(door slams)
- Morning, trainiacs.
It is cold out there.
You all wanna see a good kit?
Check out this kit.
(zipper opens)
Oh yeah!
That's a good lookin' fellow there!
Wooo!
That's Dia, the founder of Ventum.
Story time.
Dear Taren, a couple of years ago,
you wrote us a handwritten note
and I figured I would return the favor.
It's been years since I wrote a letter by hand, I think.
I know we don't see much of each other
and I suspect you miss me as much as I miss you.
I do.
I was trying to figure out how we can see more
of each other and I came up with this.
Know that I will be on every ride with you.
Every time the trainer session gets tough,
just look up at the mirror
and you'll see me smiling right back at ya.
With lots of love, Dia.
Damn, good lookin' kit on a good lookin' guy.
Just a bunch of good lookin' guys walking around.
I like it.
Unfortunately, it's just a little bit big,
which leads us into today's edition of
Thoughts from the Bike.
One of the ways that I maintain this girlish figure
that you see every day is with fasted workouts.
It's a huge thing that people are talking about these days,
so today, we're going to talk about how to properly,
without the risks of fasting,
include fasted workouts into your training routine.
Try to contain yourself, folks.
(upbeat music)
So while in Lanzarote, on a long bike ride,
before they drop me like a bad habit,
I was talking to Patrick Lange and he said
that it's incredibly important to get off the sugar
and in his case, what he recommended,
was having a nice big breakfast
and then waiting until three hours
into your rides before taking on anything but water.
Dan Plews, the amateur age group champion in Kona,
who broke the course record for age groupers,
he is a sports scientist and he says
that it's basically impossible to deny that being able
to improve your fat oxidation does not result
in improved performance.
Is this the case?
Well, there's actually a study that I found
when I started looking into this
that said as much as half of the variation
in the difference in performance
in an Ironman distance race was attributed
to the ability to utilize fat as fuel.
How do you end up improving that?
Well, there's a lot of ways
and one of those ways is with fasted workouts,
but it does not come without challenges and risks.
So a few things to note, if you start embarking
upon a low carb, high fat fasted workout
basically just trying to oxidize fat more as fuel
as opposed to carbohydrates.
This is what I'm gonna be testing
to try to prepare for Challenge Roth.
This is what I'm researching a lot.
This is probably what I'm going to be talking about a lot
as I start writing more blog posts on triathlontaren.com
One of the first things to know
is that fasted workouts does not necessarily correlate
with weight loss.
In addition to that, long periods of fasting,
we're talking 14 hours or more,
isn't necessarily the safest thing to do.
Intermittent fasting, basically having a feeding window
of only about eight to 12 hours during the day,
very, very beneficial.
Any longer than that
and you risk serious health consequences.
So, if you wanna go down this fasting plan,
as I am trying to do in preparation for Challenge Roth,
there are a few important things to note.
Number one, is if you are doing this specifically
for weight loss, you might be a little bit disappointed.
Studies have shown that fasted workouts
and fasting in general
might not necessarily actually lead to weight loss.
Calorie restriction sure does, but that comes
with a whole host of problems,
especially when you are doing lots of exercise,
as all of us triathletes are.
It's a tough thing for us to do,
so there are some very critical things to keep in mind.
First off, if you are a woman, fasted workouts,
fasting in general, has a very large risk
for your hormonal system.
From the research I've done,
I do not recommend very serious fasting protocols
for females.
Second, if you have blood sugar issues,
which somewhere around 40 percent of the population does,
extended fasts longer than 14 hours have been found
to have significant health risks.
Now, you can get a lot of the benefits of fasting itself
with about a 12 to 14 hour fast,
which is really just a shortened eating window.
So, anything longer than that has a lot
of risks to it and I don't recommend that.
Next, if you don't do this correctly, there's potential
that doing these fasted workouts and fasting
can actually lead to long-term weight gain.
If you take it too severely,
if you push the workouts too hard,
you can end up super compensating by eating more
when you finish a workout
or when you stop the fast long-term.
So, it's got to be done in moderation.
Also, this relates to the next question.
This does not mean keto diets.
Keto is also related with adrenal and hormone issues,
especially in really serious extended exercisers,
all of us are.
But you can get a lot of these benefits
without going into ketosis and being that full
like fat-adapted keto monster,
Pro triathlete Mel Hauschildt, last year in 2018,
won half Ironman Galveston without any carbs,
any food whatsoever, because it was so cold
that she couldn't actually get to her bottle,
but she had eaten low carb leading into it
and specifically said in the podcast with us
that she doesn't think it's necessary to go into ketosis.
So, if you can get that benefit without the risks
of a full keto diet, do that.
So, how do you actually do this?
I've got some guidelines.
Number one, as I mentioned, do not extended fast.
You can get a lot of the fasting benefits
from shortening the amount of time
that you eat in a day to 12 to eight hours.
That is a feeding window, not extended fasting.
That's intermittent fasting where you'll get a lot
of the benefits of autophagy,
that's your body basically just flushing out a lot
of the dead cells that could become cancerous
and detrimental to your health.
Next, fasted workouts is a sometimes thing.
It's not for every single workout and specifically,
it's not for more intense workouts.
Doing a fasted workout should be done on days
that are recovery days, very, very light training days.
This is a light recovery swim, a light recovery bike,
a walk first thing in the morning.
If you start going and doing a fasted workout,
crushing a 45 minute, super high intensity workout,
you aren't necessarily going to have the fuel
to do that workout extremely well
and you're gonna be messing around with your hormones.
Next thing is to ease into it.
When Patrick Lange told me about not eating
for three hours into his workouts,
he said, you should do that.
And I was like, how long have you been doing that, Patrick?
And he's like, all my life.
I'm like, okay, so you've had 20 years to adapt to this.
That's often how long it takes
is years and years to get used to this.
So, don't go out and just say,
just because Patrick Lange doesn't eat for three hours,
you don't eat for three hours.
What you can do is, those easy workouts that I talked about
and doing your longer slow distance rides,
like I'm doing today.
Start with maybe the first hour being fasted
and then have some food
and then extend that to maybe 65 minutes, 70 minutes.
Build into it, don't just start from nothing
and expect your body to perform well.
You gotta think that your body
has been surviving off of carbs
and teaching itself to fuel for decades in that way,
so it's not going to take days to undo that
and train your body to use another fuel source.
Then, practically speaking, what else can you do?
Well, have a coffee before the workout.
The coffee will give you a little bit of energy.
It'll also stimulate a little bit of thermogenesis,
a little bit of fat burning.
Make sure that you increase the amount of electrolytes
that you have throughout the day.
When you start bringing your carbs lower,
your kidneys start excreting a fair bit of sodium,
so you've gotta make up for that.
If you end up doing
that lighter, less intense recovery workout fasted,
pair that with cold exposure immediately after,
like a cold shower or a cold plunge.
This has been proven to shed fat at a rapid, rapid rate.
And, this is the important thing,
if you have come into a workout fasted,
eat after the workout.
Don't deprive your body for hours and hours on end.
Top up your glycogen stores with lots of carbs,
fair bit of protein
and that four to one carb to protein ratio
and then around 90 minutes after that,
immediate post workout shake
in the four to one carb to protein ratio,
have a nice big meal,
lots of fats, lots of protein, lots of carbs.
And the final thing is stay tuned to triathlontaren.com,
because I'm gonna start putting in more efforts
to writing longer, more well-researched blog posts
with the links to the studies that I find,
because you don't wanna see a bunch
of citations in these YouTube videos.
You don't want a full textbook manual
of how to do things like this,
but in a blog post form, makes a lot of sense.
Also from my standpoint, improves our SEO,
so I'm gonna start working on that a lot more.
Now, I have a three hour ride followed by a 15 minute run.
I'm gonna look good doing it.
(upbeat music)
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
So that was three hours on the treadmill.
No, no, no, no, no, three hours on Zwift,
the first two hours being fairly easy on nasal breathing,
time in the aero bars, last hour four sections
of 15 minutes each going four minutes easy,
11 minutes above race pace
and then 15 minutes as a brick run,
immediately after building from under race pace to over.
I was on no calories there for the--
Oh, by the way, this is an intake breathing strip.
Everyone on Instagram asks.
Helps you nasal breathe.
That was first 70 minutes on no sugar,
no calories, just SOS electrolytes
and then for the last hour and 50 minutes,
just peanut butter.
I'm trying to get used to no sugar.
I want some sugar now though.
There you go, trainiacs!
That is fasted exercising.
Exercise caution while you are exercising.
Now, I am just hours away from hopping on a plane
to go to LA to shoot the Cam Wurf How To Bike Masterclass,
so, I've gotta pack that up, I've gotta pack that up,
I've gotta pack up things in the house.
Make sure you're subscribed if you wanna see that.
Fun and games.
Later, trainiacs.