After a swim session the other week, my clubmate told me about a TV program he
had watched on BBC2 called Sugar vs. Fat and recommended that I watch it. The
program involved a study designed by twin Dr brothers; one would embark on an extreme
high sugar diet and the other on an extreme high fat diet for a month, with the
aim of getting clues as to whether there were advantages or disadvantages in
following any of these diets.
To be honest I thought it was a rubbish program and a rubbish study, the sort of “study” you’d find reported in The Daily Mail. But nevertheless it has spurred me to write this blog! I have a feeling that a lot of my athlete friends imagine I eat bacon eggs at every meal or at least fairly regularly. This is perhaps my own fault for posting pictures on Facebook of my high fat meals. I do eat a wide range of ingredients on my weekly diet which includes plenty of vegetables and a reasonable amount of fruit as well as seeds, nuts, seafood, poultry, red meat, as well as good quality oils such as olive oil, coconut oil, butter and lots of dairy. What I try to avoid are refined carbohydrates including sugar, processed food and oils.
Returning to the “study”, the twin on the high fat diet complained of difficulties when going to the toilet, bearing in mind he wasn't eating ANY fruit or vegetables his fibre intake was virtually non-existent. Even in more well-known extreme high fat diets such as the Ketogenic diet and Atkins, individuals are encouraged to eat low carb forms of fruit and veg to satisfy their fibre needs and take a fibre supplement.
What is metabolic efficiency (ME) then? It's a concept developed by an American dietician, Bob Seebohar, whereby you manipulate your daily nutrition to reduce blood sugar levels and maintain insulin spikes to a minimum. It’s not a diet per se; I see it as a way of putting together meals and snacks. How do you do it then? It’s simple, first of all Seebohar recommends that you eat when biologically hungry rather than at set times, to put it in other words, you eat when you body tells you it’s hungry, do not go hungry, eat when your body signals to you that it needs re-fuelling.
To put an ME meal or snack together, firstly
prioritise a good source of fat and protein and then some source of fibre. Look
at the plate and ask yourself, where are my fat and protein sources? Then add a
source of fibre (fruit, veg and/or wholegrains). A combination of fat, protein
and fibre in a meal has been shown to keep sugar levels down and to reduce
insulin spikes. Imagine that your body has a valve that controls the release of
insulin, if the valve is not controlled then too much insulin will escape and
that will stop you from burning fat. For example, a bowl of porridge made with
skimmed milk, chopped banana and honey is NOT a ME breakfast. It’s not that the
ingredients cannot be used as such; it’s just that this combination will turn
off your fat burning mechanism by raising insulin levels too much, the ‘valve’
will go berserk.
What Seebohar cannot tell you is how
many carbohydrates you will need to eat, that depends on the individual, if
they are an athlete, what their sport is, which part of the season they are at,
etc. In his book ‘Nutrition Periodisation for
Athletes’ Seebohar explains (obviously) better than I do, how to individualise
your plan and periodise it throughout the season. I also recommend checking his
website and following his blog. For example, as a long distance runner and
triathlete I periodise my carbohydrate intake and reduce it when volume and intensity
of training is low; then as I get closer to competition season I increase my
carbohydrate intake accordingly.
Let me try making this even simpler
by giving you some examples of ME meal ideas. A metabolic efficient smoothie
for breakfast made with full fat milk, banana, frozen berries, full fat Greek
yogurt and whey protein (fat =milk & yogurt, protein = milk, whey &
yogurt and fibre from bananas and berries. The other night for dinner I had
steak and a salad of rocket, tomatoes, radishes, cucumber, crumbled stilton
cheese, seasoned with salt and pepper for dinner and dressed with olive oil (fat
=cheese, olive oil & steak; protein = steak and cheese; fibre= vegetables). Both are examples of ME meals, one is more
metabolic efficient than the other but there is really no right or wrong, it is
up you (or with the help of a dietician) to figure out how many carbs you
should be consuming at a particular period of your season. Obviously if you are
eating more carbohydrates than your body needs you won’t be giving yourself
much of chance of getting better at using fat for fuel.
It’s really all about individualizing
metabolic efficiency to meet your own particular needs. There are different
routes to achieve metabolic efficiency. Three years ago I was diagnosed as
pre-diabetic, so I spend a lot of my season on really low carbs, as my body
doesn’t cope well with glucose, then I’ll eat more carbs when I’m entering the
build period of my season and obviously when I’m racing.
So, what about treats?
Seebohar suggests that you can eat
what you like from time to time, missing your target by up to 10%. I do miss
the target occasionally and eat what I want without feeling guilty, I enjoy it
and move on.
Is metabolic efficiency for me?
I think ME is for everyone, whether
you are an athlete or not. As the chef in my house I try as much as I can to get
my family to eat the ME way, as they are not insulin resistant they can eat
more carbs than I do and miss the target more regularly.
Going back to the “study”, the twins carried
out an experiment where they both cycled up a steep hill, whilst one consumed a
standard sugary gel and the other consumed a slice of butter. How pointless was
that? What ME will allow you to do over a period of adaptation is to use less
calories per hour, which is very different from eating a slice of bacon at your
next race. The advantages being that you are less likely to run out of your
glycogen stores whilst training or racing (hitting the wall or bonking) and
less likely to suffer from gastrointestinal distress (tummy problems). Last
year’s Ironman Austria is an example of how ME worked for me. You can check my
blog here.
Rather than believing my anecdotal
‘evidence’ of how ME works for me you can also get yourself ME tested in a lab,
and this is part of what the results should look like:
Your ME goal is to push the
‘crossover point’ to the left over a period of time whilst maintaining the same
minutes/per miles, or wattage if you are cycling. ME testing will also be able
to give you an exact amount of calories you will need for a given race.
Other than the benefits I have
discussed, my experience with ME has also prevented me from becoming a diabetic.
This may still happen as I age, but ME will help me delay it for sure. I also
don’t suffer from fluctuating energy levels throughout the day and my cravings
for sugary things are pretty much non-existent, not to mention I have saved a
fortune on gels and sports drinks that I used to use for training and racing.
Finally, the twins were sent for a
fasting glucose test and although their results were both within normal levels,
the doctor who analysed their samples implied to the viewer that the brother on
the high fat diet was very close to becoming a diabetic and the brother on the
high sugar diet was now better at producing insulin. What an absolute shambles,
I wonder if he knows anything about diabetes at all?!?
If you have a fear of eating fat,
then I can also recommend a great book called ‘Death by Food Pyramid’, which details the history of where
and how the nutrition advice we get today went “pear shaped”, in terms of our
fear of eating fat, especially saturated fat, the relationship of cholesterol
and coronary disease and the rise of highly ‘healthy’ processed oils. It’s a
brilliant book, superbly well written and researched.
