Combining Low Carb And Extreme Exercise - The Official Results Of The Great Ketogenic Ironman Experiment

Hey, folks, Ben Greenfield here. Sunday afternoon, one week after Ironman Canada, my family is headed out the door to go to the grocery store for a little while. So I figured, why not sit down and make this the perfect time to fill you in on all the nitty gritty details of what happens when you combine low carbohydrate intake and a ketotic diet with extreme levels of physical exercise and an attempt at above average physical performance in something like an Ironman triathlon. So if you're not a total triathlon nerd or an Ironman geek or whatever you want to call us, no worries. You're actually going to pick up a ton from today's episode because we're really going to dig into just, you know, active individuals in general and what low carb and ketosis can do to your body. Looking at this, n equals 1 case study of kind of what happened to me. The good, the bad, the ugly, the good times, and the bad times. So I've also got Facebook questions from many of you that sent in Facebook questions. I'll be answering those during today's episode. I will be going over the full blood Results and Wellness FX panel that I took over the 12 weeks of testing. I'll also be telling you why I did not end up doing the testing with talking 20 money. And then finally, a few other things that I'll be kind of going into in today's report is an update on, because I'll give you a spoiler right here. I qualified for Ironman Hawaii. So I'll be going into what the plan is going forward into that, and whether I'll be continuing with this type of protocol and pretty much everything else that you'd ever want to know about low carb, ketosis performance, etc. So put your propeller hats on because we're gonna get all nerdy. I have no co host. I have no special sexy music. I have no voiceover girl. I have no dancing panda bears. It's just me sitting here in my board shorts on a Sunday afternoon recording. So what do you think? You ready to do this? Okay, so here we go. Big picture overview, ketosis. I'm not gonna sit here and give you a lecture about exactly what ketosis is, but the 30 second elevator pitch is you are burning fats as a fuel. They're being fed into a specific cycle in your body called the Krebs cycle. And one of the things that happens when fats are being fed into the Krebs cycle is that a byproduct of burning fatty Acids via the Krebs cycle is something called acetyl coa. And your body will take acetyl COA and convert that into ketones or ketone bodies. Now, these wind up circulating in your bloodstream. They are used preferentially as a fuel by your brain. And they're also something that you can measure. You can measure them in your breath, you could measure them in your blood, you could measure them in your urine. And the idea is that you're not necessarily in ketosis to burn ketones as a fuel, even though your brain will burn them as a fuel. You're really in ketosis to burn fats as a fuel. And ketones are just kind of the consequence, kind of the byproduct of that. Why would you want to do it? Well, first of all, like I just mentioned, ketones are the preferential source of fuel by your brain. Your brain loves to run on these little guys. So you get increased focus and mental alertness. It's one of the reasons why, you know, you have a guy like Dave Asprey recommending you do, like his bulletproof coffee in a fasted state in the morning. One of the reasons that works so well is it transports a bunch of fats into your brain and keeps you in that state of kind of using ketones as a fuel source for your brain. So you get that focus. And that's good if you're, if you're a CEO or a hard charging athlete or a soccer mom or anybody else who wants to be able to think very well during the day. A few other advantages are that you train your body how to be very metabolically efficient and how to burn fat as a fuel as a very preferential energy source, which comes in very handy during a long endurance event like an Ironman triathlon, for example. Now, finally, I would say that the third kind of biggest win for me for ketosis is just the fact that you wind up consuming fewer sugars. So not only do you sleep better and feel better after you cross the finish line of something like an Ironman triathlon, but you also, in the whole build up to something like that, are not creating a lot of the reactive oxygen species and advanced glycation end products and inflammatory kind of consequences of burning high amounts of sugar as a fuel. So those would be the advantages of using something like ketosis for, for an ironman buildup. Now, the potential disadvantages would be a, if you like Italian food, life sucks for you for 12 weeks. And it certainly did for me when it came to me wanting to eat carbohydrates at certain points during the past 12 weeks leading up to Ironman Canada and not being able to especially. I can remember one very memorable occasion when we wound up at a fancy Italian joint that was like all local organic fare and they had these big old pizzas filled with local pastured eggs and arugula and parmigiano cheese. And I had a bottle of sparkling water and a couple of boiled eggs and some butter and yeah, nasty stuff. So that's one disadvantage. Just a mental disadvant. Another potential disadvantage is your thyroid. We'll talk about thyroid in a second. But carbohydrates and glucose are necessary for the conversion of thyroid into its active form. And so if you are combining a lot of carbohydrate depletion, a lot of activity with low amounts of carbohydrate intake, your thyroid could potentially take a hit. So that's another potential disadvantage. And then a final potential disadvantage would simply be that you are walking around with lower levels of storage glycogen than you would normally because your body simply is having less carbohydrate to fill those glycogen stores. Sure, you can make some glucose and get some storage glycogen out of your protein intake. Some evidence would show that you could also potentially get some glucose and some glycogen made out of the what's called the glycerol backbone of fatty acids. But ultimately you're gonna have a little less storage carbohydrate to play with. And in many, many fol who do ketosis, the complaint is that once you get into that red laser hot high intensity effort, that having glycogen levels that are not quite so topped off may come back to haunt you if you are trying to sprint or lift something heavy and do so over and over again over the course of something like, you know, whatever, an ultramarathon or an Ironman triathlon or something along those lines. So question is, let's take all those advantages and disadvantages and just put them to the test in this big n equals 112 week self experiment. And so that's what I've been doing for the past 12 weeks. So let's look at how things shook up, shall we? So first of all, let's talk about the actual training leading up to the race itself. I'm going to put a link where on the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com that accompany this post and the title of this post is Combining low carb and extreme. The official results of the great ketogenic Ironman experiment. Good luck typing that one into the into the Handy Dandy search box over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Anyways, you're going to find it. And in that article I'm going to put a link to the exact training protocol that I followed for the final 30 days leading up to the race. It'll give you a pretty good idea of the kind of stuff I was doing. Now for me, I was following a very minimalist training program. If you're familiar with my writings, my teaching, the programs that I write, you probably know that because I like to spend time with family, I like to work on my career, I like to do other hobbies like play my guitar and play tennis and I simply like to have a little bit more time left over to play with. I make the choice to use a lot of like biohacks and high intensity interval training and extreme isometrics and very short intense workouts in my personal buildup for something like Ironman. So you'll see as you go through that training protocol that I train about 8 to 10 hours a week leading up to Ironman, with the exception that I had a couple of weekends that were heavy. So I have one single 20 mile run that I do leading up to the race and all my other runs are 60 to 90 minutes in duration. As far as like my weekly long run, I had two bicycle rides that were 100 miles in duration and the rest of the bike rides were primarily indoors using my Handy Dandy Hypoxia indoor trainer which kind of simulates altitude and puts you in an oxygen deprived state. Or else using my Suffer Fest indoor cycling videos or else going out and doing high intensity cycle training outdoors. And then the swims were just kind of when I could get into the water before or after some weightlifting sessions at the gym. Most of my swims are 20 to 30 minutes in duration, mostly 2550, 100 meter repeats. Doing some hypoxic sets with those two using basically a snorkel with a special cap on top of it that restricts oxygen. So a lot of little biohacks. I talk a lot about these biohacks in my book that I've been blogging over on the website. Beyond training, you could go over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and do a search for underground training techniques and you would find a lot of the same tactics that I use. And you could also follow that link over to my little personal blog where I log some of my training sessions and again that link is BenGreenfieldTry.blogspot.com I'll also put a link to it in the show notes for this episode, but it's called an insider sneak peek into my last month of minimalist training before an Ironman triathlon. I am later on today going to be posting a very similar post where I'll tell you exactly what I'll be doing leading up to Ironman Hawaii as well. And it's just very similar. Short swims, short bikes, short runs, short lifts, mostly intense stuff. So that was the training protocol leading into this race. I never once really felt issues with glycogen depletion or ketosis keeping me from getting into that zone four, zone five effort, keeping me from doing hill sprints, keeping me from lifting heavy weights, keeping me from going all out on a bike. Now, the exception to that is that of course, when I rolled up to the starting line of Ironman triathlon, I had no clue what it would feel like trying to go hard at the end of a long day when the body was really in a true state of glycogen depletion. Because let's face it, when you're in the middle of an average working out week, your glycogen levels generally really aren't as exhausted as they're going to be when you're trying to say, like, run a fast half marathon at the end of nine hours of exercise. Okay, so there's a little bit of blue sky there, but I can tell you right now as far as like the average training, you know, 60 to 90 minutes a day, including some high intensity interval stuff almost every day or weightlifting almost every day. No issues in terms of performance and ketosis when it comes to those type of efforts. Okay, so that was the buildup going into this thing. Now there was also a series of blood tests that I did going into Ironman Canada for 12 weeks. I tested blood, I also tested breath ketones and I tested blood ketones. So I used what's called an ACCU check blood monitor, a fingertip blood monitor that I got off of Amazon to test my morning and occasionally my post workout, my afternoon, my evening levels of ketosis. And if you want to know actual numbers, I was generally anywhere from about 0.5 up to around 3. And that's, that's in millimolars in terms of the actual level of ketosis that I stayed in by following this low carbohydrate protocol. There were a few times when I would finish up a very long training session and I would test my ketones, and they wouldn't be that high, they'd be very, very low. And this may be something that if you attempt to do an experiment like this, or you try this type of diet, you may run into. And the reason for that is your, you're simply using up all your ketones and you've kind of pushed yourself to that point of just extreme, basically extreme metabolic use where ketones are simply all used up. Dr. Peter Attia, a big shout out to him for his blog posts on ketosis over@eatingacademy.com but has pointed this out before, and it's certainly something that I came across was that there were a few times when I knew, based off of how I, I felt that my body was in ketosis, but the actual blood levels didn't show that. So breath tests are easier than blood tests. They're qualitative, they're not quantitative, they're made by a company called Metron. They simply give you yellow or purple, depending on whether you're in ketosis, you'll show purple, not in ketosis, you'll show yellow. I use those bad boys every morning and I can tell you that nearly every single day I was able to maintain ketosis with one exception in that I had about six weeks in kind of a, a stumbling point where I just ate a bunch of carbs when I was at like an afternoon barbecue type of event. And it took me about a day and a half to get back into kind of that full state of metabolic efficiency, that full state of ketosis. So this was not cyclic low carb that I was doing, this was not cyclic ketosis. This was just full on low carb. The entire 12 week buildup leading up to Ironman Canada. Now, due to my levels of physical activity, for me, low carb, the amount of carbs necessary to allow me to feel okay, but still stay in that state of ketosis, wound up being right around 75 to 100 grams of carbs on kind of like an average training day, like a 60 to 90 minute training day. And then on some big days where I'd go out and do like a hundred mile bike ride or that, you know, like that day where I had a 20 mile run. On those days, carb intake got no higher ever than 200 grams, but would kind of push like around that 150 to 200 gram range. So that kind of gives you some numbers to give you an idea of what we're looking at here in terms of the amount that I was taken in. So let me close out a little. I've got reminders on my computer popping up in front of me. Okay. So the next thing that I want to go into now that I've kind of explained to you what I was taking in are those blood results. Now, this was really annoying. I tested every single week with a company called Talking 20 Blood Tests Every single Tuesday day, religiously tested my blood through them, found out about 11 weeks in that the FDA halted their ability to run blood spot cards. So I've got a bunch of results kind of in queue that I wasn't able to get. Now, fortunately, I also used a company called Wellness fx and I had three different performance panels done with Wellness FX during the course of this buildup to Ironman Canada. And I was able to get those results and kind of see what happened as far as those results were concerned. Now I am posting those over on the show notes for this particular episode@BenGreenfieldFitness.com you're going to notice a few different things when you go through those results. And if you happen to have them pulled up in front of you, I'll walk you through from the top down to the bottom, the things that you should pay attention to. First of all, you'll notice that my total cholesterol is somewhat high. And this would be for my latest values. These values would be what I measured. This would have been about seven days prior to racing Ironman Canada. Okay, my total cholesterol was at 237, but my HDL was at 138 with triglycerides at 38. That's an extremely high HDL count and extremely low triglyceride count. Very, very favorable profile with my very low density lipoprotein cholesterol being extremely low, my LP being extremely low, and those both being much, much more indicative of potential for heart disease risk compared to say, just like looking at total cholesterol. So fantastic lipid profile. You'll notice that something called APO B is slightly elevated. Now, it's very, very rare for me to ever see Apple B not be elevated in active individuals with high levels of total cholesterol. Okay. Apple B is simply a particle. It's a protein that's part of your. Part of your cholesterol particle. I'm not going to dig too deep into the science on this. You can go go to the Wikipedia page for APOB and knock yourself out if you'd like. But ultimately what it comes out to is that when total cholesterol is as high as you tend to See, kind of in a typical low carb or ketosis person, paleo diet, whatever you want to call it, Applebee levels do tend to be a little bit more elevated than what would be expected in the general population. So what you'll see there for me is that my Applebee levels were at 87. 7. I've been testing my body in a rested state, in a well fed state, in an exercise state, in an exhausted state, whatever, for two years and I have never found Apo B to be below 80 ever. And I have tested many, many healthy individuals with high cholesterol who are, you know, even, even people who aren't doing CrossFit and Ironman stuff like that. And they almost all have high levels of Apple B. So I think that in a state where total cholesterol is brought on by a healthy high fat intake, that high levels of APP are not something that we can point a finger at as being a red flag. It's simply, you know, for me, I'm a practitioner for Wellness fx. I've literally looked at hundreds of different biomarker results and it's extremely rare for me to not see Apple B kind of in that 80 to 90 range. So working your way down through the rest of my panel, you'll notice that my general inflammatory markers, HSCRP are very low. I stay in a very low state of inflammation. Surprisingly, even though I have generally high levels of cortisol hormone, I do a good job repairing and recovering from my workouts. So I don't have high amounts of inflammation. With the one exception that if you do look at my wellness effects results, you'll notice one huge spike in inflammation. That was a test taken two days after a back to back half Ironman and Olympic distance triathlon. So low inflammation. My blood glucose is low. I like to see that between 80 and 90. For a fasted glucose, I'm at 86. My insulin levels are actually a little bit low, but they're about 2.7. And generally having low insulin levels is good. My hemoglobin A1C, kind of a snapshot of my average blood glucose levels is good. Now all of my hormones are generally kind of sort of okay until you get, you'll notice a few things. Testosterone ranges on borderline low. Okay. And sex hormone binding globulin, which tends to bind to active hormones like testosterone in your bloodstream and keep them from being in their free and active form, that's very, very high. Now, in an athlete who is beating themselves up consistently doing something like Ironman triathlon Like I'm doing, it's pretty rare to see really, really high testosterone values. However, those sex hormone binding globulin values are, are very, very high. Higher than what I even tend to see in a lot of crossfitters and a lot of Ironman triathletes whose profiles that I look at. Now, what would the reason for that be? Well, there is a lot of research out there that shows a direct correlation between high cortisol levels and high levels of sex hormone binding globulin. And if you scroll down to my cortisol levels, you'll also see that those are extremely elevated. Okay. When the body is in a fight and flight response, it tends to bind up your sex hormones in your bloodstream, keep them from being in your free and active form, shift a lot of cholesterol and hormone and steroid precursors towards cortisol formation and away from testosterone formation, and that's what you are seeing in my blood panel. That is not necessarily a consequence of ketosis. That is a consequence of the fact that I am. Well, on paper, I am the CEO of three different companies. I am working, pardon the expression, my ass off, while also training for Ironman triathlon and trying to juggle a lot of balls at once. Now, it's, it's simply, simply the case that until I decide that I'm not going to put my body through this anymore, that I am not going to say, try and train for Ironman simultaneous to writing a book, to doing these, you know, podcasts, to running all my companies, to everything else that I'm doing. I'm probably not going to experience normal stabilized cortisol levels until I get to that point. Now, what you need to understand, as I'm saying all of this, is that I am, on paper, very healthy. These are not values that are concerning from a risk of death or a longevity standpoint. These are issues. These hormonal issues that I'm pointing out are issues that are simply keeping me from looking, feeling and performing at my absolute best. So those high levels of cortisol and high levels of sex hormone binding globulin are both a result of that kind of lifestyle stress and exercise stress that I'm putting myself through. But that's not all. Okay, the story goes a little bit deeper. I've also suspected that because I've tested multiple times for high cortisol, I've tested multiple times for high sex hormone binding globulin, my testosterone has been for the past three or four months, kind of borderline, a little bit lower than I'd like it to be that there may be a little bit of gut issues at play here as well. And so about halfway through this ketogenic buildup to Ironman Canada, I got a test from a company called breathtests.com for something called small intestine bacterial overgrowth, or SIBO, which is a condition that actually flies underneath the radar. But it's an imbalance of flora in your gut, in which specifically the bacteria in your upper GI tract tend to be over. And it can especially be an issue with people who are eating thousands and thousands and thousands of calories a day, which, big surprise, I'm doing as an Ironman triathlete. And many, many other people who are marathoners, extreme athletes, crossfitters, et cetera are doing as well. Small intestine bacterial overgrowth is associated with hypercortisolism. It is associated with lower levels of testosterone. It can affect your thyroid hormone. There are. There are some pretty significant issues at play when it comes to something like sibo. The only way to really knock it is to go through like a. Like a cleanse that involves some natural antibacterials, or if you wanted to opt for regular antibiotics, you could use something like that. Juices, cleanses, oil of oregano, goldenseal extract, things of that nature, combined with low levels of. Of calorie intake, low levels of stress on the gut in general. So I'll have to wait until the off season to actually fix something like that. But that's kind of the potent 1, 2 combo stress placebo that would cause the kind of issues that you see on a profile like this. So you've probably heard me talk about this on the podcast before, but whenever you're seeing hormone issues, don't just look at stress, don't just look at lifestyle, don't just look at diet, look at the gut as well. And I do some pretty extensive gut testing. I don't have parasites. I don't have many other issues going on in my gut aside from that small intestine bacterial overgrowth. Really interesting test, by the way. You ingest a glucose solution and then you do like 12 different breath measurements over the course of the next three hours. And it's really interesting, but you can order a test over@creathtest.com if you're eating a lot of calories, doing a lot of training, it could be something to look into. So anyways, I kind of went into that segue as I was talking about reproductive hormones and testosterone and sex hormone binding globulin, and then Also cortisol. But you'll also notice thyroid. Extremely, extremely concerning value for me me is my very low levels of total T3 and my nearly non existent levels of T3. These have been accompanied. These values have been accompanied by me feeling colder and colder and colder, a lower tolerance to a lot of the cold open water swimming that I'm doing, a little bit of a wearing away of my nails on nearly every finger on my hands and a general feeling of tiredness in the afternoon. Basically kind of like what you would call low T3 syndrome. I will put a link in the show notes to actually a very, very excellent article that Chris Kresser over@chriscresser.com has written about low T3 syndrome and some of the things that can cause that. And in addition to some of the gut issues that I just got done talking about, you should know that T4 is converted into its active form in T3 in liver, in your gut, in your skeletal muscle, in your brain, in the thyroid gland itself. And like I alluded to earlier in this podcast, you do need trace levels of carbohydrate in order for that to occur. You can look at a population like the Inuit who really don't have many carbohydrates at all and they don't all have low T3 syndrome. They're eating a lot of organ meats, sweet breads, liver, things of that nature. About halfway through this protocol I started to include a lot more of those type of compounds in my diet, along with intake of iodine, selenium from Brazil nuts, sea vegetables, things of that nature. But still it appears in fighting an extreme uphill battle trying to maintain constant levels of ketosis, never going out of ketosis and still having my thyroid levels be normal. I've talked to some other folks on other forums, they've had some issues with thyroid hormones as well. And for me this is a biggie because it affects my quality of life. It makes me concerned about the potential severity of low T3 syndrome and the long term outcome for chronic disease potentially downstream. And so I could go out and say, okay, I'm going to whatever, I'm going to take thyroid hormone or I'm going to go out and get a desiccated thyroid or try and put a band aid over this thing. But ultimately the fact is that I can fix the issue with thyroid by giving my body on the days where it needs more carbohydrate, more carbohydrate. If I'm going to put my body through the unnaturally high levels of Physical activity that is Ironman Triathlon, then it's looking, according to these lab values, like, I really do need to make sure that on those days where I'm digging really deep, where I'm completely exhausting those carbohydrate stores that I actually do give my body a little bit of extra carbohydrate. Now, the other thing that you'll notice is I mentioned that some of that T4 to T3 conversion takes place in the liver. You'll notice a lot of my liver enzymes appear to be elevated as well. Now, liver enzymes are something that in any active individual, if you were to go out and test yourself, you're going to find that your liver enzymes will be slightly elevated. You know, in this case, I don't take a complete rest day before I go in and test. I probably weightlifted or went on a bike ride or something the day before. But you'll see that my liver is, you know, is kind of beat up. Now, part of that again is due to the thousands and thousands and thousands of calories that I'm having to take in to support something like Ironman Triathlon, combined with heat stress and gut stress and everything else that happens when you're training. But this may also be part of the issue with the thyroid as well. Simply one of the organs that is responsible for that T4 to T3 conversion is potentially a little bit inflamed. Now, again, this returns to an issue very, very similar to the small intestine bacterial overgr growth issue. And that is that this is something that could be fixed by simply stepping back, relaxing, recovering, spending anywhere from four to six to eight weeks, just not stressing out the body over and over and over again as I've been stressing it out for almost 10 years now. Okay, so that's kind of what we're looking at. And that may seem like a lot of time to some of you, but I know there are many of you listening in who beat up your bodies every day and who have been doing it for a long, long time. So the lesson here so far with these blood values that I'm getting at is twofold. First of all, you need to give your body a chance to rest and recover. And sometimes it's going to go above and beyond what I've been doing, which is one recovery day a week. And it's going to involve a total detox period of time during the year. So for me, this upcoming January, I'll be taking four weeks where I completely cleanse my body. Body don't take in a lot of calories in general. I'll be using a lot of natural antibacterial herbs. I'll be using my juicer quite a bit, my blender quite a bit, and I'll basically be cleaning up my body, trying to get rid of sibo, heal my liver, dump these cortisol levels back down, and essentially hit the reboot button on my body. But as you can see, there are some issues here. And everything that I've mentioned to you are the type of things that I tend to see over and over and over again in active individuals and. And some of them in myself are even more pronounced than I tend to see in the average person, Especially some of those thyroid values that I mentioned that you're looking at. And I suspect that is because I've been staying in this strict anal constant state of ketosis during this entire buildup. Now, as far as a few other things that you may notice on this test, almost everything else looks great. Almost every parameter is back up where it's supposed to be. A few weeks ago, I had tested low for white blood cell count. I had tested low for iron. Frankly, all I did was I started taking an astragalus extract and started eating red meat more frequently. And that brought my iron, my ferritin, my white blood cells, everything kind of back up into the land of the living. So that was kind of an easy fix. Again, it's one of the reasons that we test and look at things like this. But ultimately, the takeaway from the blood work work is that you need to, if you're going to be eating the thousands of calories that are necessary to sustain your body for something like an ironman triathlon or an extreme feat of physical performance, except the fact that you're going to do some damage to your gut and you're going to do some damage to your liver, and you need to pick and choose a period of time during the year during which you're just going to give yourself complete recovery and not stress those organs out at all. Okay, that's. That's the first thing we can take away from this. The second thing we can take away from this is that I've never seen my thyroid values this low. I've been testing my body for a long time, and really the only thing that has significantly changed is that that constant state of ketosis, not even going cyclic, low carb, not going cyclic ketogenic, but just constant state of ketosis because of those values and because of where they're at at in My buildup to Ironman Hawaii, which is five weeks away, I will be allowing myself ad libitum carbohydrate intake as much as I'd like to eat for two days of the week. Okay, I'll continue this low carb profile on my lower intensity or my lower volume days of the week. But on those big days, I'm actually going to go out of my way to eat white rice and sweet potatoes and yams and things of that nature. So that is the geeky blood work for you. Now, before we jump into the questions on Facebook, let's talk about the race, about the race nutrition, and about everything that happened during the race itself. First of all, the race nutrition, I stayed in that low carb ketogenic state all the way going into the race. My pre race dinner, I had basically my morning smoothie, with the exception that I had about 25 grams worth of white rice in the morning. And that was simply because my wife was cooking up some rice cakes and eggs for the kids. And I grabbed a chunk and had a rice cake and it was kind of a speed bump at that point. Definitely didn't knock me out of ketosis. And then the rest of the day was low carb, with the exception that in the Evening I had four sushi rolls, and that was another 2550 grams of carbs or so. So the day before Ironman triathlon, the day before Man Canada, I had about 75 grams of carbohydrates, and I woke up that morning in a state of ketosis. I had bulletproof coffee for breakfast before the race. And what that means is that I took one cup of dark black coffee and I blended it up with 2 tablespoons of butter and 2 tablespoons of MCT oil. I added a little bit of cinnamon, and I added a touch of coconut milk, and that was. That was it about two hours prior to the race. Now, compared to my old days of oatmeal and sweet potatoes and yams and honey and everything else, this was completely new for me going into a race burning purely fat as a fuel. So nothing at that point all the way up until the swim, aside from my normal supplementation protocol, which consists of something called oxaloacetate, which is another supplement that I get from Dave Asprey, which helps to convert lactic acid into glucose more quickly, which is kind of nice because obviously I'm not taking in a lot of exogenous sources of glucose. So having oxaloacetate on board to assist with that conversion is nice. So I Take in that supplement. I take in some Chinese adaptogenic herbs to help with focus and de stress. I take in some antioxidants and I get those from life shots and I get the Chinese adaptogenic herbs from Tian Qi. And what else? Took in a little bit of fish oil so that I had fish oil package with astaxanthin. Because I don't wear sunscreen on race day, I just overdose with astaxanthin basically. So take about 6 to 8 milligrams of astaxanthin which is a natural skin protectant. So no sunscreen on race day. And then trying to think if there was anything else that I took in prior to the race. No, that's it. So. Oh, colostrum. Colostrum reduces your gut permeability to reduces your gut permeability when you're exercising in hot conditions. And so I take in colostrum from a company called Capra Colostrum or Mount Capra prior to the race. So all those go into the body about 40 to 60 minutes prior. And then I'm off to the races. Now in this race report I'm going to put a video@BenGreenfieldFitness.com that shows you the exact nutrition nutrition that I was eating during the entire race once I came out of the swim. In a nutshell it was the equivalent of one serving of Superstarch which is a very slow release carbohydrate per hour mixed with about 1 tablespoon of MCT oil, about 5 grams of amino acids, a little bit of Vespa which is a more amino acids from a wasp extract which is just, you know, super sexy and cool and helps you to go all day long like a wasp flying. And then finally the last component is something called X2 performance which contains pretty good amounts of D ribose and disodium ATP, two things that help you regenerate ATP fairly quickly in the absence of carbohydrates. So my entire fueling scenario laid out for the race is was based around the idea of staying in this state of metabolism, metabolic, fat, burning efficiency. Okay, so not doing the Gatorade, Powerade, glucose, coke, gel bar, anything like that. It's just all basically I dump all that stuff in a blender. You'll see, just go watch the video because it'll be really self explanatory. And then it goes, I've got one down tube bottle on the bike, another bottle waiting in special needs, one flask on the run, another flask waiting in special needs for the run and that's it just that liquid fat burning fuel base basically. So did the swim frankly felt like a million bucks during the entire swim. I swam around 58 minutes. Didn't even feel like I worked at all. Will definitely be repeating the scenario of consuming bulletproof coffee prior to that, that hard Ironman swim. I felt like my brain was tuned. I felt like my body was tuned. Highly recommend that scenario. So that worked really, really well. Well. So swim self experiment a success. Had some pretty good surges in the water a few times where I made some passes, did some sprints. Had of course the initial all out 400 meter sprint that you always go through at the start of one of these races. No issues with feeling, you know, that, that blah, you know, bonk hitting the wall or whatever that you might get with ketosis. Okay, so onto the bike. The, the bike is very difficult in this race at Ironman Canada. It's one of the more difficult bike courses that I've been been on. It's very hilly. You know, coming out of the water where I came out of the water meant I was out there with some pretty competitive cyclists. And you know, it was, it was a legitimately true hard bike course. It wasn't something like, you know, Ironman California down in Florida or Ironman California down in Florida. Now I'm getting loopy. Wasn't like Ironman Florida or Ironman Arizona or one of these really flat bike courses. Like it was legitimately hard. I ended up biking 5 hours and 10 minutes. I got stronger and stronger and stronger as the bike went on using that exact fueling scenario that I did not stray from one bit. By the time the ride was over, I think I'd ridden myself into third place age grouper and had one of the faster bike splits on the day period. Again, that fueling scenario worked beautifully. I will absolutely repeat that exact fueling scenario for something like Ironman Hawaii. Highly recommend it. So that worked very, very well. And I felt like a million bucks on the bike. I had to make some passes, had to dig deep on some hills. Definitely went up into like my zone four, zone five, you know, threshold heart rate. Many, many times during that race on the bike splits felt great, no issues there and just, just really felt, felt stronger than I've ever felt in the night. Ironman with, with that, that bike ride. So chalk another one up for the minimalist training and in a ketotic state for the, for the metabolic efficiency component and the mental focus component for sure. Both of those panned out very well. Very, very well. So on to the run. First part of the half marathon, I. I'm not quite sure what I ran. I think it was about. It should have been close to about an hour and a half a half for that first half marathon. I don't have that split pulled up in front of me, but ran at a nice, steady, even clip. Nursed my flask the entire time with again, my. My UCAN superstarch, my MCT oil, my amino acids, the X2 performance, and the Vespa just all, you know, blended up in that flask. Felt great. And ran that first half marathon, I actually ran farther than that, but to about the 14 mile mark. I saw my wife and said, hey, you know, babe, see you in 80 minutes. This thing's going well. And at that point, I think I was still third place overall age grouper and kind of having the. The race of my life. It felt absolutely great. So about mile 13 in an Ironman triathlon, and this is my advice to my more advanced Ironman triathletes who I coach, and it's what I do myself. That's about the point where I recommend that you pull the trigger. You go to the pain cave, you start to go anaerobic. You know that that last half marathon is kind of where. Where it's do or die. It's really what breaks a lot of people too. You know, I just got to say I was having the race of my life, you know, and you hear that over and over again. I was doing great until I got. For some people, it's until I got to the marathon. For some people, it's until I got to that last half marathon, whatever. That's where a lot of people start walking. So shortly before I saw my wife and shouted out to her, I started to dig, started to get into the pain cave, started telling myself, okay, this is going to hurt. You know, that's the point where I start counting to 100 over and over again in. And it's just the end of a long day and you're going fast. And the last time that I had to pull that trigger was going through the energy lab at Ironman, Hawaii a couple of years ago. And traditionally in the past, I have turned to sugar at that point. Well, actually. Well, traditionally in the past, I've actually turned to sugar long before that. I've been using sugar the whole time, usually up to that point, but this was different. Of course, I was doing the metabolic efficiency thing, staying in that state of keto. So I pulled the trigger and crashed hard. Crashed really, really hard. Okay. So this was the first point in the whole race where my body felt way different than it's ever felt before in any Ironman triathlon, where all of a sudden it was sleepy time. It was, I want to take a nap right now by the side of the road. Fortunately, you know, I'm a nutritionist. I read a lot of race reports. I talk to a lot of athletes. I identified hypoglyce right away. It took me a good 10 minutes to get to the first aid station where I was able to start to fix the issue. It took another 10 minutes after that before the sugars were hitting my bloodstream, but basically had to chug about a half liter of Coca Cola, had to switch to pure frigging sugar. And that is, that's an important lesson. You know, that, that kind of work where you're at the end of a long day, you are completely glycogen depleted. Okay, Fully glycogen depleted. No doubt about it at that point. That is the point where if you're gonna try and do this extreme feat of physical endurance in a state of ketosis, that is the point where taking in or beginning to take in exogenous sources of sugars makes sense. And frankly, when I go down and do ironman Hawaii in 5 weeks, I will probably start closer to about the 10k mark of the marathon. Marathon, taking in that Coca Cola and gels, pure sugar. Once 20 minutes went by and I had made it to an aid station, gotten that Coke in my system, given the blood sugar, a chance to come back up. Even though you never fully recover from a bonk, you know, I was back in the land of living and went on and ran. But it took me, you know, like I said, it took me about an hour and a half to run the first part of the half marathon. Took closer to an hour and 50 minutes. Okay, huge non negative split there to run the second part of the half marathon. And that was because of that bonk. That was because of that complete loss of blood glucose and sugar. Okay? So lesson learned. If you're gonna go into Ironman, you're gonna try ketosis or something like that. When you get to the point where you've decided that you're gonna go anaerobic and it's not gonna be a surge on the bike, it's not gonna be a 30 to 60 second effort where you're suddenly going to go in and go hard for that brief period of time when it's go time, when you're like, okay, next hour and a half is pain cave time. And that's where I'm pushing close to threshold, going very, very hard, close to full on carbohydrate burning. That's the point where the exogenous sources of sugar and beginning to switch to taking those in make sense. Okay, so huge lesson learned there as far as what you need to consider if you're going to try and do something like, like this in a. In a state of ketosis. Okay, so that was, that was what happened on the marathon. Now I continued on, ended up with a 9:39 for the race. Technically, without that crash, I should have been closer to my actual goal, which was, which was a 9:20. Easily lost a good 15 to 20 minutes with the, with the whole bonking scenario, but still, you know, qualified for Ironman Hawaii. I think I was 25th overall out of several thousand percent participants. Had a great race for the most part, you know, and crossed the finish line. Felt good. Slept like a baby that night, like nine hours, which is a first for post Ironman. Usually I've got a sugar and caffeine high that's going on for a really long time, but, but essentially, you know, for the most part, I would, I would chalk up the entire great ketogenic Ironman experiment as having been a success, but having done a number on my thyroid and also taught me a lesson about the point at which you can't go anaerobic and expect to be able to maintain that for long periods of time during something like, like a ketotic iron man. So, so those are all of my random thoughts. Now I've got some questions from Facebook that I want to go over. But before I get to those questions, and I think I've already kind of answered a lot of them in my, in my, in my race report so far, I want to tell you that I qualified for Kona, but I'm definitely going to need your help. This is not an inexpensive endeavor. And what I'm going to do in the show notes to this podcast is put a link where you can donate to support the podcast. By donating to support the podcast, you're going to directly be putting some coins in the coffer and tossing some bucks in the house hat to help me with, with the plane tickets with. I mean, it costs freaking, you know, 200 bucks for the, for just getting my bike there and back hotel, just everything that goes into getting to Kona. It cost me 800 to even register for the race. If you guys can help me, I would, I would truly, truly, truly appreciate it. I mean, whatever, 10 bucks, 15 bucks, 20 bucks, whatever you want. I'll put a link there in the show notes where you can donate. But just from the, from the depths of my heart, please, you know, help me out with, with the whole Kona thing. Because it does, it's, it's going to be spendy for me to go race Ironman World Championships. I promise lots more cool reports like this and more self experimentation and all that jazz. But please, please help me out a little bit with that. I'll put a, I'll put a donation link right there in the show notes for this particular episode over at Ben Greenfield F. So I would, I would truly, truly appreciate that if you could help me out with that. So that being said, let's, let's review some of these Facebook questions and welcome to, to my life. I haven't actually looked at any of them. I am going to see them for the first time along with you. So let's, let's see what we got here. Sam over on Facebook. Com. Sam says, can you comment on how you felt mentally throughout the race compared to your low carb approach to Ironman racing? Were you in the zone, more calmer leading up to it? Mental fog after Sam, hopefully. I've already hinted at that and answered your question. But the feeling of mental superiority, especially with like the bulletproof coffee prior to the swim and the focus on the bike and even for the first half marathon of that run, just the focus never having a feeling of not being present just because we know that the brain is burning ketones as its primary source of fuel. That was, that was definitely, definitely a true difference that I noticed. Now Sam also says was your practice with your nutrition enough? And what Sam is referring to is the fact that that whole fueling blend that I described to you, I frankly, I avoid engineered fuels like the plague. I hate them. I don't like to eat superstarch and X2 performance and all this stuff. Like they're, they work great but I'd rather rather eat raw seeds, raw nuts, chia seeds, rice cakes, you know, just all these real food blends that you can get. But they're not aerodynamic, they don't carry well. They, you know, they don't work when you want to go fast in an Ironman triathlon. So I ended up practicing about six times total with that race day fueling scenario. And I find that for most people about half a dozen times or so, anywhere from four to eight kind of around in that range practicing with whatever fuel fuel you plan on using on race day is adequate and that worked just fine for me. Zero gut distress on race day. So let's see. Adam says, what did you learn in the race that you would do differently next time? Kind of already went through that. He says. How did your body feel halfway through the marathon by staying in ketosis? Kind of already went through that too, of course. How'd your body feel only doing a few long runs in training? This is a good question. Yes, I did one 120 mile run in my build up to Ironman. Everything else was 60 to 90 minutes for my long runs with the exception that there was actually one run thrown in there. When I took a group of guys up to Ironman Canada and we did some training together, I got lost. I wound up running about 17 miles. So I had kind of one extra long run in there that I didn't plan on but felt great. I would say that my levels of soreness post race were just slightly higher than, than what they normally normally are. Like it I, I definitely felt it a little bit more in like my Achilles and my IT bands and my knees the next day. But you know, I also got got 11 weekends with my kids that I wouldn't have normally gotten so easy, easy trade off for me as far as that's concerned. And felt felt fine during the marathon. So you know, aside from that, that loss of sugar at that certain point. So another question. How many cups of bulletproof coffee did you drink before the race? 1. It was just one large mug. So that's it. How many shots of X2 performance did you take in during the race? Basically it came out to four. I try and take about one shot of this X2 performance stuff which is that D Ribose Disodium ATP blend. I try and plan to take in one of those every two to three hours during the event. So I dumped four of those into my kind of pre race blended solution and just blended that up with everything else just because I wanted to have everything kind of really concentrated and be carrying as few bottles as possible. So let's see other questions. What brand of electrolytes did you use that you blended in your fuel to keep it from clumping? I'm glad Adam asked this question because this is something I forgot to mention. I used electrolytes during this, this race. Now I have not used electrolytes in the past five Ironman triathlons that I've done including Ironman Hawaii. I do not believe that electrolytes help you help to keep you from cramping. Many studies have shown that the body is able to maintain normal plasma levels of sodium and electrolytes in the absence of electrolyte intake for up to a couple of days of exercise. However. And I learned this from. You can superstarch themselves when you add electrolytes in with their superstarch. When you add some extra salts from like, whatever Himalayan sea salt or any of these electrolyte tablets or capsules or powders out there on the market. When you add that stuff in, it keeps the superstarch from its notoriously high ability to clump. So I used a brand of electrolytes called ATH Lights by Millennium Sports. ATH Lights by Millennium Sports. Just what it sounds like. And I put 30 of those. I literally opened the capsule and dumped 30 of those, which I think came out to right around. Gosh, it would have been close to about, I think about 10 to 12 grams worth of electrolytes in there in that fuel blend. Yeah, it did make it a little bit salty. But again, electrolytes don't hurt you. It's just like, it's one thing you don't have to go out of your way to take in unless you're using something like you can superstarch, in which case it turns out that it actually does a pretty good job keeping it from. From clumping. So Trevor says, what are you going to do different next time for Kona? Trevor? I'll run about the first 10k in Kona, staying with my superstarch fuel and everything. And then as soon as I get to that turnaround on Ali drive, which is about. It's. It's. I think it's right around five miles in or so, I will switch to ice cold coke and gels, and I will be a short sugar hound the rest of the way. So my apologies to my poor ketogenic state at that point, but that is when I will. I will nip any bonking in the bud. Other than that wouldn't change a darn thing. So let's see. Andrew says, given your half ironman speed, which is 118, I think a 315 marathon is very possible. Do you think the drop in performance in the marathon is related to your. To your lack of volume? No, Andrew, I can guarantee you that if I would have, like, I know my body, if I bonked, it was pure. I literally wanted to lay down by the side of the road and sleep. My muscles were fine, my lungs were fine. Everything was fine. I simply ran out of glycogen. And so what I would change is that I would simply be taking in sugar earlier and more often during the actual marathon, not during the bike ride, not during the swim, not during breakfast, not in the week leading up to the the race, but just more exogenous sources of glucose during that marathon. So Thomas says are you considering adding cold thermogenesis to your protocol? Thomas been using it for 12 weeks. Full body submersion several times a week along with cold showers. The use of my coolfatburner.com vest, the use of my compression gear with cold. So I do it for the cardiovascular benefits, for the painkilling benefits, for the recovery benefits. So been doing it, won't stop doing it. With the only exception being that in the build up to Ironman Hawaii, I will take all the magazines and journals that I get every week and rather than reading them out on my patio, which I normally do, I will put them in my backpack, take them to my local YMCA and read them in the sauna. That's, that's how I heat acclimate as I read in a sauna. Okay, Frank says, what aspects of your ketogenic training will keep you this winter when you focus on muscle building as opposed to triathlon performance? Will your normal cyclic low carb training look different in terms of carb refeed days? Here is exactly what I'm going to be doing. Not only in my build up to Ironman Hawaii, but afterwards is kind of like a lifestyle diet. I will continue to eat low carb, high fat diet. I won't be anal about whether or not I'm in a state of ketosis. I think that that takes some of the enjoyment out of life. You know, I'll eat Italian food when I'm at an Italian restaurant, but for the most part I will stay in that low carb, high fat state. With the one exception that on any day during which I'm asking my body to go into a state of glycogen depletion and to exhaust itself. And for me that means any day where I'm exercising for longer than about 90 minutes. Okay? I will not deny my body carbohydrates if I feel like eating carbohydrates. Carbohydrates, which is something I've been doing for the past 12 weeks. And the reason that I won't do that is A, because of the loss of personal enjoyment of eating and B, because of the hit that it appears to have put on my thyroid. So, all right, so let's see. Some of these questions are repetitive, so I'm going to skip over them. Ryan says, how quickly can you Fall out of ketosis and re enter ketosis. Ketosis and can you ever consume too much fat on a ketogenic diet, Ryan, to get adequate protein in an exercising individual? You're really never going to be able to eat more than about 80% fat in a ketotic diet. And for me, I averaged about 70 to 80% fat, around 10 to 15% protein and around 5 to 10% carb during my buildup to Iron Man Canada. So if you're taking in much more fat than that, you're simply not going to be, you know, by the rules of math, getting enough protein in unless you're eating a lot and a lot and a lot of calories. How quickly can you fall out of ketosis and re enter ketosis? For me, in the few times usually when I commit to something, I commit hard. So I really didn't. I fell out of ketosis once and it took me, you know, it was a Saturday night and before, by Sunday evening, Monday morning, I was back in ketosis. So for me it was about a day, day and a half to kind of get me back into the, back into the rigmarole of ketosis. So let's see. Any other questions? Gosh, I think I'm just making sure because there's a bunch of them here that I've already fully covered in my report here. Okay, so question wise, I think that about wraps up most of the questions and hopefully gives you guys an idea of what I'm going to be doing in the build up to Hawaii too. And some of the things that I'll change both during the race and then the buildup leading up. Essentially the main things being that I will go cyclic ketogenic instead of full ketogenic and I will also be taking in sugars earlier in the actual, during the actual marathon for this event for, for Ironman Hawaii. I will also be posting a few links for you in the show notes that accompany this episode. I will be posting for you my exact training routine that I'm going to be following leading up to Ironman Hawaii. I am going to be posting all of the Wellness FX results along with some photos from the race, you know, some finish line photos, some cool shots, stuff like that. If you want to see how I carry my fuel on the bike, etc, I'm going to be posting a video for you of the exact kind of fueling scenario that I used for the, for the race and how I mixed it all up. And then finally, like I mentioned, I'm going to be throwing well, well actually a couple other things. I'll put a link to the, to the Chris Crosser article on the low T3 syndrome and some of the research on like a high sex hormone binding globulin and high cortisol and some of the reasons that those tend to be elevated and why you saw those my labs. And then finally I am going to put a link if you guys want to help throw a few bucks in the hat to get me to Ironman Hawaii. I'm just going to put my, my podcast donation link in there for you and if you can just help out at all, that is is freaking awesome because yeah, not, not a, not an inexpensive affair to to go race the super bowl of triathlon, but you can certainly help kids get me there. So. So anyways, that about wraps it up. So I'll put lots of resources for you over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com I hope that was helpful. And yeah, until next time, until the next premium podcast that we do. I wish you the best in life and the best in your performance and keep in touch. And let's. Gosh, I don't even know how to end a podcast without my trusty sidekick Brock. I don't even know if I'll be able to even play any music or play this thing out. So there you go. Go have fun with the rest of your day and I'll, I'll catch you later. Visit BenGreenfield Fitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice. Sam.