Howdy, Stranger!
Categories
Options
Atkins on Horizon
![[Deleted User]](https://wc.vanillicon.com/ca149f1b1c9e07c339b332a49da7029c_100.png)
Hi everyone, did anybody see Horizon last Thursday about the Atkins diet. I watched it and it has opened a door in my mind to be honest in so far as I went and bought the book on Saturday purely out of curiosity. I have had a good read and though I do not agree with the basic premise I have a couple of questions to put to you good people out there.
We as runners commonly know that we need carbs for fuel and any diet that advocates low carb/ high fat cannot surely be workable for us.
I am 5'8" 164lb with a bodyfat of 27%, this has been the same for the last year.
I would love to get to about 154lb and reduce my body fat to about 21% but cannot seem to do this even when training harder & eating less
Therefore question 1
Has anyone followed Atkins strictly whilst in hard training & if so how did it affect them?
2) If atkins is a complete no no ( which I think you will say it is) does anybody know how to get rid of sugar cravings as the more I train the worse they come?
I look forward to any thoughts you may have.
Nick Miles
We as runners commonly know that we need carbs for fuel and any diet that advocates low carb/ high fat cannot surely be workable for us.
I am 5'8" 164lb with a bodyfat of 27%, this has been the same for the last year.
I would love to get to about 154lb and reduce my body fat to about 21% but cannot seem to do this even when training harder & eating less
Therefore question 1
Has anyone followed Atkins strictly whilst in hard training & if so how did it affect them?
2) If atkins is a complete no no ( which I think you will say it is) does anybody know how to get rid of sugar cravings as the more I train the worse they come?
I look forward to any thoughts you may have.
Nick Miles
The materials in this website are in no way intended to replace the professional medical care, advice, diagnosis or treatment of a doctor, qualified personal trainer, therapist, dietitian or nutritionist Runners's World, Part of the Hearst UK well-being network © Copyright 2017
Comments
if you go to the unofficial thread theres some info on this
Ill boing it for you
How are you measuring body fat/
this can be notorioulsy unreliable
1) If you do exercise, you can add vegetable carbs according to Atkins.
2) Stu Mittelman the ultrarunner is a runner who is on a low carb diet. He trains at low intensity, but don't know what his speeds are like. But he has run 1000 miles in 11 days. Details in his book:
Slow Burn.
re sugar cravings, eat low glycemic index foods - except when you are actually running (and then only when running far/fast) when you should be fuelling with high-GI foods
I think both Sam Panther and Pantman used this method to lose weight while training, you could mail them for advice
Hippo, I use my mates handheld thingy for bodyfat & only do it once a week on a sunday morning when I get up. We take three readings and use the average of these three, the readings normally differ between 0.2-0.5%, it is only a guide to our physical condition.
Sam, thanks for the advice, if you used this yourself, how did you find it when running?
Andy not sure what catabolic is, sounds painful! on a more serious note, I do not wish to lose lean tissue though so maybe not too sure.
Sorry about the delay in posting back, I work in the building game & only get on a PC once a day.
cheers Nick
all i meant was you might be trying to achieve unrealistic targets
Ta!!
I tend to have a lucozade sport before exercise and I am generally fine with that.
After exercise, I have a high carb / high GI meal.
The meal furthest away from exercise is low GI / low carb. I achieve low GI by having porridge, but with lots of cream.
Ok have just reread your original post.
To stop the hunger pangs, either adopt Atkins properly or go low GI.
Low fat, i.e. high carb foods cause your blood sugar to be raised, spiking high, insulin is released to combat this, which causes the sugars to be put into cells, causing the sugar level to spike down, beloe the pre-meal level, causing the hunger pangs.
Medium to high intensity exercise helps on two fronts:
Uses up the sugars in your body thereby reducing the insulin level in your body
Makes the cells in your body more receptive to insulin so less is needed for the same action, thereby reducing the insulin level.
More on GI in next post.
Not sure if you are aware, so will explain GI.
Every food does not get broken down and enter the blood stream at the same rate.
Some do so quickly which causes a sugar spike and these are called high GI foods.
eg. bread potatoes
Some foods are broken down and enter the bloodstream slowly and are known as low GI foods, eg. apples, all-bran, meat, hard cheeses etc.
There are GI values for lots of foods, detailed in the websites below.
If you combine foods, you average the GI values. If you want to be really clever, you can take into account amount of food etc, but I just take the averages just to give me guidelines.
e.g. if I have porridge with lots of cream, the GI of porridge is about 58 and the GI of cream is 0 giving a GI for the meal of 29.
More details on the following sites:
http://www.centerfornaturopathic.com/Glycemic index.htm
http://www.lowglycemicdiet.com/comparesnackgi.html
http://www.glycemicindex.com/
Hope that helps.
Good Luck
Many thanks to all
PS started atkins as an experiment on Monday, have lost two pounds, still feel pretty good but haven't hit lipolysis yet.
seems very strange eating stuff that I have avoided like the plague for the last couple of years though.Will try to keep you updated as to effects etc.
(be mindful that is could be the 'next big diet thing' along with South Beach Diet!)
i think the low GI principle could be well worth looking at tho
along with 'eat less get more active ' principle !