Today, as I trained my clients, not one session went by without talk about The Diet.
Yes, Michael Phelps‘ diet. I’ll refrain from passing judgment and try to talk about it from an athlete’s POV, as I feel news articles are sensationalizing Phelps - “What a freak.”
The question. “How can he eat all that and still look like this?”
The skinny bastard.
First, the info:
Now, the play by play:
Phelps is 6′4″, 195 lbs. He’s an Olympic-level athlete engaged in roughly 5 hours of rigorous swim training, as well as strength training. And he’s 23.
Using the Harris-Benedict Equation, we get a daily expenditure of 3971 Calories. Shows how limited prediction equations are.
Calculating Phelps’ BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate), we get 2089.65 Calories (per day). Add in the estimated expenditure from swimming and strength training (5100) and we come up with an estimated total of 7189.65 Calories per day.
That’s impressive, but it’s still not 8000-10000 Calories. So where do the extra thousand or so Calories go?
The X factors:
Lean mass - The prediction equations I used do not account for Phelps’ lean mass (read: muscle) which burns calories all on its own. You could argue that this accounts for an extra couple hundred Calories per day.
Thermogenesis - Not insignificantly, the food Phelps eats requires energy in order to be broken down and digested. Thermogenesis is estimated to contribute as much as 10% to metabolic rate. If Phelps really is downing 8000-10000 Calories a day, then his digestive system is working overtime to process that food. This could also throw a few hundred Calories into the mix.
Age - Phelps is young (and insulin sensitive). Metabolic rate slows as we age; conversely, we can expect metabolic rate to be higher in younger folks. Being insulin-sensitive helps drive those ingested calories to muscle cells (for use as energy) rather than to fat cells (to be stored for future use). So the food Phelps eats is used immediately (whereas ’tis not so in your average American Olympics viewer).
Reality - The realistic scenario is that Phelps isn’t really eating 8000 Calories everyday, and if we use food logs of athletes as evidence, this bears out. It’s possible that he eats 8000-10000 in a single day occasionally, but that his actual daily intake averages out somewhat lower (say, 6000 Calories or so). So, perhaps, one day he has 5500 Calories; the next 9798 Calories; the next, 6211 Calories, etc.
A final note: Some clients expressed shock and horror at the thought of an Olympic athlete eating pizza and pasta (especially after being told to avoid grains, etc.). My response: Phelps would not be physically capable of downing 8000-10000 Calories a day without the hunger-attenuating qualities of the carbs to aid him. It is precisely because he eats refined carbohydrates that he is able to put away that many calories.
Here’s an experiment: Get together 8000 Calories’ worth of sweet potatoes, avocados, chicken, eggs, and leafy greens. Put it in a big pile in front of you, set a timer to 24 hours, and make that pile disappear before the timer goes off.
Ready, set, go! Good luck.
(Actually, the timer should probably be set to 16-18 hours, since I’m sure Phelps sleeps a little.)
The moral? Phelps definitely expends tremendous amounts of energy daily, so much so that if he doesn’t eat an obscene volume of food, he actually loses weight. And in order to maintain that intake level, he resorts to eating from some admittedly crappy energy sources. Ironically, those same crappy foods enable him to eat the volume of food he requires.
O harmonious universe, how you taunt us!
Not to worry, all. Check back with Mr. Phelps in about 20 years or so - I suspect his caloric intake will be much different.
A client of mine asked me about his blood sugar yesterday and it occurred to me that writing an overview of blood sugar is in order (since I rant so about keeping insulin levels low, avoiding concentrated sources of carbohydrates, etc.).
First, what’s normal blood sugar?
The normal range for a fasted state is between 80 to 120 mL/dl. After eating, blood sugar generally jumps a little higher but not much, although if you load yourself up with sugar it can and will skyrocket (as much as 200 mL/dl). If you’re normal (i.e., non-insulin resistant), your blood sugar level is probably less than 100 mL/dl and will not rise past 140 mL/dl after a meal.
100 mL/dl is the “standard” that most general practitioners use, but diabetes specialists will ring alarms if your fasting blood sugar values exceed 83 mL/dl.
Why does blood sugar matter?
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you already know the answer to this question. Having high fasting blood sugar levels shows insulin resistance, and insulin resistance is the first step down a road you definitely don’t want to take.
A recap:
All (not just the bad ones, but all) of the carbohydrate you consume gets broken down into glucose - the building block of carbs. When all goes well, glucose is absorbed from your bloodstream into your cells to be burned as energy. Insulin is the hormone that makes this absorption possible - it literally “opens the door” to your cells, allowing glucose in.
When all is not well (i.e., when you overconsume carbohydrates, particularly refined carbs), you end up with large amounts of glucose in your bloodstream. Normally, the body deals with glucose by secreting (more than) enough insulin to pull all of that sugar out of your bloodstream and into your cells to be used as energy or to be stored as glycogen. When you run out of glycogen storage space, your body simply repackages that glucose as triglycerides and socks it away in your fat cells.
Fat gain may be inconvenient, but it’s not the main issue here. The problem is insulin resistance - when cells grow immune to insulin’s effects and insulin can no longer ferry glucose into the cells. Chronic hyperinsulimia - high levels of insulin in the blood - is the root cause.
In short:
High blood sugar -> High Insulin -> Insulin Resistance -> Diabetes (and other diseases of civilization)
Sounds terrible. What can I do to prevent these insulin spikes?
The simplest way is to curb your dietary intake of carbohydrates. In other words, minimize consumption of grains, sugars, and starches.
If you do choose to consume carbohydrates, eat the “best” kinds: High in fiber and least refined (e.g., whole wheat pasta, brown rice, etc.). As always, “real foods” are best.
Get the majority of your calories from meats, non-starchy (aka leafy) vegetables, low-sugar fruit, nuts, and seeds. Beans and legumes are ok; they’re high in fiber and relatively high in nutrients, but they also contain phytic acid, which can block absorption of nutrients.
Exercise helps by making your cells more insulin sensitive - in other words, exercise improves the ability of insulin to pull glucose into the cells. So do it.
The $1000000 question: So if I eat mostly carbohydrates, I’ll get fat and die prematurely?
Ah, I knew you were going to ask me that eventually. The answer is, it depends. If you’re like my friend Andrius and the carbohydrates you eat are leafy greens, fruit, legumes, and low-GI starches and grains (e.g., sweet potato, quinoa, etc.), then probably not. But if you’re like the average American or Australian and the carbs you prefer are soda, white bread, fried potatoes, or anything that comes in a box, then the answer is “likely.”
If you like short and easy to remember admonitions, here’s what this post boils down to:
Hey all, a little backlogged with projects and posts right now. Your pardons as I sort everything out in one big vomitus:
Last Thursday, the New England Journal of Medicine released a study comparing low-fat, Mediterranean, and low-carb diets. The big winner? The low-carb diet (much to everyone’s chagrin - false sarcasm). There are two extensive write-ups on this study over at Dr. Eades‘ and Scott’s blogs, but allow me to present the highlights:
First (and certainly to the delight of Rich and Andrius), the low-carb diet was a vegetarian low-carb diet. From the study text: “…the participants were counseled to choosevegetarian sources of fat and protein…” So it appears that the benefits of following the low-carb regimen are not exclusive to gun-totin’, America-lovin’ carnivores - just those who choose to reduce intake of grains, sugars, and starches.
While the Mediterranean diet resulted in more favorable LDL levels than the low-carb diet (”a collective ‘So what?’ washed over the crowd…”), the low-carb diet killed in just about everything else: higher HDL, lower TG, and better TC:HDL ratio. Additionally, both the Mediterranean and low-carb approaches resulted in a drop in C-reactive protein, indicating lower levels of inflammation.
Sadly (for the AHA, at least), the low-fat group fared worst overall: Least fat loss, highest LDL (isn’t a low-fat diet supposed to decrease this? Hmmm…), highest TG, least change in C-reactive protein, and an increase in blood glucose for diabetics. Yet this is the type of diet recommended by the AHA for diabetics. Yikes.
Of course, the punchline: While the Mediterranean diet was pretty close to specs, at two years (the end of the study) the low-carb diet had degenerated to 40% of calories from carbs (definitely not low-carb) and the low-fat diet had degenerated to 30% of calories from fat (definitely not low-fat). So that explains the lackluster amounts of fat loss. And yet, while proponents of low-fat will argue that their diet didn’t perform as planned because it wasn’t correctly represented, the low-carb diet seemed to defy this limitation (what’s scary is it would’ve done even better were it actually followed to the letter).
The bottom line: Even a little reduction in carbohydrate consumption (or a short period eating in a strict low-carb fashion) can provide some real health and fat loss benefits. And that low-carb doesn’t have to mean eggs and bacon for breakfast, steak and salad for lunch, and salmon and tomato for dinner (although that sounds mighty tasty to me).
Or do they? (Check out Dr. Eades‘ great post on this study)
Most of the China studies I’ve read deal with rural Chinese and appear to show that their low-fat, high-grain diet is superior for health. This, of course, flies in the face of all Western research, which clearly shows a link between carbohydrate consumption and diseases of civilization.
I’ve often heard this criticism from peers and clients alike:
“If carbs are so bad, why aren’t the Chinese all fat? Don’t they eat a lot of rice? And shouldn’t there be a tremendous diabetes epidemic in China?”
There are generally two responses I give:
1) Traditionally, the amount of rice/grain eaten in China (and Asian cultures as a whole) is slight - generally a cup or two a day. This is the equivalent of roughly 45-90 grams of carbs, which is a far cry less than the daily carb consumption of the average American.
If only they’d seen pictures of my extended family in Malaysia. Or my Taiwanese godmother, who is obese and has Type 2 diabetes (and has been forbidden by her doctor from eating a mere grain of rice - smart guy).
During my trip to China last summer, I was struck by the number of diabetes treatment clinics we passed by on the 20 minute drive from the airport to my parents’ apartment in Shanghai (three, if you were curious).
The bottom line: China has a BIG public health problem on its hands; one that will cost them dearly if they don’t manage to get it under control. But how?
Place greater emphasis on real food instead of manufactured foods (say, yu choy vs. prawn chips).
Given China’s improved economic status, deemphasize grains for more nutritionally dense fare, i.e., meats, cruciferous veggies, etc.
Educate Chinese on what constitutes “healthful eating” (for example, not yu tiao).
What are your thoughts? Got any stories? Post to comments.
(You could alternatively call this post, “How NOT to do a low carb diet.” I’d like to thank Dr. Barry Groves for introducing me to these concepts and Gary Taubes for the keys that finally unlocked my dormant intellect.)
There are tons of misconceptions out there about controlled-carbohydrate diets, most of them fueled by the Atkins controversy of the late 90s (and its dramatic juxtaposition with what most medical authorities propose as healthful). Of the myriad things misunderstood about low-carb, what I’m going to focus today is the following concept:
By definition, a low-carb diet is a high fat diet.
For regular readers of this blog, you know this is ok (even - gasp - healthy). Fat is not your enemy, and eating fat won’t make you fat (more on this later).
Continuing our discussion, if the above is true, then:
By definition, a low-fat diet is a high carb diet.
Ok, now the actual discussion:
First, who cares? Why does it matter that you understand low-carb means high fat?
A: Because most people who you tell to eat low-carb will say, “But that leaves me nothing to eat!” When pressed, they’ll respond with something like, “I can’t live on cottage cheese, tuna, chicken breast, and salad.”
Most people have been brainwashed to think that fat is bad, so they will almost automatically omit foods high in fat from their consciousness. That means no butter, no (or minimal) eggs, no beef or dark meat chicken, minimal seafood (too high in cholesterol, ya’ know!), etc.
This is all wrong. No wonder people have a tough time staying on low carb diets for the long run.
Here’s why you MUST eat a higher proportion of calories from fat if you’re on a low-carb diet:
1. There is a natural ceiling to pure protein consumption. If you tried to eat all of your calories purely from protein, before too long you’d die. Why? Protein is a more complex molecule than carbohydrates or fat and has an amine group that must be dealt with. Normally, this isn’t a problem (your body gets rid of it as urea/urine), but if you eat nothing but protein, your liver can’t convert all the protein into glucose for energy fast enough, so your cells get insufficient nourishment (which gets worse over time). To add insult to injury, you also accumulate ammonia in your cells (since you the only way you have to excrete this ammonia is through urination, which also has its limits). To paraphrase Dr. Weston Price, “a nasty, brutish death.”
So there’s a physiological limit to the amount of protein you can eat.
Note to bodybuilders and fitness buffs who are saying, “That’s not true - all I eat is protein and I’m fine.” - You can eat high amounts of protein and be perfectly healthy, but you can’t eat only protein and get sufficient calories to operate your body. Incidentally, does your diet look like this? FYI, milk, oats, oil, rice cakes, pasta, rice, and vegetables = not protein.
Let me illustrate this in numbers so you understand the full picture.
Let’s take your average athlete, say a 165 lb MMA fighter. Let’s assume he’s a bright fellow and reads Dr. Jeff Volek’s research to find his protein requirements are roughly 1 gram per pound of bodyweight. Let’s also assume he’s like most athletes and overdoes it. By 100%.
330 grams of protein supply roughly 1320 calories, which is insufficient calories for our athletic friend’s endeavors. For him to meet his daily energy requirements, he’d have to consume closer to 3100 calories (I used the Harris-Benedict equation), which is more like 775 grams of protein.
Or the equivalent of 20 of these. Each and every day.
Likely? Not really, unless your name is Flipper.
2. You must get your energy from somewhere. So if there’s a limit to the total percentage of calories you can get from protein, where does the rest of your energy come from (since you need to supply a certain amount of calories just to run all of your body’s daily functions)? Well, there’s only two choices left - fat or carbohydrate.
On a low carb diet, you restrict carbohydrates. So, logically, the majority of your calories must come from fat.
On a low fat diet, you restrict fat. So, logically, the majority of your calories must come from carbohydrates.
Hormonally, it doesn’t make sense to consume carbohydrates if you’re looking to optimize fat loss. High levels of carbohydrate result in high insulin levels, and high insulin levels equate to fat storage.
Joanne asks, “But what about fruit and vegetables? Aren’t they carbohydrates too?”
A: Technically yes, but we treat them differently because they are non-starchy carbohydrates. Per unit of food, the carbohydrate content is relatively low, particularly leafy greens and berries. So they’re ok.
Of course, it’s obvious why a combination low-carb, low-fat diet doesn’t work in the long run. You simply can’t eat 2000 calories worth of zucchini.
So, to summarize:
Many of your daily calories will come from fat when on a low carb diet. This is just how it should be; you won’t get fat, you won’t keel over from a coronary event, and you won’t suddenly wither as a result of grain deprivation.
Or do 
