- Good morning motivators,
a lot of people out there think that I'm anti carb.
Absolutely not, I'm actually fairly pro-carb
at the right time from the right sources.
Carbs can be a massive performance enhancer
and the right types of carbs can actually help balance out
some of the damage that we do to our body
with all of the endurance training that we put it through.
I wanna take just a hot minute here today
to talk about some of the best types of carbs
that you should be taking on as an endurance athlete
to make sure that your weight is managed really well,
that your gut health is balanced
with all of the endurance training that we put it through,
and we might even get metabolic benefits
to be able to burn fat a little bit easier,
yes, by taking on carbs.
And for those people who have blood sugar control
there seems to be some indication
that the right types of carbs
might actually help with all of that.
You'll be leaner, you'll look better, you'll feel better,
and your internal health will be better
all by making some really simple swaps
with very common foods that you're probably already eating
but just changing the way that they're prepared
in order to accomplish all of this.
In 2019, when I was training a lot
and doing a fairly strict lower carb approach
of about 130 grams of carbs per day,
which is very, very far from keto,
but it is also fair bit lower than the typical Western diet,
I ended up gaining about 15 pounds
and gradually my digestive health got fairly bad
and I wasn't really able to keep up to the training.
Yeah, the carb restriction ended up
improving my race performance,
but it did have a fairly detrimental effect
to my overall health,
which is why I want to talk about this,
and I don't use the lower carb approach anymore,
I don't even talk about what I do in terms of lower carbs,
I talk about nutrient timing
and things being much more balanced.
As I started focusing on gut health,
my symptoms ended up getting better,
my weight ended up stabilizing and my gut health
with what happens on throne ended up actually
being a fair bit better.
And it's no wonder that this happened
because as I started researching gut health
with what is going on with exercise,
there's a lot of damage that we do,
and there's a lot that we don't do
to actually offset that damage.
This study here asks straight up,
"Is There an Exercise-Intensity Threshold
Capable of Avoiding Leaky Gut?"
Leaky gut is a situation
where the lining of your stomach
ends up degrading and food particles
end up actually leaching into your body.
This isn't what we want,
this creates a ton of inflammation and food sensitivities
and problems with gut health, it's a really bad thing
when you start getting a leaky gut.
Just go down and boom, it hits right on the nose
where it says "It is recently shown
that 60 minutes of vigorous endurance training at 70%
of the maximum work capacity," 70% of VO2 max,
this is basically right around the top end of zone two.
So anything past that for 60 minutes,
"Led to the characteristic responses of leaky gut."
So all of us out there doing sweet spot training,
lots of long intervals in preparation for a race,
this is fairly hard on the gut,
that doesn't mean that we shouldn't do it
because challenging ourselves with endurance sports,
super fun, super cool, super rewarding,
it gives us the structure and the motivation
to maintain our health.
But how do we offset that to make sure
that we don't create a longterm detriment
to our overall health?
How do we then fix this?
Well, again, research is starting to find it out for us.
A study called "A randomized trial
to determine the impact of a digestion
resistant starch composition on the gut microbiome
in older and middle-aged adults,"
Found that, spoiler alert will go down here,
this isn't sponsored at all,
but they used a resistant starch product,
and I'll explain what resistance starch really
is, to see what actually happened in the gut
when people took a resistant starch.
And what they found very clearly
was that "There was an increase in Bifidobacterium
in both elderly patients and middle-aged patients
compared to a placebo."
So a well-designed study that showed
that you could actually get those good bacteria boosted up,
not by taking a probiotic,
but by taking a prebiotic, a resistant starch.
The outcome of what this results in is super interesting
for endurance athletes who are very conscious
of managing our weight.
This study here called "Resistant starch and energy balance,
impact on weight loss and maintenance,"
The study says "There is strong evidence
demonstrating that resistant starch
lowers whole body and visceral adiposity," Body fat.
"The magnitude of these changes in adiposity
are very large and sufficient
to independently improve insulin sensitivity
and reduce the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease,
and certain cancers."
If you end up diving into this study,
you might notice a couple of things
that a lot of this research is done on rodents,
that's totally fine because the lifespan
of a rodent being very, very short
can then extrapolate really well
and apply to the lifespan of a human
where doing a long-term multi-decade study
is almost impossible,
but the effect on rodents is fairly similar
to the effects on humans.
In addition to that, you might just say,
"Well Taren, these are just one study here there."
If you start looking at study after study after study
about this, they all kind of say the same thing.
One thing that's also really interesting to us
is that ingestion of resistant starch
is really good for actually fat burning,
keeping that blood sugar nice and low with resistant starch,
it ends up promoting the ability to burn fat as fuel,
something that we as endurance athletes really want to do.
So, where do you get resistance starch?
There's five really common foods
that we end up using very, very regularly in our cooking
and changing the way we prepare it
to increase the amount of resistance starch.
The first one are unripe green bananas.
The unripe green bananas,
they have a high amount of resistant starch.
Overnight cooked and cooled oats.
Common overnight oats,
but make sure that you cook them beforehand,
and the cooling process of anywhere from 12 to 24 hours
really increases the amount of resistant starch
in those oats.
Same thing with rice, cooked and cooled rice,
so we'll often precook our rice
and put it into a Tupperware container in the fridge,
and we'll often do the same with potatoes
because potatoes have the same thing,
and potato starch actually
is also really good resistance starch.
And then finally beans.
The more you can cook with beans the better
because beans have a really high amount of resistant starch,
tip, we make a healthy version of Franks and beans
with homemade sauce, homemade beans,
and then like a really nice sausage.
I recommend that you try making some small changes
with the types of carbs that you have.
If you have rice, just cook and cool it,
if you have oats, cook and cool it,
if you have potatoes, cook and cool it,
if you have bananas, eat them when they're green.
You're probably not going to notice
instant health improvements, but over a long period of time,
the same way that bad habits like smoking
might not show themselves to be detrimental
to your health for decades,
these good habits will end up showing themselves
to be positive to your health over the course of decades.
One of the really awesome things about resistant starch
is that it keeps your blood sugar nice and low
so that you can still access fat as fuel
and be metabolically healthy,
Segue into today's sponsor, UCAN.
They are my exclusive nutrition provider
and have been for the last year
because they're a type of carb that burns so slow
that your blood sugar stays really stable
and you get a lot of energy over a long period of time
instead of a big spike and a crash.
And you can go to ucan.co/taren
and read a blog post on how to use the timed carb approach,
and if you buy anything after going to that link,
you'll get a discount at checkout.
No affiliate links there, just a little bit of a How-to,
and a discount that you'll get at checkup for that.
And if you want guidance
on what to take when during your training
go to app.mymotive.com
where all of the workouts in our training app
have recommended nutrition
to help create that metabolic flexibility
to help you with all of your training.
With that said, later motivators.