A brick workout is any workout that combines swimming, biking and/or running into a single session. The most common example is the bike to run brick, where you go for a run immediately after finishing a bike ride.
Warm-up: 10 min easy
Main set: 2.5 hours @ 170-180 watts At the top of hour 1 and hour 2, ride x 10 mins @ 215-230 watts. Spin easy x 5 min after each interval.
Cool-down: 5 min easy
Using the data I’ve collected over the past few weeks I go into the 3 hour ride with following fueling and hydration strategy:
Hydration
Goal: Prevent loosing more than 3% of weight through the fluid loss. In my case 68 kg (150 lb) = 2.1 kg
How?
Sweat Rate: ~1400 mL/h Liquids Required: Exercise Duration x Sweat Rare = 3 * 1400 = 4200 mL 6% Solution: (255 g carbs / 4200 mL) x 100 Sodium Requirements: 0.5 x 4.2 = 2100 mg
What?
Electrolyte Solution:
Gatorade G2 (591 mL) x 7 bottles Carbohydrates: 12 g x 7 = 84 g Sodium: 270 mg x 7 = 1890 mg Calories: 50 x 7 = 350
FUELING
Pre-Exercise: 30 min Before
It worth mentioning that the workout is done early in the morning, after the night fast.
Had two bananas + Clod brewed coffee + sugary drink = 57 high GI Carbs, 235 calories.
Felt good, not overly stacked. Just enough.
During Exercise
How?
Formula: 0.3 x 150 = 45 g/h x 3 hr = 135 grams of carbs
What?
Carbohydrates: 144 grams
Calories per hour: 1100 / 3hr = 367 cal/hr (towards the higher end of absorption rate)
Didn’t eat the cliff bar as I was pretty full.
RESULTS
Pre-Weight: 69 kg Post-Weight: 69.5 kg Liquids Consumed: 4137 mL Sweat Rate: 1212 ml/hr
Loss: 3637 mL 2% body weight
Good job Sasha! Happy with the fluid loss. Right on point!
BIKE
Felt really strong. On the beginning my HR seemed to be a bit high, but after the first interval it dropped from 140 bpm to about 136 bpm, holding the same power of 180 Watts. Feeling strong, increased the power to 190 Watts and surprisingly HR stayed the same ~136 bpm. Continued with 190 W for the rest of the workout. Had to stop for the restroom twice, in the middle and almost at the end. The seat is really uncomfortable, made me change my position every 5 minutes.
Overall I am really happy with bike performance and the way I felt. Great job Sasha!
RUN
Nothing special on the run. Legs are heavy, RPE is peaking. Towards the end, had the urge to use a restroom. Next time would be smart to use the restroom before heading out.
Lessons Learned
Start eating right from the beginning of the workout. Don’t wait until it’s too late.
Pre-meal doesn’t have to be huge, as long as you’ve got enough during-fuel and stay consistent with it.
Seat position changes RPE and power output.
There are ups and downs, keep your head up. One bad workout doesn’t mean the next one will be also bad.
Higher cadence (80-90 rpm) makes it easier to hold bigger power.
1400 mL/hour is on the high side. At this intensities I could go away with approximately 1200 mL/hour.
One bite of banana + one bite of chocolate protein bar = HEAVEN.
What will I do Differently?
Experiment with liquid sources of carbohydrates.
Adjust the seat, where I feel comfortable. If not, buy the new seat.
A brick workout is any workout that combines swimming, biking and/or running into a single session. The most common example is the bike to run brick, where you go for a run immediately after finishing a bike ride.
38 g (carbs/hour) x 2.75 (2 hours 45 minutes) = 105 grams of carbs required. 2 protein bars + Cliff energy chews = 100 C 21 F 28 P 660 calories
Hydration
TheGOAL: prevent loosing more than 2% (1.5 kg) of body weight in fluids.
What do I need? Sweat Rate: 1500 mL x 2.75 = 4125 mL Sodium: 0.5 x 4125 = 2062 mg Carbs: (X / 4125) x 100 = 5% -> X=0.05 x 4125= 206 g of carbs!?
What I got:
G2 Gatorade: 6 bottles (591 mL) + own solution (580 mL)= 4126 mL Carbs: 12×6 = 72 g Sodium: 270×6 + 330 = 1970 mg Additional Sodium: AminoPro 2 scoops 230 mg + Vega hydrator 100 mg = 330 mg in 580 mL of water💦 Calories: 300
Total Calories: 960 calories: 350 calories/hour Using the Cooling Fan.
Results
Pre-weight: 69.3 kg Post-weight: 69.3 kg Liquids consumed: 3930 mL Sweat Rate: 1430 mL/hour (confirmed previous calculations)
Total fluid loss: 3930 kg (2% body weight)
I am satisfied with this numbers and consider my calculations right on point. It’s a win!
BIKE
What do you know about “bonking”?
The first 40-50 minutes felt strong, pedaling without too much of an effort (RPE 3-4). Wasn’t fueling until 30 minutes into the ride. Approximately at minute 50 my power began going down increasing RPE.
Since then it was a total suffer fest. No matter how much I ate or drank, my power kept going down and down. I hit the wall or how cyclists call it “bonked”. Glycogen in my muscles and liver got depleted making my body fatigue and bonk. It felt incredibly hard to keep pushing 190 watts and I had to slow down multiple times for 10-15 seconds, because I just couldn’t keep going. My mind began playing tricks on me, but no matter what I did, I just couldn’t physically spin my legs. Even knowing my legs were hurting, it wasn’t about pain. I simply couldn’t force my body to push the pedals. Multiple times I had thoughts to quit and stop this suffering as I couldn’t keep up with workout.
Here is how bonking looks like on a graph:
While heart rate is going up, speed and power falls down.
RUN
Immediately after the ride I put my running gear on and went out for a 15 minutes run. My legs felt like jelly, running at 5:28 /km pace RPE felt like 6-7. Didn’t try to push, making the emphasis on keeping the form.
Severe diarrhea hit me 5 minutes into the run. I honestly thought I would shit my pants… In addition to that had minor stomach cramps. Had to finish the cool down part short… at the restroom.
Lessons Learned:
3,000 calories / day with 400 grams of carbohydrates I currently eat on my diet is not enough to fulfill the energy demands. I went glycogen depleted into the training and payed the price.
100 grams of carbs from pre-meal burned in 40 minutes.
Confirmed my Sweat Rate calculations. Approximately 1500 mL/hour.
Learned what the bonking is and how it feels.
If you drain your glycogen tanks, there is no way to refuel it on the fly, while keeping the power & speed.
Cooling fan didn’t make significant change in my sweat rate.
I don’t like energy chews. They get stuck in teeth.
What will I do different?
Increase my carbohydrate consumption to 600 grams/day. Total daily calorie intake: 3,900 calories
Always have a big, carbohydrate-rich meal at least 90 minutes before workout.
Try consuming liquid calories. See how that feels on stomach and absorption.
There are six things we are trying to achieve with of proper pre-exercise nutrition:
Restore muscle glycogen (especially important for morning training). A lot of athletes ignore food first thing in the morning. Don’t be like most! Going into training fasted or under-fueled will catch your up later with what cyclists call “bonking” or runners call “hitting the wall”. You simply run off the gas (glycogen) and your body refuse to deal with you any longer. You are forced to stop, you lost!
Satisfy hunger. Realizing that you’re hungry in the last hour before exercise or race is too late. Eating so close to start will only harm you.
Boost motivation
Delay fatigue
Optimize performance. This is a biggie! This is why you continue reading this chapter. Other than simply restocking your glycogen stores and fluid levels, proper pre-training nutrition has direct correlation with your performance.
Improve post-exercise recovery. If you start with your fuel tank on empty, even if you eat and hydrate during training, your recovery will be compromised. The better fueled and hydrated you are going into the training, the faster you will recover from it afterwards.
WHAT?
Salads are bad for you! This is the only time you hear me say it – right before training or racing. We are not talking here about eating for health and longevity, we are fueling up our carb tanks for performance. Understanding that, we stay away from fiber, high fat and protein foods. Those foods are slow to digest, may cause bloating and diarrhea during high intensity trainings.
Here is your general guidelines to follow, when deciding on how you are going to fill up your body for upcoming training:
Eat mostlycarbohydrates. The more time you have before exercise, the lower GI of your food choices should be.
Stay away from fiber.
Include protein, especially BCAAs. The 2018 Researchsponsored by Western University in Canada have shown that taking in BCAAs before aerobic exercise improves endurance and stimulates protein synthesis.
No foods or snacks in one hour prior to event or training. Is to prevent hypoglycemia (rapid insulin spike, followed by drop in blood sugar level).
The following are examples foods to eat prior the event:
Fruits with Eggs. Fruits (Low in fiber: bananas, peaches, cantaloupe, honeydew and watermelon) + Eggs (Easy to digest and is a great source of BCAAs)
Applesauce (Unsweetened) + Protein Powder. Applesauce is easy to digest and is low in fiber. Add egg or whey protein powder to slow the glycemic reaction and to add BCAAs
Baby Food (easily digested by anyone) + Animal Protein (Turkey, Chicken or Fish)
Liquid Meals. Stress reduces our abilities to digest food and I’ve had a nervous stomach prior to events before. Blending foods makes it easier to digest
Sports Bars with Protein. My least favorite option. Whenever possible, stay away from engineered foods
Fluids, especially WATER. In addition, a strong brewed coffee has been shown to improve endurance performance. Downsides of caffeine: upset stomach and nervousness
Of course, eating moderate-high GI foods will cause the insulin spike and shut down fat oxidation and your body will shift to burning carbs for fuel. This is concerning for many athletes that try to loose weight and train in fasted state to improve fax oxidation.
You got to pick one or another:
You burn fat and loose wight
You train and race at you peak performance, stimulating fitness gains.
Those two are not compatible. If you chose the option #2, continue reading as I’ll get more in depth on how to fuel up for performance. If your goal is to loose fat, you chubby panda, I suggest you read on some of my postshere.
HOW MUCH & WHEN?
To boost your performance, carbohydrate-rich easy-to-digest foods should be consumed no less than 1-2 hours before the exercise or race.
Everybody is different and the amount is determined by body size and gender. You should listen to your body, however here is some general guidelines:
3-4 hours before – Large meal (500-800 calories)
1-3 hours before – Medium-size meal (250-500 calories)
30 min – 1.5 hour before – Small meal, snack (100-500 calories)
10 minutes before start – Sports drink or Gel (100-200 calories), followed by 180-240 ml of water.
Race Week Diet
Typically a week before competition, athletes go into a “tapering” stage, where training volume and intensity is reduced to ensure the athlete is well rested before the event. Since they don’t train as much, it makes some athletes confused with their food choices. Let’t keep it simple: this is not the time to make changes in your day-to-day diet. You should continue to eat the same diet as while you was training, but with slightly reduces amount of calories consumed.
Skip the pasta party! The day before the race slightly add more carbohydrates to ensure your glycogen tanks are full. It’s a great time to treat yourself to some: bananas, peaches, watermelon, dried fruits, potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams. To keep your blood sugar levels in check from such high GI foods, add protein and fat with each meal. In addition, reduce the fiber and eat at your usual times.
A tip: The order in which you eat carbs and proteins matter. Simply by switch the order you eat your food you can control you glucose and insulin levels. Eat protein and vegetables first and carbohydrates at the end. Never eat carbohydrates alone. Read more on Food Order.
References:
Lemon, Peter. “Effect of Branched-Chain Amino Acid Supplementation on Muscle Damage – Full Text View.” Search of: Spain – List Results – ClinicalTrials.gov, Western University, Canada, 2018, clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03766815.
The closer I get to my first IRONMAN, the more race specific my training gets. On today’s agenda is the “BRICK”:
2 hour 15 minutes Endurance Bike Ride (180w) immediately followed by10 minutes run of the bike
Fueling Before:
2 cups of coffee
Essential Amino acids
Whole Grapefruit 360g (40 carbs)
Hydration
Considering my previous Sweat Rate calculations: ~1500 mL/hour * Workout: 2 hr 15 min = 3000 mL of fluids (4xG2 bottles (2840 ml))
Today I experiment with hydration solution G2 from Gatorade. A bottle (710 mL) is a 5% solution with 330 mg of sodium. (240 cal/64 carbs)
It’s important to mention that the calories in hydration solution are not meant to deliver energy to the muscles, but to improve the fluid absorption.
Fueling
The formula I use to calculate carbohydrate needs:
0.25 x 150 lbs = 38 g/hour
2.15 x 38 = 82 grams of carbs
2 Protein Bars + banana = 585 cal (86c/23f/15p)
Total Calorie Intake (hydration+fueling): 825 cal (150c/23f/15p) / 2.15 hours = 384 cal/hour
Results:
Had 3 bottles of G2, left one unopened. Found it difficult to drink this much. Couldn’t say the same about eating part. Sugars are always fun. So here is what I’ve got:
Pre-Weight: 68.4 kg
Post-Weight: 66.9 kg
Fluids Consumed: 2130 mL (710 mL less than suggested)
Total Fluid Loss: 3630 mL
Sweat Rate: 1613 mL/hour
Energy Expanded: 1630 calories / 2:30 hours = 652 calories/hour
Felt strong on the bike physically and mentally. Was able to hold ~180w for 2 hours straight. The ride ended up at 100 kilometers, averaging at 44.5 km/h. Running off the bike, my legs felt literally like jelly. Ran 2 kilometers at 4:56 /km pace.
Overall I am impressed by the power output on the bike and how good I felt.
Do you want to get the taste of every shade of pain? I’ve got a perfect recipe for you – get yourself dehydrated. All you need is to lose just 1%-2% worth of your body’s weight through the fluid loss. Here is how you do it: wake up early in the morning to get that 90 minutes bike ride done, before work or school. Have nothing besides a cup or two of coffee and jump straight on the trainer. I guarantee that your heart rate won’t go higher than zone 3-4, no matter how hard you push yourself. RPE of 3-4 will feel like 7-8, making every second of your workout count as you courageously suffer through it. Besides that, you might experience some of the following symptoms, but they most likely have nothing to do with you being dehydrated. Push harder!
Headache (wether changes)
Fatigue (don’t be lazy!)
Dizziness (thats ok, just don’t close your eyes)
Increased thirst (resist! less water = higher RPE)
Tachycardia (you won’t even feel it)
Weak pulse (don’t worry about that)
Chills/cold hands (put on an extra jacket)
Organ failure (people live even with one kidney)
Shrunken brain (less weight to carry)
Heat cramps, heat exhaustion, heatstroke – those are the things that will add more flavor to your experience of riding the paintrain. There are few tips on how to access those add on features and amplify your suffering:
Do some interval training outside, including extreme spikes in intensity or volume
Try exercising when sick. Disease and fewer is not an excuse to skip a workout
Put on as many clothes as you have. Let’s see how many cycling jerseys you’ve got in your closet
Neglect all the clues and heat-related illness signals your body sends you
Few more workouts like this and you begin questioning your abilities as an athlete and your existence on this planet overall. A little shit-talking voice in your head gets louder and louder, yelling at you to stop this suffer fest and quit the sport all together. Perfect! There are many other ways to get on the paintrain with a first-class seat, but I will not discuss all of them just yet. If it’s something that you’re specifically looking for, let me know and I will provide you with step-by-step instructions on how to obtain the ticket to the suffer-land for free.
Let’s get serious
Performance Hydration
Let’s talk first about why exactly is hydration so important?
I bet you heard a million times that making sure you are well hydrated with clean water is essential to your well-being. I’ll just refresh a few things in your memory in regards to why you need to drink water.
About 40 liters of water contains a 150 pounds human body. Every day you loose 2-3 liters of fluids. Your body doesn’t produce water and heavily rely on external sources. Without proper amount of water, your body fails to:
Transport fuel to your working muscles
Eliminate the byproducts of your trainings from your cells
Keeping you alive and not let you dies from overheating by cooling itself down.
Digest the foods you eat and convert them into the fuel for your next training sessions.
Keep your brain functioning, making you a bit smarter than your dog. Concentration is compromised.
Maintain the blood volume. The sweat that you loose during exercise comes out of your blood plasma. Loose too much sweat -> blood volume goes down -> performance decreases.
The list goes on and on, but the main point here is that WATER IS LIFE.
Dehydration
When endurance athlete “hits the wall” or getting “bonked”, running out of energy, he can grab a gel or coke and rapidly put that necessary calories into the engine. Up to a certain point dehydration is manageable and there no performance decline. However, if the athlete is getting dehydrated, there is no fast way to restore hydration status. When is too late? Over 2% of body’s mass lost through the fluids links to a low performance. Your main task as an athlete is to stay above 2% or 3% off for fluids lost during exercise. Its easy to miss the point of not coming back and once you’re in the hole of dehydration, you’re not coming out of it in a course of the event. Game is over! Or it for the least your performance is highly compromised.
A symptom of dehydration is often expressed as hunger. That sound weird, but it’s true. When people reach for carbohydrate rich foods, because they’re hungry in the pm its often the fact that they simply dehydrated. By retaining hydration status during the day, it get easier to manage portion control and quality of food consumed.
Hyponatremia
On the flip side is over-hydration problem – hyponatremia. A lot of athletes are over-hydrating lowering the body sodium levels to dangerously low levels. Your blood becomes thicker and saltier and you feel thirsty. If you drink a lot of water or a lot of low-sodium fluids you actually diluting your blood down. You hold about 32 oz (950 mL) of fluids in your stomach. Depending on your body size and exercise intensity it empties at a rate about 30-42 oz (890-1242 mL) per hour. If you drink too much, too fast, your stomach gets overfilled, having no choice, but make you vomit to remove the excess. Overdrinking can cause nausea.
Electrolytes
You noticed in the past that your sweat leaves white marks on your clothing. Sometimes less, sometimes more. With sweat you never loose just the water, but also electrolytes. Without those positively and negatively charged ions you won’t be able to contract your muscles properly, making your running form seem more like a butt injured bear running away from the hunter. Potassium, calcium, magnesium and sodium are the micronutrients that in proper combination allow your body to remain in homeostasis by maintaining the fluid balance. Sodium is predominant electrolyte so you mainly loose this important nutrient with your sweat.
Five main electrolytes inside your body
If you don’t replace the fluids and electrolytes lost, it will essentially pull a cascade of negative events that will make you a dehydrated bitch. Luckily for you, mother nature provided your body with reliable fluid level management feature – a thirst. When too much water leaves your cells – they shrink and your brain gets notified immediately. If you feel thirsty, you’re on your way to a suffer-land, sponsored by dehydration. Listen to your body and drink enough to satisfy thirst, not more or less.
Better Hydration = Better Performance
You may not feel thirsty during exercise, but you absolutely need to hydrate while you exercise. Plain water is the best! There are three kinds you are safe to go with:
Purified water. This water is free of contaminants and produced by deionization, distillation, reverse osmosis and carbon filtration.
Spring water. Spring water is the “natural” version of purified water. may have been disinfected, but most impurities and contaminants remain. In terms of quality, spring water is much closer to tap water than purified water.
Alkaline water. It’s less acidic than tap water, however there is little evidence that its healthier than regular tap water.
“Taste and temperature have no perceptible effect on fluid absorption”
Karel, L
Sports drinks
Hypertonics. They are the high-calorie sports drinks or simply soda. Drinking these is notoptimal way to hydrate as your body has to move water out of the bloodstream into the gut to absorb the calories within the drink.
Isotonics or Hypotonics. This types of drinks are formulated to a concentration that is similar to your blood, which makes them a good hydration tools.
Coffee & Tea
Coffee is considered as probably harmless and possibly healthy. Just keep in mind that it’s a central nervous system stimulant so try not to over drink it.Commonly accepted safe dose of it is no more than 32 oz (946 ml) a day.
Tea also has caffeine in it, but way less than coffee. It is often praised for its health benefits and can help to fight free radicals, reduce the risk of heart related disease and even cancer. Herbal teas increase immunity, support weight loss, control appetite, promote better sleep and lower stress levels. It’s not a magic bullet, but if you get to pick between tea and coffee, I would go with the first one.
Juice, Energy drinks and Alcohol
Liquid produce is not healthier than whole, solid produce. Real juice, even with no added sugars is a very easy way to over-consume the calories, compared with eating whole foods. However it may come in handy after the intense workout, assisting in rehydration and delivering vitamins with minerals. To make it even a better post-workout option, add a tea spoon of pink Himalayan salt to make it more similar to rehydration sports drinks.
Energy drinks is a no-no! 5-hour Energy, NOS, Monster Energy, Red Bull, Rockstar etc. is a poison straight from a can. Sugar, enormous amount of calories and caffeine along with other stimulants will put you at risk of cardiac arrest. Save your heart and opt from such drinks, especially during the exercise.
There are no benefits to alcohol consumption. Sorry. The use of alcohol even in small amounts can negatively affect your hydration status, sleep, recovery, motivation and overall performance.Not to mention, it causes weight gain and weakens your immune system. If you are an athlete, especially during a competition season, do yourself a favor – stay away from alcohol.
Know your Sweat Rate
Everyone looses fluids differently, therefore to better understand how much you are sweating it’s important to calculate your sweat rate. Right before your next big workout, jump on scales and record your weight. When finished, re-weight yourself and calculate your sweat rate using the example of how to estimate the sweat rate for 150 lbs athlete after a 2 hour 30 minutes bike ride:
Pre-exercise weight: 150 lbs (68 kg)
Post-exercise weight: 148.5 lbs (67.3 kg)
Weight (fluids) loss: 1.5 lbs (0.7 kg) or 24.7 oz (700 mL)
Water consumed during exercise: 3 liters (100 oz)
Total Sweat Loss: 24.7 oz + 100 oz = 124.7 oz (3688 mL)
HEALTHY PEE CHART [Digital image]. (2017, January 30). Retrieved February 3, 2019, from https://hydratem8.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/healthy-pee-chart_03.png
Obesity is a huge deal in US and many other developed countries. People are obsessed with the quality and quantity of food they eat, without monitoring their schedule of food intake. Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot about Time-Restricted Eating and Intermittent Fasting as it gains popularity around North America. Different “health guru” bring up the relationship between temporal eating and obesity. I don’t believe everything I hear, so I pulled up some scholar literature from the field, to see what the science says and share my findings with you.
“Time-restricted eating(TRE)” or “time-restricted feeding (TRF)” is the approach to eating which limits the time for food intake, typically 6-8 hours a day (24 hours). People who follow this protocol consume all their food for the day in an 8-hour window, such as from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The rest of your day (16 hours) is the fasting period, meaning no calories are consumed.
Circadian rhythms dictate our bodies not just when to sleep and wake up, but they also play a huge role in regulating hormones responsible for metabolism, including Ghrelin (hunger hormone) and Leptin (fat storage hormone). Energy metabolism in our bodies has evolved to be cyclical, meaning it speeds up at certain times during the day, and slows dow when we fall asleep. This particular study got my attention as it tested whether obesity and metabolic illnesses result from bad diet or disruption of metabolic cycles (circadian rhythms). The study was published in Cell Metabolism Journal in May 17, 2012.
Lab test was done on mice, where they were subjected to time-restricted eating (ate for 8 hours, fasted for 16) and free feeding, where they were fed the same amount calories evenly throughout the day. Both groups were on a bad diet (high-fat diet) for 6 weeks. Now let’s see what happened:
The lab test showed that TRE resulted in:
Decreased predisposition to get fat (Adiposity and Leptin Resistance);
Decreased inflammation (body’s response to injury);
Improved motor coordination.
FA – free feeding FT – time-restricted feeding
Despite equal energy intake from the same bad diet, FT mice didn’t gain extra body weight. The study suggests that time-restricted eating reprograms the way our bodies metabolize energy received from food and improve body weight regulation.
In addition, TRE will help you to:
Give you body and digestion some rest and stimulates cellular repair processes, by removing toxic materials from cells;
Increase metabolism;
Decrease such brain illnesses like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s;
TRE affects endurance sport athletes:
Mice eating an unhealthy diet on TRE showed greater sports performance than mice with the same diet and no time restrictions on eating.
Conclusion:
Simply by modifying our feeding schedules without changing the amount of food we eat, we can improve our overall health and protect ourselves from illnesses associated with excessive body fat. Each human is unique and it’s difficult to suggest what is the best schedule of TRE for you. Discover for yourself through trial and error. The healthiest approach to incorporating TRE is to have a breakfast later in the day and finish dinner earlier.
You don’t want to be that FAT RAT on the left!
References:
Hatori, M., Vollmers, C., Zarrinpar, A., DiTacchio, L., Bushong, E. A., Gill, S., Leblanc, M., Chaix, A., Joens, M., Fitzpatrick, J. A., Ellisman, M. H., … Panda, S. (2012). Time-restricted feeding without reducing caloric intake prevents metabolic diseases in mice fed a high-fat diet. Cell metabolism, 15(6), 848-60.
Modern “trendy” diets, aka Keto, Paleo, Carnivor, Vegan etc., made us perceive carbohydrates as evil. There are so many things that impact the way our bodies absorb and process foods. Every person is unique, with his set of hormones, digestive microflora, physical and mental stress loads etc… When it comes to developing a healthy individual diet a lot of variables need to be taken to the account: macronutrient content, caloric load, glycemic index, meal timing and a lot more.
For a while I’ve been wondering if the order we consume nutrients during the meal impact glucose response. I’ve been thinking, will it change anything if we eat proteins first and carbs later or in reverse order. Eventually everything mixes in the stomach anyways, so is there is a difference to the order we eat? I found the answer and I am excited to share my finding with you.
After searching for a while I found this recent research made by Dr. Alpana P. Shukla that brings up the term – food order. The term “food order” refers to the sequence of the nutrients consumed during the meal. Turns out that timing of carbohydrates consumption during a meal has significant impact on the blood glucose level response. The research shown that when the carbohydrate component of the meal is consumed at the end of the meal or last, the effect on the glucose level will be way smaller that if the carbs would be consumed on the beginning of the meal. In other words, if you start your meal from eating proteins and vegetables first and save the carbs for the end, it wont cause the blood sugar level go up high. The table below shows that carbs eaten last resulted in 37% less of a blood sugar spike and 49,6% less of insulin response:
This is fascinating! Simply by switching the order you eat your food you can control you glucose and insulin levels in control and loose or maintain your weight. I am also fascinated to see how it can help people with diabetes and other insulin related deceases.
Protein pre-loading. Another, related study showed that taking whey protein drink shortly before a high-glycaemic-index meal (your favorite pancakes or pasta), lowered the insulin response by 28%:
“The results showed that over the whole 180 min post-meal period, glucose levels were reduced by 28% after whey pre-load with a uniform reduction during both early and late phases”, (Jakubowicz, D, July 10, 2014).
The study published by The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in July 2005 proved the previous one:
“Whey proteins have insulinotropic effects and reduce the postprandial glycemia in healthy subjects. The mechanism is not known, but insulinogenic amino acids and the incretin hormones seem to be involved”, (Anders H Frid, July 1, 2005).
I like how they put “the mechanism is not known” in a study, but it doesn’t matter. What matters to us that is it works. Simply have a whey protein before your carb loaded meal and you won’t skyrocket your blood glucose levels up. When choosing whey protein, I suggest looking at isolate as it usually has the least amount of added sugars. Make sure you check the label for sugars content as you don’t need more than 3-5 g of sugars per scoop.
Does eating this way impact satiety? Yes it does. The research showed that protein consumed first, suppressed the ghrelin hormone level. Ghrelin is the “hunger hormone” because it stimulates appetite, increases food intake and promotes fat storage. Good news, keeping your food in order will make you feel more full and you will eat less.
Here is the study published by Diabetes Care journal. The experiment was done in 3 ways:
Carbohydrate-first meal: carbohydrate (bread and orange juice), followed 10 min later by protein (chicken) and vegetables;
Carbohydrate-last meal: protein and vegetables, followed 10 min later by carbohydrate;
Sandwich: all meal components together, each half consumed over 10 min with a 10-min interval in between.
Below are the results:
Main takeaways:
The order in which you eat carbs and proteins matter. It is not only “how much” and “what not to eat”. Optimal timing of carbohydrate consumption during a meal have a big impact on blood glucose levels and as result on your health and body composition;
You can loose weight by simply eating protein and vegetables first and carbohydrates at the end;
Never eat carbohydrates alone. They should be consumed as a part of the meal, followed by protein intake;
Taking a whey protein drink before meal reduces blood glucose spike;
Eating proteins first make you feel more full for longer;
References:
Shukla AP, Dickison M, Coughlin N, et al. The impact of food order on postprandial glycaemic excursions in prediabetes. Diabetes Obes Metab. 2018;1–5. https://doi.org/10.1111/dom.13503
Aronne, L. J. (2018, February 23). Effect of Food Order on Ghrelin Suppression. Retrieved November 11, 2018, from http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2018/02/22/dc17-2244
Shukla, A. P., Iliescu, R. G., Thomas, C. E., & Aronne, L. J. (2015, July 01). Food Order Has a Significant Impact on Postprandial Glucose and Insulin Levels. Retrieved November 11, 2018, from http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/38/7/e98
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