How To Eat For Weight Loss And Performance, Nutrition with Dr Harrison Weisinger

Welcome to another episode of the Tribalo coaching podcast, Tribelo Coaching, where we specialize in cycling and triathlon programs and coaching mostly for masters athletes, but we do a wide range of athletes. I'm joined, as always, by our head coach, Jarrod Donnelly. You've won so many Australian titles, I can't rattle them off anymore. And we've got a special guest today to talk about a really good topic, nutrition, but specifically nutrition in cycling. And that is Dr. Harry Wiesinger. Dr. Harry, welcome.

Thank you. Good to be here.

Thank you for coming on. This is a good topic because it's something that a lot of people struggle with just in the general population. A lot of people struggle with not just nutrition in general, but their weight. And it is hard because there's a lot of misinformation out there about what you should be eating, what you shouldn't be eating, what actually works for weight loss. And am I right in saying that most people really struggle to stick to, to a sustained nutrition plan that gets long term results? Is that what you notice?

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

We're going to cover nutrition in general today and then specifically nutrition for cyclists. So we'll start off, I want to start a bit more general with you and you would see a lot of patients just generally for nutrition and weight loss. Can you tell us about what you see most often coming in and then what you try and help people with just generally to get them going, get them started with nutrition for weight loss?

Sure. Well, I think the, I think the first thing to say is that we've got a problem here in Australia with nutrition. About half of the population are overweight or obese. Of course, no one listening is overweight or obese, but, but it's a, it's a massive problem and it's quite possibly the most important risk factor for the, the key diseases that kill us. Right. So things like heart disease and stroke, cancer, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, they're all drastically affected by weight and nutrition. So as a, as a gp. Absolutely. There's rarely a patient that I don't have some sort of conversation about diet and nutrition and weight, but certainly my special interest being weight loss. That's, I talk about that all the time. Like you say, we have a real problem in sticking to diets and that's because they're hard. And all of our physiology is geared around, if you think about the way humans have evolved in times of scarcity, we've evolved all these mechanisms to eat when there's an opportunity to eat. Right.

So.

And we've Got amazing systems for storing energy. Right. So fat is an amazing energy store. We, we get nine calories in every gram of fat, so there's almost boundless energy stored on us. And hunger is one of the most powerful drives that anyone will experience. You think about when you're hungry. There's almost nothing else you can think about. Okay. And things go haywire if you don't pay attention to that. You can't think straight, you can't function, can't work, whatever. So the, I guess the general approach I take now, and I consider this a work in progress. There's no perfect answer to diet. I want to declare that right out front. I'm still experimenting on myself, on patients, athletes, you name it. Getting better. But what I've. What I've definitely come to figure out is a couple of principles. The first one is any nutritional program has to work when you're low on motivation.

Okay, great point.

Okay. So if, if, if I had to rely on people being super motivated all the time to maintain a program, as with a training program, you. You're stuffed because the minute you have a stressful day or the minute you have it's. It's difficult to find the motivation, you didn't sleep that well, Whatever, whatever. Then you fall off the wagon. So that's the first thing. And the second point is that my belief is that humans can concentrate on two things at a time. You can focus on your family and work. You can focus on cycling and your family. Cycling and work. You know, you've only got a couple of slots. And so what I try to do when I set a nutritional program is to. Is to remove it from one of those slots as quickly as possible. So it starts off as a focus, and people are very conscious of what they're doing, but you need to get them to habitualize it, same as training. So it becomes a habit. So they don't have to think once. They don't have to think about it. It doesn't take psychic energy, and they can succeed. So those are the general principles.

Pretty massive principles to start. And I think that's so true with any program. That is, if you, if it's complicated, we won't do it.

Absolutely. Yeah.

And Simon, coaching athletes, if the program's unsustainable, they'll give up instantly. Yep. And whether that's in their head or whether they've created reasons why they don't want to continue, but if it's too difficult, the human nature is to take the easy option. That's too hard. And any roadblocks you put in the way, they'll use them.

Yep.

And it's so good that you've said that, you know, motivation shouldn't be the key. It's a really important thing to begin with because you want to have people who are really keen to improve their diet or their training, but if that's the only thing that they've got, then it's not sustainable, is it?

No, no, certainly not. And I mean, because that's the thing is we all, we all have days that are a bad day. You know, things didn't go our way and they're stressful. You can have health challenges, you can have challenges at work and the minute they start drawing on your energy, if you're relying on high energy to execute your plan, you're going to fold. Because we just, we deprioritize that and we prioritize the thing at the immediate.

Moment, just before we. Because I'll forget Jordan when we talk later. That's a really good point. I want to bring up with you, Harry, as too, you know, can we do other versions of the ultimate goal? And is that something you try and get people to understand that it's just not one way for every person? Because every person is going to react differently, aren't they?

Totally. Well, everyone is different. Our circumstances are all different. So like yourself, I. When I set a program, it's got principles, but variance in how they're executed. Right. So. So certainly, yeah. And we should talk through some of the principles of weight management. Not everyone listening, I suppose, has to or wants to lose weight. But the majority of cyclists should think, be at least thinking about it. And if it's not immediately obvious, I'm certain it is because anyone listening cares this much about their cycling already, you know that. But, but you can train. You think about it. You got a 20 minute power of 300 watts. Okay. And you could train, you could train to Jared's program, all greens in training peaks for the whole year and come out the other end and have 310 watts. And that wouldn't be a bad year. 315 watts, amazing year. Right? So 5% uplift in power. I can get athletes to lose 5% of their body weight in about three weeks, four weeks. Now if you do both, you can win national championships, can't you?

It's a game changer, right?

So this is why everyone has to at least think about it. Particularly if you understand how to maintain the mass that matters and lose the mass that doesn't matter. Right? So again, these are all, these are all part of the, part of the program.

Well, just on that note about people being different and everyone has different bodies and different reactions, we're also very similar because we're all humans. So how much of our similarities can help compared to the different reactions we will have?

Yep. Yeah. I mean, what, what, what I can say with respect to similarity is that unless we, unless we deliberately, unless we deliberately do something to change this, most of us are carbohydrate addicted. Okay? And the general way I explain this to patients is you think about it, you've got how many kilograms of fat on your body? Kilograms of fat? As I said, you've got nine calories in every gram and you've got kilograms. So there's no shortage of energy stored in and around our bodies. But if the general person, or even the, even the well trained cyclist goes until 3pm without eating, or tries to do a race, 60 kilometer race without eating carbohydrate, what use is the fat on and around your body? Not much, not much use at all. So there we're basically starving, unable to perform metabolic function despite an abundance of energy. So this is, this is a similarity among humans that has to be explored in any plan that aims to, I think, improve cycling performance, but certainly to lose weight. So the key, the key that we more or less try to exploit in things like a very low carbohydrate diet or a ketogenic diet or some variant of that, is we try and develop the ability to use those fat stores. So regardless of whether you've got a gel on you or not, you can still perform. This is a challenge for the typical human out there. I mean, and we forget as cyclists what we're doing to our bodies. It's total. Just anyone listening out there, I can tell you categorically as a doctor, it's not normal. It is absolutely not normal. What, what ride you do on the weekend? 180ks, 200k. It's not normal what we do, isn't it? It's not normal. And, and, and yeah, shout out to Joe Spano, he thinks it's normal. It's not, it's not the number of times the red blood cells go through the circulation in a cyclist.

Right.

You're chewing through red blood cells faster than anyone else around. You know, typical person blood cells last for 90 days. Not, not in cyclists.

Can that be a bad thing?

I don't think so. Well, well, I mean, no, I don't, I don't think so.

Fresh blood cells are always better than.

All fresh blood cells. Fresh blood cells are good. We won't go into that today. There's a different typ. A different, different podcast for that. Yeah. What are we talking about?

Similarities.

Similarities, yeah. So.

So really just taking that one step further, and I don't want to upset Jordan's agenda, but, but certainly, certainly understanding, and this is what most cyclists and general athletes, whether they're triathletes or runners, want to understand, how to metabolize quicker version of, of the storage that we have. So, you know, we don't all of a sudden be like the, the ever ready battery ad, where one battery is just going flat out and the others are all slowly dying. And that's what you feel like. You've. You had that feeling on Saturday.

I did, I did, I did.

And I had a similar feeling except, you know, 15 minutes later sort of thing where it was clear to me that I was not able to convert the energy that I had stored in my body into useful activation to ride the bike.

Yeah. So I think, I think again, all of us listening as cyclists are already in a bracket of performance that is exceptional. So if you've been cycling for six months, you're already able to do things metabolically that the average person can't do. That's the first thing. But we're not, we're not happy with that. We want to go to the next step. Obviously, in my experience, there is just no easy way to cross that bridge. I think you've got to suffer the pain of getting there. This is again, nothing new to cyclists. You've got to get across the bridge to be able to metabolize fat. And, and the bridge that you're crossing is something like starvation because it's only when the body is starving. And I say that from a scientific definition of starving. Okay. Which occurs within six hours, eight hours of not eating, your body clicks into starvation. But to truly adapt, you need prolonged periods of carbohydrate restriction or complete fasting. Right. So the, so there's no, no simple or no easy way to get there. Hunger is a feature and in amongst that, as Jared said, failed completely on the weekend. And that's because I'm currently putting myself through a version of starvation in the hope and anticipation that in a few weeks time I'll be able to ride without slamming a gel at any point.

So in effect, we're trying to teach our body that there is another method other than the one it's currently using to convert all the amazing amount of storage that we have into useful energy.

Totally.

So you're saying that on any given day, if we didn't eat until 3, 4, 5pm and we're still starving and we're not functioning because we're not using that fat stored. That is a lifestyle thing that has happened to us in society because we should be able to be using that naturally.

Absolutely. We evolved to eat every few days. So it's. What is, what is totally abnormal is the standard western diet. It's totally abnormal. You think about, we get up and I think about my own poor kids. Right. Who unfortunately I've brought into the world. Teaching this is okay. Knowing full well this is a path to disaster is you get up and what do you eat? You eat a plate full of carbohydrate. You either have toast with jam or you have, you know, nutri grain cereal with milk. Carbohydrate, carbohydrate, carbohydrate. And then, you know, morning tea time, you don't even let the person go four hours without eating and start learning how to burn their own fat. You put more calories in them. At lunchtime, it's a salad sandwich, it's a donut, it's a brownie, it's whatever. Afternoon tea, then dinner. And dinner's never just steak and vegetables. It's steak, vegetables and bread, rice, pasta, noodles, carbohydrate, etc. And then we don't allow ourselves to fast from dinner. Do we've got to have a late night before bed, Just before bed, just quickly a little top up carbohydrate. So that's, that's the opportunity. But it's also the, it's also, it's very difficult because society is, is of course geared to breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks. And again, no surprise, no surprise to anyone that's ever tried to operate in a very low carbohydrate diet is go into any cafe and I challenge you to find something that isn't laden with starchy carbohydrate. It's just impossible. So you gotta, you've gotta. This, this is what creates a lot of the difficulty in, in executing a nutritional plan is access to healthy, healthy choices. Yeah. Simply because the unhealthy choices are so easy. If I go into my pantry and open that up, I've got a million unhealthy choices and about two healthy choices.

Some people might say, doctor, you're being a bit extreme in that they're extreme lengths to go to, to try and reverse that process. But I guess comes back to your Very original point is that it is a major health problem in the country.

Correct.

That's extremely extreme.

You've said it. You've said it. So I heard it. I read it just last week, actually, that, that there's three levers you can pull. As far as nutrition and manipulation of diet goes. One, one lever you can pull is to change what, what you eat. Okay. The, the next lever you can pull is how much you eat, and the next lever you can pull is when you eat. Okay? So in this last lever, consider things like intermittent fasting, complete fasting, etc. One of them's portion size and the other one's something like a ketogenic diet, low carbohydrate diet, something like that. I pull all three and in no particular order. And, but suffice to say that if you are pulling no levers, that is, that means you're eating what you want, when you want, however much you want. You will get sick. Like it's, it's absolute, it's guaranteed. Guaranteed you'll be overweight and you'll be inflamed and you'll be sick.

Your risk factor is ginormous.

Yep, yep.

And one of the things you did say was the difficulties we have. For example, if your work situation is. And you can't take the kitchen that you have at home full of the stuff that you want to eat to work. That is a, that is just a plain fact that it's difficult.

Yeah.

So what, you know, we, at the moment, our office has a kitchen so we can execute what we want to eat when we want to eat it. So we're in a huge advantage. So people who are on building sites or in hospital care or I can just think of an amazing amount of people who don't have the ability to cook what they want for every meal, their execution is going to be limited.

So the, so the, so the answer that is the quicker you can get to a point where you don't have to eat, the better off you are. Because then if there's a poor choice or no choice, you can go, you can abstain, crazy as that sounds. And the secondly is that, is that like, as in your, as in your motto, preparation is everything. Okay? So planning and preparation, everything. Because if you don't plan and prepare, you can't perform, you can't execute. And so to this point, I have at my office and scattered around the various places I work, things like keto bars, exogenous ketones, olive oil, buckets of olive oil. Every. You can tell where I've worked because I've got these little olive oil containers everywhere. And yeah, you know, even us blokes gotta learn how to make a salad. Yep. Gotta learn how to make a salad.

And that's such an important point. And I have had discussions already and we'll get to this, but you've helped me enormously with my eating habits. And I hate saying the word diet. I never want to say that I'm on a diet because I want to be on an eating habit that I can sustain forever. So therefore it doesn't become a diet. You've given me such good advice. I'm trying to convey that to some of the athletes who. The preparation, exactly what you said is the key to. You can have roadblocks in front of you. Like, we don't have a kitchen, we don't have this, we don't have that. I can't carry it. I ride to work. How can I carry. There are so many things that they can put up in front of me that are excuses. But if you prepare yourself and plan, then you can actually get around all of these things. If you're planning in advance, then they're just not excuses anymore. It's a choice you take to either embrace. Embrace your food change or just use excuses and stay the same.

Yeah.

Look, again, I think I believe in keeping it simple. I know that keeping it simple is the answer. I give athletes and patients some ideas to start with, principles to work with and. And a simple plan. So breakfast can be eggs and coffee with butter in it or eggs in a smoothie or, you know, a high fat smoothie and coffee with butter in it. It's. You have to, even have to. After you've been doing that for a week, you don't even have to think anymore. Lunch, again, I just give simple choices. You can have a salad with avocado and macadamias and douse it with olive oil. That'll do. And it'll keep you. It'll keep you full.

You don't need bread, you don't need any carbs. You don't need.

And that takes me, I don't know, it takes me five, ten minutes to make a salad. That'll take me ten minutes to eat. So it's plenty of time. Eating doesn't feel like. Because some of the hours of preparation. Yeah, some. Some of the things you can do. Hours of preparation and way too quick eating. Because a lot of what we associate with nutrition and eating is ritualized. You know, you expect to sit down to eat for 30 minutes, whereas it doesn't really take 30 minutes necessarily to eat.

There's some really good examples of choices and some of the things that you told me were exactly like that. Simplify it and just select things that basically are low in carbs. And I made a huge change in my diet and Jordan really helped me. Cooking is not my thing. But now I don't have the cereal like I did before and that in itself is a massive game changer for my metabolism. That has changed everything for me. You can tell me that might not be the case for most people, but there was a massive change by just taking the totally the wheat flour grain out of my diet and putting in the eggs. Avocado, mushrooms.

Yeah.

So you've done two things there. You've, you've reduced inflammation, which is a problem. So that, so, so I guess at the extreme, at the extreme end of, of carbohydrate intolerance, you've got things like CE disease.

And I, my guts was out here.

Yep. And, and I, and I believe everyone has some. I think it's a spectrum. In, in my experience there are people that actually get, you know, hospital worthy sick when they eat carbohydrate, when they eat flour and bread and stuff. But I don't think any of us get off scot free. And I know that in myself that if I, because, yeah, try and do a trivelo ride on a Saturday, particularly before being adapted, you've got to have some carbohydrate just for the, just for the peaks of effort. And when I get home, I feel, I feel awful. My guts are just a mess compared with if I'm not eating, you know, gels and bars and bread and what have you. So. And the other thing that a lot of cyclists don't appreciate is that, you know, in the, in the fed state, right. We've got plenty of carbohydrate stored in the muscles and obviously all this fat stored around us and in us and having a bowl of cereal before a ride is, is a wasted opportunity to lose weight. It's calories for nothing. It's absolutely calories for nothing. So unless it's a race and you want to be humming like at the.

Start line and you're not trying to teach your body how to function.

Exactly.

You're actually trying to compete. The difference is in training you're trying to teach your body to metabolize.

Exactly.

In a race, you actually don't want any of that to happen.

No, that's right. No. So race. I certainly Wouldn't be advocating this stuff, Iron Man. Absolutely. You need to be so iron. Ironman athletes are by definition metabolizing fat almost exclusively. They're operating at threshold or just under. So they should be. And, and they're well trained, so they're metabolizing fat. You could not get enough car do the numbers. You couldn't, you couldn't eat enough gels to keep up with the cut to carbohydrate demand. If that was the source of energy, you couldn't do it. So clearly these guys are operating at a different thing. But if you're doing a time trial, and the time trial is 30, 40 minutes, you've got, you cannot be switching, you can't be compromising. So then you're going from, you're going from carbohydrates, almost certainly because you're at threshold, above threshold.

Is this a new school of thought? Because I remember first learning about nutrition in sport and, and the kind of doctrine we learned was you need carbohydrates for energy and once you run out, you're in trouble. If you're starting to use fats for energy, you're in trouble. And that's what you're told that in endurance events you might switch to fats, but yeah, not as effective or. I don't know if effective is the right word, but that's kind of the general consensus that you were taught.

Yeah, I don't think you're wrong. I mean, it's not so that new. It's. I don't think it's mainstream, to be honest. If you, if you interviewed, if you interviewed 100 lecturers, I'm sure 90% would say exactly what you just said. Carbohydrate is what the. Is the fuel you use at the top end and use fat at low end. And I think it's something like that, but not quite right. I think, I think with fat you've got that metabolic flexibility right up to threshold to perform. So I. And do we need carbohydrate? Well, yeah, probably. So maybe think of it as like a Prius.

Right.

So if you. So Prius is dual fuel, analogous to us as dual fuel. We've got carbs with. And fat cars have, you know, the Prius has got, it's got petrol and it's got electricity and the electricity is awesome, up to 25k an hour. And then the minute you put your foot down harder, it switches to petrol. Okay. And like the rocket fuel. Yep. And if you run out of petrol in a Prius, it doesn't matter how much is stored in the battery, the car stops. And I think it's something like that. But the body's got very, very strong mechanisms to hang on to glycogen. So you, you'd be hard pressed to run out of all your carbohydrate stores. I've got methods to do it though, which, which I teach to athletes is carbohydrate loading in a, in a non traditional sense, because traditional sense is big bowl of pasta the night before. That's not actually carbohydrate loading. But yeah, I think it's, it's not quite that way, but, but certainly at the top end, I think the body still prefers carbohydrate.

And so if you were doing an event that's maybe only half an hour to an hour, a crit circle or something then.

But a crit itself, A crit itself is most often sub threshold. With efforts that are super threshold. That's a critical, that's a crit. But yeah, I would. No, I've raced crits. I've race crits, keto and one and, and yeah, but equally maybe raced a harder one and gone off the back.

So I have, I have a lot of questions. Yeah, go like my brain's really firing right now and I do want to try and ask the ones that I know anyone listening will find really helpful. And even if there's some obvious ones, just to make sure we're really clear, because one point you made was that we do have enough fat on us that we can store as energy. Now, does this mean no matter how heavy you are or light you are, a leaner person still has enough fat? It's not that someone that would be considered overweight has more fat to use as energy or if you're extremely lean, low body fat percentage. Like pro cyclists, they're, you know, 6 to 8% body fat, they still have enough fat in them to use.

Totally. Well, think about it. I mean, maybe the leanest athlete you've ever met would be 6% body fat and they might weigh 60. Low 60s. Yeah. There's three or four kilos of. Three or four kilos of fat right there. Bang. So yes. Yeah, even them. Yeah, even them. Yep.

Take it back to almost back to the start. I don't mind if you talk about cyclists here or the general public where you've, you've set the frame that this is really tough. So we need to find something that's sustainable and find something that is simple enough that when there's no motivation you can do it. I watched what you did with dad and that was really, really beneficial. And like dad said, we kind of sat down with you and had a list of all the foods that you could eat. And I've watched Dad try a bunch of different eating plans. And while some were successful short term, it was very obvious very early that they weren't successful long term. This one for you, dad, really helped. But I would have been, I would have been someone previously, before this conversation that was, would have said, nah, that's what you're saying is too extreme. Logically you'd say, well, I just feel like you don't need to go down that path of starving yourself and going into this side of things. But when you're saying it from a medical perspective, it really does make sense. So knowing all this, what's the first step in starting? When you're talking to someone, giving them advice, what point do you start with?

Setting a date is the very first point to start. So people often need a period of contemplation and a period to rev them sort of get, get the motivation going. So it's actually quite effective if I say, we're going to start. So I see them on Tuesday and I go, we're going to start Monday next week. Then it gives them a bit of think time, a bit of think time and a bit of preparation time, mental preparation, physical preparation, and it's motivational. So that's the first thing in preparing for what's not necessarily comfortable at the start.

Do you find those people are going extreme up until that point? I'll just eat whatever I damn. Or like now when or.

No, not necessarily. They're probably even starting before the start time. Yeah, they're going hard on an easy day. So. And, and that's a, that's actually a technique I use for things like quitting smoking as well. So if I'm advising a patient to quit smoking, it'll be, right, let's put a date in the calendar. They find that relief. Oh, okay, I have to quit today or tomorrow and I can get my head around it. And so that's. And, and also remember that in line with the it, you've got to make it simple. It's, it's really important to have the people that are around that person on board. And so often they need to do a bit of politicking in the house to go, oh, look, yeah, I'm thinking of, I've been talking to the doctor. I'm thinking of changing what I eat.

That's so True. Right, look, I, I call my wife the devil because, because there's that much carbohydrate option. Yeah. Oh, I've just got some afternoon tea cake from school and she brings it in. I say, don't bring it into the house, please. That's it.

That's it.

And you're right. Yeah.

So, yeah, I mean, that's. So you got to socialize that at home. And it's, and it's so much better if, if the people you're around and with are on board, they don't have to be on it themselves or they could be a variant of it. But, you know, my wife and I, I, I actually don't even bother changing if my wife's not up for it. So it's just pointless because she wants to eat nachos and, and I'm trying to be keto and quite frankly, I'm gonna eat nachos if they're there. So, hey, ho, but, but. So that's, that's the starting point is that I think the second thing is a plan. This is, it's just like, it's just like cycling training. Seriously, it's the same thing. So you gotta have a plan. So you've got to have, it's. I've, I've got to write down for them what I want you to do and stick to that at the, at least at the start. Try and stick to it to the letter if you can. We'll see how much of this you can hack, how much you can habitualize, and I'll go into what's in the plan in a minute. And then the third thing, just like cycling coaching, you got to measure it. You got to measure it. You've got to measure where you are today, you're going to measure where you are next week. You've got to measure what you're doing in between. So depending on how you know, driven by numbers, the person is. So I'm very driven by numbers, as I know. Well, I'm sure both of you are. I know Jerry is. But I track, I track personally and I ask, depending on the person, them to track what they're eating, the calories, the macronutrient content, daily weights or weekly weights, depending on how neurotic they are. Some want to track ketones in the blood, some don't want to track the blood. So I'll get them to track ketones in the breath and I'll. Yeah, so I'll follow them, but through measurement. And the, that's, the, that's the fundamentals really is planning and then so preparing, having a plan and measuring along the way with regular check ins with me. Because I think it's like having a coach. People just do better when they have a coach. It's just someone. There's many reasons that coaching works. One of them is you don't want to disappoint the coach. One of them is the coach is there for support and guidance and to say, yep, it's okay, I've had this before. You'll get through it in two weeks and then you'll be fine. So anyone coached by Jerry will appreciate that already. So what's in the plan? Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, what you can eat. Absolutely. What you can't eat. Absolutely. That's what's in the plan. In basic terms, breakfast is if they'll, if, if they're happy to eat it. Eggs, omelet, eggs and bacon, poached eggs, scrambled eggs, you know, eggs anyway, without bread. Okay. And as I said, coffee but with fat in it. You need. So the key to adapting. So I probably should have started with this actually just so, just again so that the listeners understand, the reason the ketogenic diet works is, is because you don't get hungry. Okay. That's why it works because as I said at the start, hunger will beat any opponent. Any opponent, it will, it will slaughter. So the reason the ketogenic diet works is it suppresses appetite through high fat. And then eventually what happens is your own production of ketones from the liver kicks in and then appetite diminishes drastically and you almost have to tell yourself I better eat, otherwise I won't be able to do my afternoon session.

That's such a good point you've made and understanding how the liver does take over and you've tried to teach your body to get the liver to do that role better. And that's what we've suppressed as carbohydrate.

Totally.

And that was the most, most thing that happened to me was changing that breakfast. I think that was the key to me and, and I wasn't eating breakfast at 7 o', clock, 6:30. I was having it after my training session. Yeah, it could have been 10, 11, 12. So the timing is the other thing.

Totally. Well, we should talk about timing. We will. I've got, I've got a lot sounds.

On timing but, but me having that, I was thinking I just need so much food. And that was the thing I was saying to Jordan. Oh, this isn't going to be good. Eggs are not going to do it for me, I need more. And then when I started having the omelets, I could know I could go without food till 3 o'.

Clock. Yep.

I would have an omelet at 10 or 11. I was that full.

Yes.

The hunger suppression had totally kicked in and I. And it was like four o'. Clock. Oh. All I've had is an omelette.

Yes.

And I had. No, I've got hunger pangs the whole time when I'm on the carbohydrate rich environment.

Yes.

Process. But that was a big change for me. And if anybody listening, if you can only get one thing out of this is to the breakfast. Yes.

High fat. Yeah. So, so in terms of what's in breakfast, as I said, eggs are good, eggs with cheese is better. So omelette is really good because cheese has got more fat in it.

To clarify, fat and protein are the most filling compared to carbohydrates.

So the problem. So the problem with. Yes, you're correct. Okay. What, what we're trying to do is not spike insulin. So the, the pecking order is glucose spikes insulin very effectively. Protein a bit less so, fat even less so. But the other problem with protein is that the liver can quite easily convert protein into glucose in a process called gluconeogenesis, which we do anyway, and you have to, or you die within four minutes. So too much protein will kick you out of fat burning anyway. So the diet is a very low carbohydrate, moderate protein, high fat diet. That's what I would advocate. Or a variant of that. I'm not religious about this, but keeping in mind those things that it's fat that will suppress your appetite most, that's what gives you that feeling of fullness and satiety. As I may have explained to you, Jerry, you know, how many, how many times have you ever binged on, you know, cheese or peanuts or, you know, it's, it's just, it doesn't happen like a bag of corn chips. You can eat a, you can eat a whole family pizza. I know every cyclist out there can eat a family pizza and then go, what's for dinner? Right. That's entree. Now what? Whereas you just can't do that with. You can't do it with cheese, you can't do it with high fat stuff. At least if you're mindful.

Yeah. You get enough feeling, that's enough for that.

Yeah, yeah, I've had enough of that. So. So that's why I say eggs with something, you know, cooked in butter and with Cheese is, is good. So omelets are great. And then coffee. I say coffee because I drink lots of coffee and I like coffee. And I assume most people like coffee, but it's, it's. Yeah, it's, it's ergogenic. You know, it makes us feel better, gives you a bit of a zing. And it's, you know, it's socially acceptable to have coffee, unlike other drugs.

Probably very too few people that don't drink coffee.

Yeah, yeah, but. But most people do. You're right, most people do. And then, and then I put, I put butter in mine or a fat bomb.

Is that nice?

Absolutely. Or cream or coffee drinkers would like that cream. And it's an acquired taste, but you can tweak it to like. I, I've even made, you know, I get pretty creative experimenting. So I'll have filtered coffee with sugar free maple syrup and a bit of coconut oil and a little bit of cream or something like that. So again, the goal is to get enough calories in, allow your body to be able to make ketones and suppress appetite. And then that's breakfast. That, that I often have a liquid breakfast, a smoothie, high fat smoothie that would have spinach. You could put spinach you run through. Oh, I put, I would put in my smoothie of currently of the day. You know, if we listen to this podcast, in a year's time, it'd be completely different. But it'll be, it'll be put in some ice, some berries, avocado, egg, car. Low carb, really low carb. Protein powder, something green, spinach, something like that put in.

So I put in, as is the cream with omelette or smoothie, because the omelet can include veggies, mushrooms, capsicum.

Yeah.

Red pepper, that kind of thing. The smoothie's got spinach, berries.

Those kind of carbs are okay, seem to be.

Yeah.

So they don't knock me out and they don't knock most people out.

High calorie carbs?

Not really. No, no, I think berries are fine. And I don't distinguish between berries, so I don't go. Strawberries are out, but blueberries are in. I think.

Yeah, there is a lot of sugar in them.

There is a lot of sugar, but. Well, there doesn't seem to be that much. The guide I use for patients is if you ever see it on the supermarket shelf as a juice, that fruit's out. Okay. So you don't see blueberry juice, really. You don't see strawberry juice because orange.

Juice is too high. Sugar.

Orange juice is one of the most lethal substances known to man.

Oranges themselves, Nope.

Orange juice, it's just an abnormal load of fructose. So fructose will cause the liver, stimulate the liver to make triglycerides, which are a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. And too much fructose is bad.

What if they say, and this is probably what a lot of people fall into. Oranges only. No. Anything else. Because I know there's a difference between no added preservatives. But there's already preservatives in there. But there are brands that I know. The Gnudi brand claims that it's as close to just oranges as you can get.

It's the sugarload. Gnudi is as unhealthy as any other juice just purely on a. Sugar. Grams of sugar into your body in one hit. I mean it is teaspoons and teaspoons of sugar in one go.

It's really important to know that because it really just gets you. The labels don't know.

People don't know. It's well, well marketed, this stuff. But basically you got to look at the labels and yeah, if it's got more than 4 grams of carbohydrate in a serve of anything, it's got to be out. Because if you're doing this diet, Right. So if you weren't doing this diet.

If you're at a healthy weight.

Okay. If it's a, if you're at a healthy weight, we should talk about this because I still believe in pulling one of those levers even at a healthy weight for longevity, for health purposes. I mean, some of what we do is for cycling performance and some of it is so that we live to 100 years old so that we can enjoy, you know, win national championships into our 90s.

Right.

So that's, that's, you'd probably only win.

Those because there's no one else.

Yeah, well, that's. Okay. Well that's. And that's fine. You can only beat who you line up against. But yeah, so that's breakfast, lunch.

So just before we go to lunch, can we just talk about the timing of breakfast? Because I think that's really something that you really made clear to me. The time between the previous evening meal and when you have breakfast. And also the activity that you are potentially going to do, whether this is a Tuesday, Monday or a Saturday. And they're three different days in our book, as you know, a Saturday is like an endurance.

Yep.

You know, four to six hour ride. A Monday is the easiest day of the week where we ride granny gears and, and Tuesday we do high intensity over threshold. So they're three distinctly different days. So can you just explain that to.

Sure. So I think it, this is really calling on the time, you know, the timing lever. I think as I said before, certainly for a Monday, for, for an easy session, there's no, there's no reason to eat before the session if you're a morning, if, if you train the mornings, there's no, there's no reason to eat from a nutritional point of view prior to the session. So I would encourage not eating until after. On a, on a dead easy session, on a, on a hard day or a long day. I would advocate something small ahead. If you're not quite up to Jerry and Joe and Troy if you're not quite up to them, which is me. So I would have something, I'd have, I'd have a mini smoothie before I go. But otherwise eating on the ride is sufficient and that's. There's no problem. I've often said to athletes, you could eat a Big Mac, I don't encourage it. But you could eat a Big Mac on a four hour ride and you won't gain. You could eat Big Macs all the whole ride through. It will not be stored. It'll stay in circulation till it's burnt. So that it's kind of a free swing. Eating while you're riding. It's a free swing. You can eat anything. You should, you shouldn't eat anything. But because there's some food fuels that are better than others and some that will sit in your gut for longer than others. And then I guess the, the other variant is, is a tempo session or, or even so tempo, tempo. I think you can. Similarly, you don't need much beforehand. You should be able to because by definition it's sub threshold, you're not going to be dipping into glycogen anyway. So I would think.

So that's your rating, isn't it? Pretty much the intensity, pretty much the effort?

Pretty much. Yep. Absolutely. And then I think it's. Of course we both look after athletes that train in the afternoons or after work and that's a different story altogether.

That's a good point.

Yeah. But they, they have to essentially.

They.

Have to essentially consider the same things in terms of the amount of energy they need to perform the session based on the intensity of the session.

So for a high intensity session where you're doing five, five minute efforts way over threshold.

Yep. I would be, they're going to need Some glycogen. This is actually an important point. The adaptations come from the stress of being right on the line of being able to do it and not being able to do it right. So what Gerry would call the lower end of the range, you should be able to just execute the lower end of the range. When you're adapting to something like this. It's going to hurt, I can attest to that. It hurts at the lower end. But if you don't put yourself out there and get close to failure, you won't get the same adaptation. So in a 5 by 5 minute session above, at threshold, above threshold, I would suggest a little bit of carbohydrate in a bottle about 45 minutes before, but no more. Okay, so not much more. At this, at this point where you're trying to develop flexibility just before you go on.

If you were further advanced down the track and you have gained some really good linkage with your liver and is it okay to push yourself with none of that?

I believe so. In fact, I'm certain that Steve McMillan doesn't, I'm certain he doesn't need to have any carbs before a interval session like that. Because those that have been doing, those that have been doing sort of Ironman triathlon, you know, long, long, long endurance, already have the machinery, the metabolic machinery, Y. It is about just rekindling it. And this is a point that I really wanted to make, is that it's just as important what you do after a session. So historically and certainly continually, in some situations, special cases, but not in our case, you can get great adaptation from not having carbohydrate after such a session.

Which is just so controversial, which is so.

It is just the opposite of everything that we were ever taught. But the real adaptation, you do one of those five by five sessions and then just go and have steak and veggies for dinner or have your omelette, have a smoothie.

High fat, moderate protein.

Again, high fat, moderate protein. Okay. Whereas if you're a Grand Tour rider, they've got to get carbs back into you.

They're exceptions, aren't they?

They're exceptions and we can't work to that model. I mean, those guys struggle to get enough cal, calories full stop. And, and they lose weight over the tour, lose kilograms. They just can't, can't keep up. So in fact, I, I remember some discussions with the head of the, the medical director for Orica, and it was about portion size after a stage and it was all about small. So you had to Have a little bit of carbohydrate because at the start, of course, teams didn't know this. So they, you know, big pasta, big bowl of pasta and the athletes just blown out by that. But instead you'd have this, you know, piece of toast, bowl of rice, a couple of crackers. Again, opposite of what the athlete wants. The athlete wants to go gorge, sleep. All right. But you got to go a little bit. A little bit. Otherwise the gut just can't hack it. The body can't hack it. Yeah. So that's breakfast.

I want to keep moving through, but like that. I still have so many questions.

Well, go ahead.

Yeah, we're going at a good rate, I think. I think this is so valuable for everyone to hear. When you're talking about adaptation, there's almost two goals of adaptation because the goal of the session is to just increase your, you know, your threshold capacity as a bike rider as well as the adaptation of what you're talking about. To be more efficient in your body's handling of energy. Yeah, handling of energy.

So that's right.

Where's the balance between both of those? It's a little bit what you said about, you know, not pushing it too far and being able to ride at the lower end of the range, I guess, would I be right in saying it's totally context depending on the person and what their goals are? Because if you want to increase your FTP, you're going to be better if you can ride the session properly.

That's true. But the, I mean, I would counter to that that you never. There's no race you've ever done that's like an FTP test where you get 20 minutes to warm up, you go full gas for 20 minutes and then it's over. Closest thing to that time trial, 20 minute time trial. But the, the context of racing is always both those things. It's always about power and energy. So you can have an FTP of 450 watts and if you're inadequately fueled or you're not metabolically adapted, you'll, you'll get thrashed, you get dropped in five seconds. So it's, it, the context is to do with, yes, the person, how adapted they are and the race. So again, high, having a high FTP is wonderful, but if you're racing 180k, you know, stage or race, what's more important, your FTP or how you can metabolize fuel either way over that stage?

It's exactly what we want to find out. And certainly if you had two athletes both highly trained, with similar FTPs. The person who is able to produce the best fuel program will beat the other person, no matter how well trained the other person is. It's like the analogy of, you know, a Ferrari racing car and a Toyota Corona. If you don't put petrol in either of them, doesn't matter how expensive the car is or how well trained you are as a rider, you still won't, the car won't go and neither will you.

Yes.

So that is so true that people have to really understand that we can get you as fit as possible, but if you're not fueled right, you're going to be like Average Joe by the end of the end of the ride. And that's something that listeners really need to understand.

Given that analogy. If you had a Ferrari versus a Corolla and you put the best fuel possible on the planet in a Corolla, it still wouldn't be.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Which is the. Yeah, the point I was trying to make too was, you know, it doesn't matter how well fueled you are, you still got to do that training to improve your FTP, to be the, Give yourself the opportunity to be the best rider on the day.

Yeah, I, I think they're both important and I, and you know, they, they develop at the same time anyway. Right. So if you, whether you're conscious of your fueling strategy or not, if you're doing 180k hard rides, you are developing metabolically, there's no way you can do it. Whether you like it or not, you will have to adapt or you won't complete the ride. So I know this much is true. The guys doing long rides are already there in large part. Okay, so, but, but certainly you can emphasize the fueling part of it and, and you can accelerate that in the same way you can accelerate your actual power performance through, through structured training. You can accelerate your metabolic performance through structured training.

Look, that's what, that's the question that we're coming from for our angle, and that's why we've got you here, is because we want to know when you're down the track and you have established good metabolic fuel relationship. You can train at the normal ranges, but the interim period, that first period that we, that we're transferring from the crap method we've been using to now, this is the right way to go. They're the times. Where is it two weeks, is it four weeks? How long is it going to be? And should you, should you manipulate it a little bit more so that you so you can get to do the sessions that are going to keep your physicalness improving.

Yes.

And not to the detriment of your program.

Yes. So. So, exactly right. We don't know how long it's going to be in any one person, and it depends on what they've done in the past. So you adapted very quickly because of your background. Most people, myself included, much slower, harder path. And I can only tolerate so much failure before I go. You know what? I'm going to have a gel before this race because I just, I. I don't want to get dropped or whatever. So I think the. The perfect place to test it is on the Ergo, because it's a controlled environment. You can see what power you can push. You know what it feels like? It. What it feels like when you are metabolically challenged at the start of adapting is it feels like Jerry's turned the watts up on the target by 20 watts. That's what it feels like. It just feels like, oh, this is hard. And even though those numbers look familiar and in the past, you know, I've done these numbers before, and it was not this hard. That's what it feels like. So again, you.

There is some sacrifice.

There's undoubtedly a sacrifice. I argue it's worth it. But at the same time, being a frail athlete, like everyone, I want to perform, I can tolerate a few weeks, maybe a couple of months, maybe a couple of races where you feel great and then you feel like you're going to win, and then you're out the back with 10Ks to go.

And look, the confidence side of the athlete is the thing that we're both sort of. All three of us are here conscious of that. And that's the thing that you've. You try to avoid, is to, you know, why can't I hit those numbers that I could hit so easily three weeks ago? I must be going backwards. And that's the thing that people really have to understand, that there will be a period of one step back before you can go two steps forwards. But. But it's easy because I've done the same thing. Geez, I'm riding crap today. Oh, maybe I'm not that good as I was a few weeks ago. Well, no, it's just the process. And mentally, would you agree with mentally, you've just got to be aware. The point I'm trying to make is as long as you understand what's happening, then you've got a much better way of coping.

Yep. And it's. I guess it's your job as the coach, my job as a coach, in some cases that you've just got to go, this is normal and we expect it and it's okay. And I still, and believe it or not, I still want you to do this session and I still want you to race this race and, and that's when the real gains are made. So in my last foray into keto, I've got different, I've got a different approach this time. But in my last go, I'd literally just started being coached by Jared and I was like, oh, by the way, you might see my performance just go down a little bit. He's going, oh, yeah, whatever. And then just push me anyway. And I had a few races where, where I was in a break or something like that and then just, it suddenly got really hard. I was like, we were, you know, we were away. Couldn't, couldn't see the chasing group at all. And then suddenly I couldn't pull a turn and then suddenly I couldn't hang on and then I went, oh, that's right, I'm, I'm keto.

And.

And then two weeks later, riding away, riding away. So it's, that's the other thing is the, I think the rebound, if you add a little bit of petrol once you've been through this period of adaptation is so powerful. So I would actually, I think there's something we need to think about in, in lead up to a, to a, to an A race is what can we do to cause that slingshot.

This is such a great idea because believe it or not, in 1987 when I was in Kona and just, you know, got through a phys ed degree in exercise physiology and we learned about glycogen super compensation. And that was something that a couple of marathon runners had tried. And here I am going to do it to myself untried, in the biggest race in the world for triathlon.

She wouldn't recommend anyone.

Never. And I never, I always say this. Don't try something in a race you haven't done in training. And anyway, the psychological problem with what is it, first of all, you starve yourself of all the carbohydrates you can. Two weeks out. So roughly two weeks out. 14 days, something like that, sometimes longer. And you continue to train and all of a sudden your performances in your training start to go in a hole and you start second guessing everything. Oh no, what have I done to myself? And you forget that you're starved at the carbs.

Yes.

And so you're just having basically Protein and fats. And in those days it wasn't about fats.

No.

Fats were absolute. No, no. So it was just protein and get to this the week of the race and then all of a sudden, what was it, four or five days out you could. And, and what you were talking about a minute ago was to slingshot double the glycogen stores that you would ever have thought imaginable. And on race day, you just felt like a superman. Yep. You, you just, you know, because of your fueling and your training was always there. Yeah.

So I think the, I think that came into that was recognized after one of the marathoners, I think got gastro. So someone got gastro, couldn't eat. Couldn't eat for, you know, he's two weeks out, got gastro before the Olympics or something like that. Gastro couldn't eat. Perform, you know, started the train performance off the cliff and then bang. Just amazing. So. Yeah. Yeah, that's. It's fascinating. Fascinating stuff.

Yeah. Should we go to lunch and dinner?

Yeah, pretty quickly. Lunch and dinner. Yeah. As I said, keep it simple. So salad with stuff on it, so green salad. And I put on mine chopped up camembert or brie, macadamias, avocado, cherry tomatoes, cucumber and dried shallot, you know, anything that you like and just douse it with olive oil because the olive oil that's giving you the fat.

And would you be happy to put in some cooked ham?

Ham, chicken. Yep, absolutely. Or salami. Yep. Some meat. Yep, yep. And then dinner. Yeah. Steak and veggies, chicken, veggies, salad.

Stay away from rice. Potato.

Yep. But you can get, you know, you can get that stuff that substitutes there. So you can get the volume out of things that are the, the substance is called cognac or konjac. It's a vegetable very popular in Japanese cooking. And it, you just boil it and then strain it and it's kind of like noodles. It's kind of like vermicelli noodles. So you could. We do. We do spaghetti Bolognese. Kids will have real spaghetti and we'll have spaghetti with this stuff. And it's just, you know, it's filling and you get everything you're supposed to get. So, yeah, fish, it's. It's tough for vegans, I'll give you that much. I don't know any vegan athletes you have, but I suspect you can't really perform on a, perform at a high, high level on a vegan diet. I could be wrong, but yeah, we do have One. Yeah.

You haven't seen game changes.

No, I haven't seen it deliberately. Haven't seen it yet.

I do not condone game changers.

Yeah, but, but, but certainly, certainly nuts and olive oil, you can go a long way. But I, I would struggle without eggs.

But.

And meat, chicken, fish. I would, I would.

As you said, you've given us a really good, simple kind of plan for your meals. And so I suppose that's one lever we talked about. So when to do.

Yeah, let's talk about the wind because that's, this is, this is just coming into the, into the scientific domain now. So, so I guess the, the, if you think about a lot of the, A lot of this is about when you're not eating. Okay. Because again, that's when, that's when a lot of the metabolic changes occur is by not eating. Same as training. So it's when you're resting that all the adaptations occur. So the typical fast is overnight, right? So you have dinner, maybe a snack after dinner and then you don't eat until breakfast. That might be 12, 13 hours. That's a standard overnight fast. And that's okay, better than, you know, midnight snack and then 6am before you ride eating, because then you're only getting six, six hours of fasting. I guess what's come into vogue somewhat is what's intermittent fasting or time restricted eating, time restricted feeding. And that's where you would only eat in a window during the day and that might be eight hours. So you might miss breakfast. So you might have dinner, miss breakfast, eat lunch. And depending on the time, that should be about 16 hours of not eating and 8 hours of eating. A lot of advocates of that way of eating say it doesn't matter what you eat in eight hours, you'll still get a benefit. And I think that's probably true because.

You'Re probably eating less.

You are definitely going to eat less.

You just can't eat enough in eight hours.

You could, of course you could, you could eat pizzas and nachos and you'd easily compensate. But so I think, I think no one really does, you know, time restricted feeding without modifying their diet somewhat. If you were to, if you were to time restricted feed and then eat McDonald's, you'd be blowing it really, I think. And then you can, you can go even more extreme, which is to eat one meal a day. I don't, I don't advocate for that. I don't advocate for that because I think it's hard and I don't know what the advantage is over just maybe having time restricted, feeding for, for 14 to 16 hours and eating the right food. But what here's my current experiment is so I do, I do like eating and drinking and this, this is, I know I'm not alone. So what, and, and what? And I'm not, I haven't been on a ketogenic diet for the whole time that I've known about ketogenic diets. And what that tells me is that when it gets too hard, I stop doing it. Makes sense. So what I've actually, what I'm doing this year, my plan is to do five or six six week blocks like a training block because that's achievable and I've got a finite window and I've got results. I can then start looking at result from start to finish and compare blocks over time and I get a bit of a break where I can be free range in the middle. May or may not go free range in the middle, but I've got the opportunity to. So that's, so that's my plan at the moment is a six week block on a, on a ketogenic. Ketogenic plus carbs is required for training and performance. And then within that six week block every week I have one day where I don't eat for 16 to 20 hours. So one time restricted feeding day and that's going to be a Monday.

Right.

So unless Jerry, like this week goes, actually you can train hard on Monday because he didn't do enough on Sunday. Right. But generally speaking, Monday, easy day, easy day, time restricted feeding, donate till after lunch. Right. And then once, once in the block I'm gonna do a three one to three day fast, just water only. So again, I will look at my training calendar and make sure that the first day is a hard day. All right? So I'll do the hard session straight away while I'm still fed basically in the fed state. Tempo and recovery. So tempo I'll be fasting and then recovery I'll be fasting. So that's, so that's my, that's what my annual plan looks like. Five or six of those six week blocks where I'm using time restricted feeding and absolute fasting. And the goals are not just weight, the goals are. There are a lot of advantages for health in fasting. So what, in very quick time and simple terms, what fasting encourages is for us to start digesting, auto digesting some of the shitty cells in our body and, and inhibiting some of the old, the cells that are Becoming old or dying. So it's called autophagy. Yep. And basically eliminates. So it's almost like a, you know, you get a bit of a clean sweep once every now and then and, and most humans will never do it, of course, because they'll eat continually for their whole lives.

Is that your number one reason for that one to three day water fast?

For longevity?

Yeah.

Yes.

And for that cell replenishment.

Absolutely.

Flushing.

Yep.

So the reason isn't for weight loss. That's a extra byproduct.

No. Because I think weight loss is reasonably simple to achieve with dietary manipulation as opposed to fasting, which will be. It'll use a slot for those three days. Like it'll be hard to not think about it, obviously, because be. Be hungry. I just wanted to add as well, for those athletes considering a ketogenic diet, you need to supplement salt. Okay. Because we don't, we don't typically get enough salt when we're not eating carbohydrate. They tend to be absorbed together. And so I advocate for some, if not all athletes to try stock cubes, just a bullion stock cube in water before a session. So I certainly do that and I, and I perform way better when I do. So remarkable.

There's a couple of really important points in there.

Pardon me.

You're right. Obviously ketogenic is your preference, the ketogenic style. But you made a really good point that you are on and off it and that's okay. You're not offered because you're blowing out.

Yep.

You're offered because you don't want to stick to something like that long term. Is that just because it's just too hard to avoid all those carbs?

I think as humans living in Australia, we, we like enjoying variety of foods. Certainly a ketogenic diet restricts that variety substantially. And we're prone to suffering boredom. And I just think again, if you, you know, some are very good and really like it and don't miss bread and nachos. I keep harping on nachos because that's like something I really miss when I'm not. When I'm on keto. But, you know, I think by cycling you stay fresh and don't get prone to that boredom. And we're humans, so we've. The other thing I've really learned and I'm learning the hard way and still learning is, you know, perfection is the enemy of great. Right. So great. Great is great. Perfection is virtually impossible to achieve. So it's forgivable to fall off the Wagon. That's the same in everything. So I'm an advocate in healthy habits. Stuffed it up today, see how you go tomorrow. Stuffed up again, see how you go tomorrow. It doesn't matter because you're better off just trying to hang in there. If you got 10 things you know are healthy habits, if you just do one for the day, better than nothing.

Same as a training plan. You miss one session, you don't throw out the whole training plan.

But people do. You know, people do see the world black and white and they do aim for perfection. And when they don't hit it, they chuck it all out.

It's like a failure.

Yeah, yeah, I really like that point. That ties into what you said, which I really liked as well, was you're ketogenic, plus enough carbs to train.

Totally.

You're not being silly.

And so it's. It's enough carbs to train and race as well as. I believe there's. There's certainly benefit in exogenous ketones as a supplement, which is what? So you can. You can put powdered ketones in a bottle and. And, Yep, takes about 40 minutes to work its way into the circulation, but certainly for hard sessions and racing. Now, I would put exogenous ketones in a bottle.

So what are ketones and why do we want to make more of them?

Well, ketones are a type of chemical, so acetone, beta hydroxybutyrate and I can't remember the third. There's three. There's three main ketones that are produced by the liver or. Or digested in the diet that can actually substitute as fuel for the. For the muscle and the brain.

Are they counted as fats?

Is that what, you know, they're. They've got their own. Got their own category.

Yeah.

They can be produced. So fat is the substrate. So substrate's what it's made from. So the liver can convert fat into ketones and then it will secrete ketones into the circulation. They'll be used by working muscle and the brain in place of. In place of glucose. Now, the brain still relies very heavily on glucose, so that's why the liver is always making glucose gluconeogenesis. It stops doing that, you're toast. So the reason ketones are so important is so that we can function in the starved state. So we have adapted, we've evolved to be able to do this because our ancestors were not guaranteed three square a day. So, as I said, you can have exogenous ketones, which is ketones that you eat or drink. They used to taste just disgusting, but they've come a long way since then. Yeah.

Is there any comparison between. Yeah. The efficiency directly of ketones of energy and glucose of energy?

There is. I'm not, I'm not right up to speed on the, on the metabolic efficiency of ketones, but certainly in terms of things that doctors and scientists care about, which is like free radical production, ketones are a cleaner burning fuel. They can be burnt directly by the working tissue and the pathway to metabolise them does not produce free radicals in the same way that oxidative pathways of glucose produce free radicals. So in terms of health, ketones are a healthy choice, but I suppose it's.

Kind of not relevant to the reason we're doing this in the first place. We're trying to go ketogenic and produce more ketones to help us rely less on carbs so that we are healthier, can lose weight and we have both options. Is that correct?

Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll never be liberated from carbohydrate. It's not necessary. Yes, that's right. Absolutely. We want, as athletes, we want to be able to burn anything anytime. That's the best way to be, because if you're reliant on one, you've got all your eggs in that basket. And that's where, frankly, most guys you'll see cycling up and down Beach Road are. They couldn't go 40 minutes without a gel.

That's cleared up a really big misconception for me, having only heard of the ketogenic diet from an outside perspective. I know a lot of the argument against it is that, well, the perception is that people are saying ketones are superior to carbs, whereas that's irrelevant to the argument.

I don't think they are, frankly. I think for top end performance, carbohydrate or liberated carbohydrate from your own glycogen stores is superior. And I have no personal proof that I can perform above threshold on a purely keto diet. I've read books that say you can, but I haven't had that experience myself and I don't really have any athletes that are willing to take the chance to, because that's probably six to nine months of adaptation. But again, as you say, this is not the case. We're making. The case we're making is power to weight. First and foremost, we want power to weight. So we gotta either gain power or lose weight or both. And I think you can do both. And it. And it can come to a head at the right Time, if we get this right, if you, if you restrict carbohydrate to right up to close to race day, you know, or a few days before and then bang. I think, and I think that window lasts for weeks too. I think it's. There's a glow time there that lasts for weeks to months.

That's brilliant. And what you did was, and you spoke about at the very start of the podcast, your own version, dad, but you certainly were hesitant to go full ketogenic foods all the time. You just knew that that would personally be difficult. And so you really focused on it throughout the week. And then Friday nights you would relax with your meal and you would have potatoes and meat and still not an unhealthy meal.

You won't go and have probably still in ketosis, to be honest.

Yeah, yeah. And over the weekend you more relaxed and you found that approach really effective.

It's great to hear Harry say that he's trying a version this year that he didn't do last year that he didn't do. And that to me is almost giving me confidence, going, oh, I was so worried that if you half do something that you're going to get half the result. And as a coach, if someone said to me, thanks, Jared, for your program, I'm going to do 50%.

Yeah, that's right.

And I'll go, well, no point. Whereas, you know, this is a bit different. It's not black and white.

Totally.

Yeah. And it's great that you've said that. You know, you're experimenting on yourself and I used your information and tried to manipulate it as best as I could into my schedule and. And that's what worked totally. Because I did almost like mini glycogen supercompensation every week. I starved myself during the week as much as I could. If I was doing a hard Wednesday where it was a hills ride, I would then have some carbs in the ride and the night before, and then Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, none of that, do it properly. And then Friday night before the Saturday ride and I had no significant reduction in my performance in training. And that was the thing that I had to keep focused on. I didn't have enough time when I first contacted you, from when I started the process to the. The goal was the national championships in Adelaide. I think I had 16 weeks. So the fact that I had an endurance background helped me, as you said, but. But certainly I didn't restrict my intensity in training because I couldn't cope with it due to fuel. So that's the Key thing that I was trying to. To avoid and I succeeded in doing it within a week.

Almost five kilos.

Yeah. And. And the thing that we said at the start to be a better cyclist, improve your threshold or lose weight or do both, and that's what I did. I improved my threshold and lost 5 kilo.

Yep.

And what a different rider I was 16 weeks later. And the, the nutrition plan that you advised me was paramount to that. Sure, I still had the ability to improve my threshold, but the race we did had a 10 minute climb three times and it was so important that I wasn't 75 kilo and I was 69 totally to get up that hill. And what a difference that made to riding to the finish line with no one in the picture.

Yep.

And. And it was purely to do with, you know, preparation in terms of training and fueling and that they cannot go without each other. And would you agree with.

Totally agree. That's it. That's. That's absolutely. That's what, that's what we're all trying to get to actually, is find those magic numbers.

We. I think we'll start to wrap it up. Is there anything else you thought noteworthy to say on that?

I think I've said everything I know.

Yeah.

No, I look forward to.

I think we would love to have you again on in maybe six months or 12 months to see any more experiments you've had or any more results you've seen. One question I had still was, is there any danger in being too extreme with it? Obviously the answer to that question would be yes, but what are the dangers in being too extreme for too long, holding it too long, or is there no danger?

Well, no, because we can fast for days and days and days. No, I don't. I'm not aware of any specific dangers. I think we need to. If on this sort of diet for a long time and not seeing changes, not seeing benefits, I would think it's worth seeing a gp, having a blood test, having things like electrolytes checked. But as a basic rule, I advocate, as I said, sodium and magnesium in all athletes on a modified diet like this.

Well, that's great to know. Is there anything else from you? Yep.

The one thing that we've talked about is, and we talked about it a little bit here, is the fact that the psychological effect it can have just can't be underestimated. That if you start to perform poorly, then you have to understand that it is a period depending on what your background is, whether you're an experienced endurance athlete or You're a newbie to it. As you said earlier, it can take longer, and that is something that people really have to have clear in their mind. I will have a period where I may not be functioning the way I want to. So with every hardship that you take, the reward is so much better, but you have to go through that period before the body kind of gets what you're doing to it and then goes along for the ride, so to speak. And I've had so many conversations with people who are telling me they're, oh, God, I'm now I don't want to ride my bike anymore. You know, there's something not right. Well, there is something not right because you changed your whole eating regime and you've tried to maintain your normal living.

Yes.

And you just got to be prepared to adapt. That's all. Your body's adapting, but your brain has to adapt as well.

I completely agree. And I can speak with firsthand experience, that's. That's exactly what happens. You just suddenly can't perform as well. But the benefit is at the other end, and it may be a week or two and it may be a few months, but the. The gains are over and above what you would get in a standard training program. If you can train as well as it's a force multiplier, I think, and it's a force multiplier on race day as well. So not just on the. Ergo, I think when it really matters, then. Then you'll have the legs.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, that was incredibly valuable. Thank you very much for your time.

Welcome.

Yeah, that was just a gold mine of information. I hope that everyone listening got as much out of that as we did. And if you have any questions, definitely let us know. If you have any questions for Dr. Harry Weisinger, you can let us know and we'll pass it on to him. And maybe he can answer them in a different forum or come back on to another podcast, but I think that's some really good information for people to have and just a whole nother tool in there. Arsenal, I guess, to try and tackle some weight loss and some improvement in performance.

Great.

Thanks, Harry. Really appreciate it, mate.

Thank you. Pleasure.

Look forward to seeing some results for you.

Me, too.

Fueling and performance.

Me too. Thank you. Thanks for that.

That's it. Cheers.