- Morning Trainiacs, very easy, cruisy little,
let's say 75 minute bike ride,
this fine Friday Morning.
I am ready, to announce who my coach--
consultant?
More of a consultant, is.
And it's exciting stuff.
(upbeat funky music)
So I'll save all the drama and just let you know,
that the new consulting coach, is Dr. Dan Plews,
the Plews!
Now, to introduce you to Dan,
I would recommend that you go and listen to the episode
that we did with Dan, back in November,
and I think it's triathalontaren.com/theplews.
Or danplews?
Just search "Triathalon Taren podcast, Dan Plews".
And before I get into
all the stuff about
what we're doing with Dan Plews,
if you are interested in starting with a low-carb,
high-fat approach, and you don't wanna watch
the next bunch of minutes of this video?
Go to triathalontaren.com/theplews,
and Dan has put together a free starter pack
for getting you going.
With recommend foods and diets and things like that.
So some fun facts about the Plews,
that he was telling me earlier this week,
is that he has coached three pros, to sub-8 hour Ironmans.
He coaches Terenzo Bozzone,
one of the most talented athletes in triathlon.
He's published over 30 papers,
he is one of the most sought after people
when it comes to low carb, high fat,
endurance training, and HRV training.
But, what do people care about,
and what has opened the most amount of doors to him?
Winning the Ameture Racing Kona in 2018.
So this guy is a coach, a researcher,
he's an 8-24 Iron Man finisher,
and the current all-time age group record holder in Kona.
The man walks and talks and writes the talk.
- [Dan] As I said to you,
you know I got, you know Ph.D., 30+ publications,
coached three guys who are
8 hours in an Ironman competition,
and the thing that got me the most attention, was Kona.
Sorry for talking about myself, no one gives a crap!
(both laugh)
It's almost annoying.
I'm like "what is going on?".
- [Taren] So the plan, is to get me through,
half Ironman Puteo Rico.
And then immediately after half Ironman Puerto Rico,
I'm gonna start working with Dan on a consulting basis.
Not necessarily a coaching basis because
there are so many things that I test out for you
and Team Trainiac.
But it's kind of a weird relationship,
for me to have an actual-- a full-time coach?
But Dan is going to come in as a consultant.
Now, why specifically Dan?
Well, here, I'll show you what we talked about
earlier this week!
- [Dan] What were your initial thoughts then,
when trying to get you out to LJF-ing?
- [Taren] Uh, well, I'll say that I think
my biggest opportunity for improvement,
is in the back half of the run.
- [Dan] Yep?
- [Taren] I fade, I fade hard. - [Dan] Yep.
- [Taren] So the idea is to work with Dan,
with him consulting me on my diet, and my training.
To get me to become more fat adaptive.
Not Keto, but more able to access my fat stores,
lower my blood glucose level,
just be healthier and be more metabolically flexible.
So when I go to Challenge Roth,
I can access more of my fat stores,
because there's studies upon studies upon studies
that show being able to oxidize more fat
is up to half of the variation in your performance
in these long distance events.
So what are the key factors he's going to be consulting on?
Here, Plews will explain.
Love saying that!
The Plews!
(says "plew" like a gun)
- [Dan] It's easy to fix because we can just--
you just need to include a little bit more carbs
but the trick is not to go sushi or pizza.
It's like sweet potato or blueberries
or something like that.
So how close are you to, you know, train outside now?
You must be getting pretty close there.
(Taren laughing)
- [Taren] No. - [Dan] Oh really?
What, it's March!
It's March!
H-How,how long before you can go outside?
- [Taren] Uh, two months?
- [Dan] Ugh, geez.
Well yeah, I was just thinking that
the way to push the fat metabolism
there's- obviously, diet is one thing,
but then training session's the next thing.
You have to go long, to do it.
But you, we can do some fat-set training sessions
and stuff like that will get you, you know,
that's a good way to do it but the fat set training
you just have to be reasonable or
low vision availability sessions need to be reasonably long?
But you'd be happy doing four hours on the training right?
- [Taren] Yeah!
I don't know if I'd say "happy".
(both laugh)
So then one question would be like,
why even work with Dan at all and not just do it myself?
Because, since November when we originally talked
to Dan I've been studying this, looking at research
and his blogs and reading books and testing my blood glucose
and tracking all of this.
Lowering my carb intake, seemingly doing
all the right things, but in talking to him
and in all this testing, what I've found is
that it's not just as simple as lowering your carbs.
In fact, that is potentially fairly
a dangerous way to go about it.
Here.
- [Dan] How's your-- what's your fasting blood glucose?
- [Taren] Not low. (Dan laughs)
- [Dan] So you're talking in deciliters are you?
Do you know what it is in millimoles? Or in Bls?
- [Taren] I know I'm like 5.1 to 5.6 most days.
- [Dan] Oh man, man we need to sort you out!
- [Taren] So the next steps for this
like I say, get myself through half Ironman Portero Rico,
and then we start protocol,
that Plews is gonna guide me through.
Which is kind of, as follows.
And it's gonna suck.
- [Dan] The way that we'll do it,
is we'll go two weeks of like just whole food
so that will be
that will be like
like basically anything
that can be made by a community, you eat.
And it's actually quite easy,
and you'll find during this whole food period
your blood glucose will start to come down
and it's actually an easy transition.
Then after that, we'll do three weeks
of pretty hardcore Keto.
- [Taren] Okay.
- [Dan] Yeah, and then after that
we'll come out to what I call The Sweet Spot Stage,
that we kinda just increase the carbohydrates
to find the point where you're,
where you're happy, - [Taren] Okay.
- [Dan] where you can feel the right amount.
And that will hopefully be somewhere
between 100 and 133 grams.
I would expect, that's wise for most men.
But the bit that's really hard
where you're gonna suffer is that cold keto phase.
You're gonna be,
I guarantee you're gonna be hating life
and it'll be quite entertaining
because you'll be so--
- [Taren] So yeah, that's gonna end up sucking.
Now, here's a big caveat to all of this
that everyone needs to know,
that low carb, high fat
or full on ketogenic diets
all the time for endurance athletes
is not the answer for everyone.
Again, listen to him explain.
- [Dan] The diet is not, it doesn't work
for everyone all right?
It's not the same.
But it works for most people so, but hopefully, you like it.
With you, just about what you just said
it'll either, solve all your problems
or it'll make things worse.
You know, so I think.
We just don't know all right?
Until we try it.
But if you look it--
There's a really cool study,
that looks at all the different diets
and every single diet works for some
but doesn't work for others,
but for most people, a lower carb diet,
in terms of health outcomes, it works for most.
There's still a small percentage of people
it doesn't work for.
But for most people, it's way more effective
than a medium carb diet or a medium carb
low-fat diet sort of thing.
So it should be good.
- [Taren] In my case, from the 2017 overtraining
that I went through, I still have low hormone issues
so this might help, this might hurt, but that alone,
and that conversation that Dan and I had
is enough to show that for any of you considering this,
it's not just straight forward as
start testing blood ketones and lower your carb intake,
there's a lot more to it,
and we're gonna document all of this.
So one thing that I ended up getting from Dan
is basically his
low carb high-fat approach starter pack,
if you are looking and considering this go to
triathlontaren.com/theplews,
and he's put together a list of
what he eats in a day, recommended foods,
kind of like the basics of how
he recommends getting started on this journey
and that's free, you just put in your email address
and you get that.
And also, follow along, every consultation
that he does with me we'll record and I'll share
the highlights from it.
So that's that Trainiacs, this here is a
this is a fasted,
light little spin so, things are starting already.
Aright, lets do that, 'nother 65 minutes to go,
later.