Low carb athletes

We get quite a few queries from athletes about the best way to manage low carb eating with activity and performance. Our main area of interest is in helping overweight people to lose weight, so please forgive us for not putting the same research effort into athletes wanting to lose some pounds and optimise performance. We do understand that the higher the level at which someone is performing, the more critical the power to weight ratio can be, but our first passion is to help the 1.1 billion overweight and obese people in the world.

We’ve put together this blog to help signpost people, who have such queries, to some experts who have looked into this more than we have. We start with our two top recommendations, as these guys have been elite athletes and have learned from research and experience that carb loading is not necessary, or even ideal:

Tim Noakes (@ProfTimNoakes on twitter). Main web site.

Mark Sisson (@Mark_Sisson on Twitter). Main web site.

Both have written books and both have lots of open content for you to enjoy freely. Here’s a great Mark Sisson post on carb loading.

And here’s a great Tim Noakes post on eating, exercise and all sorts.

You may also like to check-out LCHF for runners.

Other articles that you may enjoy

*      Chris Froome: Low carb diet propelled Chris Froome to three Tour de France titles.

*      Greg Rutherford: Going gluten-free was a leap of faith.

*      Low-carbohydrate diets for athletes: what evidence? British Journal of Sports Medicine: Timothy Noakes, Jeff S Volek, Stephen D Phinney (26 May 2014).

*      How the Australian cricket team won the winter 2013 Ashes series on low carb eating.

*      Did a gluten free diet help Novak Djokovic?

*      Peter Attia – up there with Mark Sisson and Tim Noakes – how a low carb diet affected my athletic performance.

*      Swedish winter Olympics athlete, Bjoern Ferry, followed a strict low carb high fat diet before winning Gold in the pursuit event in Vancouver in 2010.

*      What do professional cyclist Dave Zabriskie, ultra marathon runner Timothy Olson, and gold-medal triathlete Simon Whitfield have in common?

*      Sabine Lisicki – why she became gluten free.

*      High fat low carb diets – good for you and your cycling.

*      If you want to go even more natural/Paleo in your running, here’s a runner who goes barefoot and tweets as @basicbare.

An excellent book

We highly recommend “The art and science of low carbohydrate performance” by Jeff Volek and Stephen Phinney. There’s a really useful reference guide to the book here.

Twitter peeps

Some low carb/ketogenic athlete tweeters include: @wyadvd @totkat @BaumTodd @MickProud @eobeara @FatChanceRow

Please share other leads in the comments for blogs/articles/books/tweeters to help all the people trying to move from carb loading to fat fueling 🙂

Many thanks – Zoë & Andy