me at a peak of 270 and takes 4-6 hours to normalize). Perhaps you might want to get a glucose monitor, and monitor your response to carbs to find out. I use my monitor, even to fine tune my nutrition on the bike. If you have impaired glucose tolerance, then your body may be in a state where if insulin is on, glucagon is off, and therefore you are in a hormonal state that promotes fat storage rather than fat utilization, even while you are exercising intensely. I also feel so much better now that my blood sugars are normalized.