Why Are The Government Making You Fat ?

I'm going to cut straight to the answer for those of you who get bored with reading. It's very profitable for big business that's why. Yes it's all about making money. Still with me ? Want to know more ? Here's how it's happening. You are being told to eat far too many carbohydrates, mostly in the form of sugar. A recent critical analyses study into the treatment of Diabetes with a low carb diet was packed full of useful information.

The table explains that the obesity epidemic started after carbohydrate intake reached 43% of total daily calorific intake. For a man eating 2500 calories a day this is 269 grams per day.

So lets have a look at the government guidlines in the UK.

Well what do you know ? The UK guidelines say you can eat 300g a day. For a man that's 48%, way over the amount that causes obesity !

So why are the government advising you to eat far too many cabohydrates/sugars ? I told you, money.

There are eight advisers to the government on Nutrtion and 5 of them are in the pay of sugar and confectionery companies.

You can read the full article HERE

So how do you lose all that fat the government and big business have been feeding you. You eat fat, that's right, eat less carbs and more fat. Eating fat does not make you fat, carbs do.

Eating fat is healthy there is no link between fat ( whether saturated or not ) and heart disease. In fact it looks likely that Carbohydrate intake is linked to coronary disease.

Even our 'Fast Diet' friend Dr Michael Mosley has now been convinced that we had it all wrong.

A low carb. high fat diet is the way to a healthy life, I know I'm on one. 

Carbohydrate Intake During Exercise

I'm sure you all know that in order to maintain your ability to run or cycle over 90 minutes you must intake carbohydrates. Certain companies who supply carbohydrate powders and gels would like you to take up to 90g per hour.

I'm no expert but I do like to experiment with my training and nutrition. Since October 27th 2013 I have been mostly on a Low Carb High Fat LCHF Diet.

It's great ! Initially on exercise days I ate more carbs especially on days with long and/or strenuous cycles. Lately I have been reducing the amount of carbohydrates consumed on exercise days.

For example, I would consume around 50g carbs on a non exercise days and up to the government guideline amount of 300g on a workout day. ( WARNING: If you follow the governments advice on Carbohydrate intake, you WILL get fat ! )

Now it's around 150g or less more when exercising. I don't even bother with the essential post workout carb intake. I just have protein.

Lets go straight in and look what I did at the weekend.

A 4 hours cycle over 100km

You can see average heart rate is 149 BPM, for me this is classed asTempo (Zone 3)as per my LTHR zones.

 My effort was averaged out as 139 watts which is Endurance ( Zone 2 ). There's always a wee bit of crossover here depending on other factors.

Anyway after 90min I really should have been tucking away up to 90g carbs to keep my muscles going right ? Well no.

What I had was one scoop of High 5 2:1 Energy Source in each 750ml drinks bottle which lasted me the whole four hours. Each serving ( which is two scoops ) provides 44g carbohydrate. So I only consumed 11g per hour. No cramp, no exhaustion.

Ah, maybe I just scraped home before my carb supply ran out. Well luckily I have been monitoring my blood glucose during this experimental period. If I have two Weetabix ( under 30g carbs ) for breakfast my blood glucose after two hours in around 5.5-5.8 m/mol. Immediately after this ride it was 5.8 m/mol.

Wait a minute, if I had consumed all those recommended carbs I would have done a much better job right ?

Let's see.

Trust me, that's the same ride from three weeks ago. Shows how accurate the Garmin is when you look at the Km. Anyway, I knocked 10 minutes off the ride time and with a lower heart rate and power output than in this one.

Food for thought, so long as you keep your carbs lo :)

#LCHF

Using A Power Meter: Power Curve.

In my effort to combat the effects of arthritis I had managed to overcome the knee pain hurdle by slowly increasing my cycling distance and intensity. I also had a cortisone injection !

Having made some good gains cycling outdoors I could see myself losing this initial fitness during the winter so bought a turbo trainer and joined Trainer Road. Full details of this are HERE.

The decision to buy a power meter was made easier with the introduction of the Stages Power Meter, why ? Price. I did consider the Powertap G3 hub, but the hassle of having to get it built into my wheel put me off, it would have meant a week of missed training with me driving to our NOT LOCAL bike shop.

So now I've used power for training, what next.

The other thing Trainer Road does with my data is that it builds up a power curve. It uses the power I am able to produce over given time periods.

It builds a graph with this data. All the above data has been gathered during my training sessions which have been Sweetspot Intermediate Base 1. I won't show you the program, you'll have to join Trainer Road.

I also use Strava, and the premium version will also build a power curve for you. I upload my Trainer Road workouts to Strava but I can also include my outdoor rides.

Today I went out and did a 30 second all out sprint, and then a 5 minute paced effort, they were both on uphill Strava segments.

http://app.strava.com/activities/121733658

You can see three of my attempts on this segment. Position 3 and 2 were last year when I had started building my strength outdoors. In October I beat my September result by pushing the lap button and trying to beat my previous speed.

I achieved my fastest time yesterday by pushing the lap button and simply looking at the Watts I was producing. Time and speed were not an issue, I knew it would be 5 or so minutes and what wattage I hoped to produce.

Overall on the segment this gave me a pretty good result.

I did well, segment wise and I also gleaned valuable power information. I actually paced the 5 minute effort, based on recent efforts so that I didn't blow up halfway into the 5 minutes.

I now know that I should be able to maintain 267 watts over 5 minutes.

The Strava curve also gives you Watts/Kg.

Now for comparison. My 4 w/Kg would make me CAT4. The pro riders are pushing out 6-7 w/Kg !

So to stand a chance I would have to increase my 5 minute power from 267 watts to 462 watts !!

After my training is done I'm going to be doing an FTP test, more about that later.

What Do I Eat ?

I got back into cycling at the end of last year. Read the full story about my arthritis HERE and the motivational tools and training aids HERE

There is still a missing parameter in the fitness and health equation, my diet.

The word diet has all sorts of connotations and people have tried to get around this by saying, this is not a diet is a lifestyle ! Well, this is just the stuff I eat after a lot of research, several attempts at similar eating regimes and a little give and take I arrived at this.

It is to a large extent Low Carb High Fat. Yes, I'm a cyclist and I'm saying LCHF ! Also see bottom of page for info.

That may sound crazy, Carbs are your easy fuel, to cycle you need to eat as much as possible right ? Well not really. Take a look at what I have eaten over the past few days. Now I don't usually track my food all the time, However I was away from home last week and ate the food in the Hotel so I'm just checking I'm back on track again.

Normal day with no planned workout would be something like this:

The food tracker is Fatsecret and I have set a RDI of 2200 calories. You can see the small amount of carbs consumed and fat eaten in it's place. What about the Protein I hear you ask ?

Well a recent article in Cycling Fitness by an Olympic Nutritionist suggests that over 35 years of age should consume 2g of Protein per Kg of body weight. (Dr Sharon Madigan )

At 66kg - 67 Kg that's 132g. Having eaten that regularly over the last few months I'm pretty sure that most over 35's are NOT getting enough !

Anyway, onto a workout day. This was a 60 minute turbo session workout around the Sweetspot, see my Trainer Road blog.

Aye the good old Weetabix for breakfast, two hours before the training session, also there's the PhD ISO 7 drink post workout. I never even managed to get near the set RDI. I'm actually just eating to hunger, as I said I don't usually even track what I eat. Last Fridays 2225 calories may have been related to the fact that I ate quite a lot of carbs at the Hotel the day before. I have discovered that when you eat carbs it actually makes you hungrier throughout the day and the next day !

Tuesday and we are having a day off again. Few carbs and lots of lovely fat.

So what's eating all that fat done to my body and my fitness ? Well I have beaten all my Strava segment times from the past few years so I'm a lot fitter and have MORE muscle mass.

My cycling performance has increased. Here are my results for a local hill climb.

I had been back cycling since August and only started my exercise and diet program at the end of October. I thought my September time was fast and that I would not easily beat it !

As for my weight and body fat, well here is the graph. I was 71Kg in October 2013 and 22.1% body fat.

Today I'm 66.4Kg and 18.4% body fat, the main thing is I feel great aswell ! Another great benefit is NO heartburn/indigestion. Over a year ago I was taking Ibuprofen and Paracetemol for my knee pain. I stopped because of an upset stomach but the indigestion continued all year until I started my new way of eating !

When I first started doing this along with cycling I had a lot more carbs before, during and after excercise. I have been cutting this back recently with no negative effects. As I continue to experiment I will take food or a gel out with me just in case I need it :)

I would just like to say a big thanks to Andreas Eenfeldt   

It's nice to see some sense in a sea of diet confusion and stupidity !

If you want an excellent example of a self inflicted scientific study with proper control and all the data ( even more than me ) have a look at this. Peter Attia, experiment.

Another cycling and triathlon specific story can be found here Bob Seebohar

Get fit and lose weight, there's no excuse. LCHF !

Stages Power Problems Timeline.

This is a more concise version of events for those who don't want all the data, tests and pictures.

Full Report Here.

 8th February. Used for indoor turbo trainer sessions. First battery lasted 7 hours. Replacement battery lasted around 5.5 hours.

With the third battery I did tests to make sure the ANT+ and Bluetooth were 'going to sleep' when the unit was not in use and concluded that they were, so something else is draining the battery.

 22nd February. Meanwhile I had contacted stages Technical on  and later posted a link to my blog report on their facebook page.

 25th Feb. Stages' Evan Gaspar replies after reading my blog and says he will send out a new unit.

6th March Email from Saddleback saying my new Power Meter has been sent out.

11 March New Power Meter arrives, fitted in minutes. I will leave the battery in. Have an indoor session tomorrow and an outdoor on the 13th.

18 March After a week and several rides and workouts I used the Stages App to check the device and the battery was still showing full :) Happy days.

Stages Power Meter Battery Drain !

If your don't want to read the whole thing then hit the link below for the very short summary.

Updates and complete timeline now here.

I have contacted Stages to see if they can help as I'm in the UK and the unit was purchased for me by a friend in Colorado Springs.

I emailed Stages Technical about the problem on 22-Feb-2014.

Well the first battery lasted for a total of 7 hours riding time. I didn't panick at this stage although it had not quite achieved the claimed 200 hours !

I replaced the battery with  new one. It lasted around 5 hours. The third Duracell is being taken out when not in use.

The sad thing is that Stages haven't made an Android app so I have to take my bike to an iPad user to get the data. If there was an Android app I would leave the battery in and check it throughout the day.

Duracell battery put in the day before but removed overnight.

My firmware is up to date 2.0.38

I don't see the point of the zero reset, it merely shows you a figure and doesn't reset anything to zero !

Don't know what the slope or DPOT values are for.

I have discovered that the earlier ones shipped to the UK had similar problems.

Tri Talk Forum    and here   Bike Radar Forum

I decided to perform a test on my 'unworthy' Android device as it does support Bluetooth 4 and so can see the power meter when its awake and transmitting. 

Look at the times in the upper right. I had woken up the device in the first pic and then let it alone for ten minutes to put it back to sleep. You can then see me searching for it at 15:06 and it is not found after several attempts. I backed up this test with the Garmin Edge 500 and the same thing happened for ANT+.

I have decided to leave another battery in and check it tomorrow night if I can get access to an i-device.

It's now the next evening 24-Feb-2014 at 18:30 GMT.

No reply from Stages yet. I will link this blog on their Facebook page.

The battery has been in place for 30 hours but only two of those were spent cycling.

No access to an i-device tonight so lets try the Excellent Trainer Road.

Trainer Road attempts to find Stages Power Meter.

Nothing happens. Also nothing on the Garmin Edge 500. I remove and check the battery on a battery meter which says the voltage is good so I replace it.

I get something but the signal goes from good to poor to bad. I'm going to leave it for another day, this time in the house.

Here is what I hope will be the penultimate update. I arrived home tonight to do my 1 hour turbo session. I had left the bike in the house overnight. I got ready, put on Trainer Road which detected my HR monitor. Then I spun the crank and Trainer road detected the Power Meter.

Got on the bike to start the workout and NOTHING, battery out battery in still NOTHING. Removed battery replaced with another new one and away we go, no problem. I later tested both batteries on a simple good/bad battery meter and they both moved the needle to the same good position. I'm baffled.

The good thing is I got a very good and detailed response from Evan at Stages who is going to send outa new one. That's why I hope I'll only be making one more update to the blog :)

Updates and complete timeline now here.

Latest Training Aid. Virtual Power v Power

What can I say. I love using my turbo trainer now ! Yes. I sold two in the past because it's soul destroying, boring as hell.

Now it's great.  The reason is Trainer Road. 

I mentioned this before in my last blog so hit the above link if you haven't got beta on it yet.

I started off using Virtual Power to determine my FTP and all subsequent workouts were based on this. My Training plan was the Intermediate Base 1 a six week program working on the 'sweetspot' range of power output.

I got on well with this program with obvious improvements out in the real world. I did however notice that it wasn't quite right. I had been lazy with the bike setup. I should have checked my tyre pressure on the rear wheel to make sure that everytime i connected it to the turbo trainer the same amount of resistence was being generated. In reality the slow loss of air was making my workouts easier !! When I noticed I re inflated the tyre to over 100 psi and found that my FTP was actually much lower than I had thought.

Before this though I had already made the decision to get a more accurate view of my power, one that didn't care about tyre pressure, one I could use out on the road. I ordered a power meter.

I settled on the Stages power meter, I had to wait a month as they were out of stock. Many thanks to my friend and fellow cyclist John Macleod for facilitating the acquisition of the power meter.

The above one is on the bike of Richie Porte of Team Sky, they can't be that bad then I hear you say ?

The upshot is that my REAL FTP is 191, I'm more or less a beginner again :) I have restarted the six week Intermediate Base 1 program. I'm in week 2.

I have noticed that the Power Meter is very sensitive and its a lot harder to be bang on the power demanded by the workout. Even though I have reset my FTP, the workouts feel a wee bit harder. I immediately noticed that it was harder to achieve the low power 'warm up' and 'recovery' wattage. Needless to say I'm glad I went back to Base 1 and didn't plough into Base 2 !

Here's an example of the same workout, the first is using Virtual Power and the second is done with the Power Meter.

You can claerly see the 'shakier' plot of power with the second picture.

Now lets examine the heart rates. Remember the FTP has been adjusted down from 251 virtual to 191 power meter.

It's perfectly clear that I'm running a higher heart rate in the second  (power meter) picture. Remember this is a sweetspot workout, admittedly power orientated, but I feel that the HR results than in the first ( Virtual ) picture are far too low.

So there you have it. I have heard a lot of people say that the results they have had with Virtual power match up pretty good with the power meter but, maybe it's my lazy attitude to setting up, it didn't really work out for me. All was not in vain, as I said, I still made improvements out on the road and trail with vitual power.

I'm looking forward to the next 4 weeks of the program but most of all getting back out to test myself on some Strava segments in a month :)

Sport Tracks, Strava and Trainer Road

Sport Tracks

If you want to record and analyse your bicycle rides or runs, you'll need some sort of GPS enabled device. I have a Garmin Forerunner. After my ride I can upload this to my PC and analyse the data using Sport Tracks.

Here is my last ride up a local hill called Fyrish. Whilst out on the trail you can hit the lap button, but you can also add the lap positions using SportTracks. I also have a record of my heart rate and what zones my heart rate was in throughout. This particular ride has some tough parts which would have been spent in Zone 4 and 5.

Here's the profile of the ride which also shows the grade in percent and my heart rate.

There's also a section where you can generate reports and charts of your rides. Here's a nice one showing what heart rate zones I spent my time in during 2013.

You can also get plugins which extend the useability into whatever analyses you want. One I have discovered recently is training load. A wonderful visual interpretation of your training. This extra plugin is $12.

What you get here is basically, Blue = Fitness Red = Fatigue Green = the balance between the two. The orange spikes are my workouts and cycles. You can see how my fitness has progressed since September and my week off at Christmas time.

The full version of Sport Tracks is now $35, it was cheaper many years ago. There is no subscription just a one off payment.

Strava

You can also upload your rides to Strava. They have a bot that will automatically highlight an interesting part of your ride and make it into a segment. This could be a hill. Anyone else who rides that hill will be added to the leaderboard.

The good thing is, you can also make your own segments so if they missed your favorite offroad hill climb or downhill you can just add it yourself.

Here is Strava's representation of the same ride I showed in sporttracks.

You can see the list of all the segments I covered on the ride.

This is the Car Park To Monument segment. It's the biggest hill climb on the ride.

Strava can also provide more in depth analyses based on your power meter reading and heart rate but you have to pay for them and there not as good as the the Sport Tracks tools. 

Trainer Road

This is my latest discovery and a real help if you struggle with the boredom of indoor Turbo sessions.

For six dollars a month you get structured sigle workouts or whole workout plans lasting several weeks, you can even make your own workouts and add in video workouts from the likes of Sufferfest !

Set the bike on the trainer, plug in your ANT+ dongle pick a workout and away you go.

The plans are based on your personal LTHR or FTP, this is basically the amount of power you are capable of delivering over a period of time. If you don't know it, then sit there fitness test, The Rubber Glove.

From that moment forward ALL your workouts will be derived from your FTP. Power readings can be taken from your chosen power meter or derived from virtualPower, that is related to the speed of your Turbo Trainer. This is very dependent on your turbo set up and tyre pressure, consistency is the key.

Heres a quick view of some of my workouts whilst following a program based around threshold power.

Whilst training you can have Netflix or Youtube running on screen. Or you can choose a Sufferfest video to ride along with. They have one for rubberglove. The videos are perfectly synced and start when you start pedaling.

All of the above tools help me to stay motivated and when I'm not out or on the Turbo Trainer I can spend hours analysing my rides :)

The Fight Against Degenerative Knee Pain

Over the years I have enjoyed many outdoor pursuits from running to rock climbing. I have had some minor knee issues since the mid nineties but always overcame them. The knee pain started getting the better of me in the mid noughties accompanied by shoulder and thumb pains.

Several visits to the physio later we realized the knee problems were of a degenerative nature, basically arthritis.

Here's a look at how my cycling was affected after managing to get back on the bike and put in some mileage in 2008 then suffering constant pain and swelling over the next few years.

All this time ( since 2008 ) I had been using a piece of software called Sport Tracks to record my rides, this is done by taking a GPS device and in my case a heart rate monitor on all the rides.

I hate to be a plot spoiler but you may have noticed that something happened in 2013 ! Well lets just see how bad it got by looking at the record I kept that year. The daftest thing like bending the knee too much whilst crouching down would results in a wee of limping and my knee swelling up up like a football !

I tried to cycle more in 2013 and it did seem to help a little, sometimes my knee was so swollen that I cimply couldn't turn the cranks. Running had been completely abandoned after even the shortest run left me crippled.

I slowly increased my cycling mileage but I was still in a lot of pain and could not stand on the pedals, I needed a wee boost to help me out so arranged for a cortisone injection in September 2013.

Eureka. Cue the mileage increase, the fitness increase and the muscle increase !

I re-discovered Strava. The first time I tried it I wasn't sure that racing on certain segments every time I went out was going to be enjoyable, but now it was the perfect training motivation for me. I uploaded GPX files that I had from 2008 and tried to beat my times. I would just take it easy on the non segmented parts and go all out on a segment. My mileage (Km) increased.

I knew the cycling was working and helping to keep the pain and swelling away even though the effectiveness of the injection must have been slowly wearing off. I needed something else to make sure I could cycle with the winter weather approaching.

I needed a Turbo Trainer. I had one years before and sold it as it was so boring cycling in the house. I then discovered Trainer Road. This is an excellent online tool with workouts and full programs.

All this time ( since 2008 ) I had been using a piece of software called Sport Tracks to record my rides, this is done by taking a GPS device and in my case a heart rate monitor on all the rides.

All of the above, Sport Tracks, Strava and Trainer Road have helped me in my battle, there's also the work on the road and trail but that's the fun part.

Its now January. I have minor niggles and can still feel pain whilst cycling or even walking down the stairs, but its nowhere near as bad as it was and I don't have the frequent swelling to deal with anymore.

I'm still beating my times on Strava segments from 2008.

I'll do a separate, more in depth blog on the above tools and how they can be used together to keep you cycling.