Ep 16 - Carb Loading

Carb loading is a dietary strategy where athletes top up their glycogen stores before an endurance event lasting longer than 90 minutes. It improves performance by providing a readily available source of energy. It is recommended for half marathons or longer races. The general rule of thumb is to consume 7-10g of carbohydrates per kg of body weight in the 3 days leading up to the event. It is important to avoid high fiber foods and reduce fat and protein consumption during this time. Carb loading is not a long-term dietary strategy and should be practiced during training runs to avoid stomach upset on race day. Hello and welcome to episode number 16 of the progress pod and today's topic is carb loading and it's just going to be myself today chatting through all about carb loading, what it is, why we do it, when we should do it, mistakes to avoid, everything like that and the reason being over the next few weeks there's a lot of people inside the progress project, there is a lot of people, especially in Scotland, lining up for the Great Scottish Run and there's also a lot of other autumn running events so I think during September it's a good month to put out a few episodes on running. So we've got carb loading this week and next week I will be discussing through my top 5 race day tips. So yeah, without further ado we're going to get into carb loading. So this is something that can be really really beneficial but it's also something that a lot of mistakes are made on, there's a lot of confusion around it and if it's not done correctly it can actually result in performance taking a negative slide rather than improving performance. So what is carb loading? So carb loading essentially is a dietary strategy where athletes, runners, people taking part in endurance events will top up the glycogen stores so that we've got that readily available source of energy prior to an endurance event and the endurance event typically is one that's lasting for longer than 90 minutes, 90 minutes or more. There's no need to have a carb load prior to a 30 minute 5k or something like that. We're talking if we're running anywhere above 90 minutes to 2 hours. So I'm going to be, this can be for any endurance event whether it's running, cycling, swimming, whatever, carb loading is effective. I'm just going to be talking just around running to be honest. It's the same focus, the same premise but I'm just going to be talking on a running basis but you can apply this to the other disciplines but in terms of why do we do it? So we really want to be, as I said, topped up with glycogen and giving ourselves the longest period of time before fatigue sets in and really to just improve our performance on race day. The way I would relate it to is let's just say you were going to be driving a long car journey, you were going in the car for like 4 hours, the first thing you'd probably do is go to the petrol station and fill up the tank. This is essentially what you're doing at a carb load. We are filling our bodies with carbohydrates and glycogen so that before we do a long run, we're sitting there full. It's like essentially filling up our tank with energy so that we're going to the start line with a full tank. If you didn't do a carb load, if we didn't prepare and you ate barely any carbs for the lead up, we'd already be going in a bit depleted so it'd be like starting the race with a quarter of a tank, like starting a long journey with a quarter of a tank in the car. That's what it'd be effectively doing and obviously if you are driving a long journey, you'd have to stop after half an hour of your 4 hour journey to try and get fuel and it's just going to be a mess. Similar with you starting running. If you're trying to run a half marathon for instance, you might be 5km and you're like I feel terrible, I've got no energy, I'm depleted, I'm going to need to try and get some gels on board, it's maybe too late and it's just going to be a nightmare of a race. A nightmare of a race day just because we've not been properly prepared and properly fuelled. So yeah, I'd typically say half marathons or above, we're looking at a carb load. Anything below that, we're not really too worried. We should have enough stores in there to get us through the event. So how do we do it? So typically, rule of thumb, somewhere in the region for general population of 7-10g per kg of body weight of carbohydrate in the 3 days leading up to it. So if you've got a race day on a Sunday, I'd be saying Thursday, Friday, Saturday, we're looking for higher carb days. You will hear some people say it can go up to 12g per kg of body weight but that's more elite athletes. It is hard again as well with duration and how long will your glycogen stores last, that's all relative to each individual person. If you're Elliot Kachogian and you're running at 21km an hour, you're going to burn through glycogen a lot faster than somebody that's running at a quarter of that pace. But just as a general rule of thumb, we're looking at somewhere between 7-10g of carbohydrates per kg of body weight. So if you're 70kg in weight, you're probably looking at somewhere between 500-700g of carbohydrates per day on a Thursday, Friday and Saturday. And what I tend to do, just to avoid feeling bloated and just too full, I tend to hit the higher end of the range on the Thursday, Friday and then the lower end of the range on the Saturday. There's no need to have the biggest carbohydrate meal ever on the Saturday night before the race. That's going to maybe interrupt sleep, that's going to maybe make you feel bloated, you're not going to feel too good. There's no need for that if you've done the work on the Thursday, Friday where you've been loading up the glycogen stores already. You can just have a normal sized meal on the Saturday night and have a good sleep and still be full on the Sunday for race day. So I tend to go for the higher end of the range. So for me, I'm roughly 70kg there, thereabouts. So I tend to aim for about 700g Thursday, Friday, drop down to about 500g on the Saturday and then I'm feeling good for it. That works well for me. So that's how we do it. We'd also be keen to avoid really, really high fibre foods because that can cause a bit of stomach upset and we want to also reduce our fat and protein consumption. Because if I'm just, just if you use me as an example, if I'm consuming 700g of carbohydrates, that's 2800 calories already, not including fats and proteins. If I just take my normal level of protein, my normal level of fats, I'm up over 6000 calories for the day and that's, I don't need that amount of calories. That's going to result in unnecessary weight gain. So what I'm wanting to achieve here is eating that 700g of carbs but having that be about 70-75% of my daily calories. So vastly reducing protein and vastly reducing fats. So this, just so you know, carb loading for these three days, that's not a normal way to eat. It's literally just a pre-race protocol that you're doing for a couple of days. It's not the most healthy, like really reducing protein. Typically, I'll be working with members of the Progress Project and talking about how we need to keep our protein high. So can I go against that? Doing a carb load to say drop your protein, drop your fats, we're really focusing on carbohydrate. As I said, this is not a long-term dietary strategy. This is just two or three days prior to a race where we want to really maximise our performance. So carb loading isn't the most nutritious and the most healthy thing to do in the world, but you're doing it for a purpose for a very, very short period of time. So there's absolutely no issues there. So just to kind of overall summarise, 7-10g per kilo bodyweight of carbohydrate. We want to have about 70-75% of our calories coming from carbohydrates and we want to avoid high fibre foods to avoid stomach upset and we want to reduce our fat and protein consumption just so our calories are not sky high. So that's typically how we'll want to do it. For me, carb loading, I still try and stay to some good whole foods. You will get some people that like just pack in the Hannibal, pack in Pop Tarts and everything like that, just high sugar foods. Like great, you're going to get the carbs in, but are you really going to feel that good? If you're not used to eating all that, probably not. So for me, you'll see me eating a lot of oats, rice, pasta, bananas, lots and lots of fruit, honey, and I'll sometimes just add in a few energy drinks there as well, like Lucozade, something like that. Drinking the carbs is a really easy way to do it rather than trying to consume all that food. Because if you go tomorrow and try and eat 700g of carbohydrates, you'll know that it's a lot of carbs, it's a lot of food. Because I've done a lot of running now, a lot of events, I've conditioned myself really to be able to eat that. I can eat 700-750g of carbohydrates with relative ease, but it's not always been like that. At the start, I would be saying aim for the lower end of the range. If you've never done a carb load before, and then tomorrow you go and try and eat 700g of carbs, you're probably not going to end too well. You're going to be feeling bloated, you are probably going to have a stomach upset, it's probably not the best. So don't just dive straight into the higher end, just practice it, and eat foods that you're used to eating. Again, don't mix things up and go crazy, it's just eating more volume of the carbohydrates that you're normally used to eating. And that for me is oats, rice, pastas, honey, fruit, things like that. I eat that all the time, so it's just a case of increasing the volume that I'm eating of that. And just in terms of some common mistakes that I see made, so firstly is not practicing it, so I've kind of touched on that. If you don't practice it, and you leave it to race day, it's just a real worry, because the last thing we want to do is Thursday, Friday before race day, first ever time to practice carb loading. Our stomach gets upset, we're feeling terrible in the lead up to race day, you don't want to do that, so practice during some long training runs. If you've got a long training run planned for a few Sundays before race day, that Thursday, Friday, Saturday, practice your carb load, learn from it, see what worked well, what didn't, and adjust it so that when we get into race day, we know we're not doing anything unusual, and anything that's going to cause us any upset. Another thing for me is, another mistake is not reducing fats and protein, as I said, just keeping calories sky high, gaining unnecessary weight. And then the final thing as well is worrying about weight gain. You're going to gain weight during the carb load, don't worry about it. If we eat that many carbs, then we're going to store more water. I think it's around three to four grams of water gets stored for every gram of glycogen that's stored, so if we're topping up our glycogen stores to the max, we're also going to have a lot of water stored there, so the more water we've got stored, obviously we're going to weigh more. So if you stepped in scale on race day and you're three or four pounds heavier, it's water retention from the carb load, it's not body fat, so don't let that worry you, don't get concerned about that. I've had a lot of people say they don't want to do a carb load because they gain weight. It's not a body fat gain, it's not bad weight, it's just water retention from the additional carbs. So just really avoiding these mistakes in terms of not practicing it, also making sure that we're not eating too many calories and not worrying about weight gain during it. If we do that, then we're going to give ourselves the best chance of being fully topped up and ready to go for race day. If you've tapered off, if you've had a good few days rest plus a good carb load, you're going to be going into that race as well equipped as you can. You're going to be full of energy, glycogen stores topped up, well rested, legs feeling great and you're going to have a good race. But again, just be careful. Everybody is individual in terms of how they react to carbs, how they react to certain foods, what pace they're running, so how many they need, what weight you are, so many different variables there. But as an overall general approach to carb loading, hopefully this has covered everything that you need to know in terms of what it is, why we do it, when, how and everything like that. But I'm more than happy to answer any questions. If you have enjoyed this episode, let us know. If you've got any questions about carb loading, just message, comment below, we'll get back to them and answer anything that you have. But coming up to the autumn events, I thought it'd be a good topic to cover just to make everybody aware about not diving into it without researching, not diving into it without practicing and how it can be beneficial, but it can also be negative if we don't do it properly. So stick to these tips and you should be absolutely fine. So yeah, I'll catch you guys next week on the next running episode where I'm going to be talking to the top five tips for race day. And as always, if you have listened to this podcast, if you've enjoyed it, take a screenshot, share it to your socials, tag somebody who you think would benefit, listen to this. If you know anybody doing some running events coming up, tag them, share it with them. And the more people that we can help and the more people that can listen, the better. So yeah, hope you guys enjoyed it and I'll speak to you on the next episode.