What exactly is a "Fat-adapted" athlete?

                 

Yesterday we introduced you to the Cereal Killers Movie.

If breakfast is the most important meal of the day then should we be eating high carbohydrate cereal?

Many endurance athletes have considered a high carbohydrate diet to not only be healthy but essential particularly when racing.

If you are an endurance athlete, that’s anything greater than an hour and a half then “hitting the wall” is where you effectively run out of carbohydrate.

Don’t “Bonk” on the bike is the biggest fear of all endurance Triathletes.

Because of this fear, many endurance athletes are consuming so much carbohydrate that they have Pre-Diabetic blood glucose levels!

The higher level the athlete, the more insulin resistance that is being measured.

                       

The world’s top endurance athletes are changing the way they eat and burn fuel. 

Even if you are a conditioned endurance athlete with 2,000 calories of stored muscle glycogen, if you are burning sugar, at the rate of 1,000 calories per hour, you will run out of fuel at events longer than two hours.

So, can and should we run on fat?

Visceral fat is the fat that surrounds your internal organs.

Having high levels of visceral fat has led to a new terminology, "skinny fat." This refers to people who are thin on the outside but are effectively "fat" on the inside. 

A low carbohydrate diet causes a cascade of events to occur:

Stable, low and non-fluctuating blood glucose 

Decreased inflammation around the internal organs

Increased Metabolic Flexibility:

Metabolic flexibility is the capacity for the endurance athlete to adapt fuel oxidation to fuel availability. The inability to modify fuel oxidation in response to changes in nutrient availability has been implicated in the accumulation of intramyocellular lipid and insulin resistance.

Improvements in metabolic flexibility resulted in an increase in the energy production derived from fat and ketones, which reduced the energy derived from external carbohydrate sources. 

How do I transition to becoming a “Fat-Adapted athlete?”

A general guide is a total intake:

15% carbohydrates, 

20% protein, 

65% good fats per day.

In addition you need to start "fasted" or "empty" training.

When practiced in training (ideally in the ‘off-season’) for 8-12 weeks, this enhances your fat utilisation and decreases your reliance on exogenous fuel sources (i.e. gels). 

To begin with, start with lower intensity sessions of 60-90 minutes in duration. 

As your fat adaptation progresses, gradually extend this out to two or two and half hours, but no longer.

Hopefully, you will notice an improvement in both performance and health!

For 30 years Dr Stephen Phinney has been preaching about low carb diets, it turns out that he may have been right all along!

Dr Phinney the Bulletproofbodies Team salute you!

What did you have for breakfast this morning?

           

What if everything you were told about diet from the world’s leading experts was wrong?

What if carbohydrates were the bad guys and fat is in fact a good guy?

Well it would take some of the World’s leading Sports Doctors to convince me.

How about Professor Tim Noakes and Dr Peter Bruckner?

Ok, I'm listening.

                     

Join Donal O'Neil on his journey of diet discovery.

Diabetes and Obesity are now at epidemic proportions on our current high carb low fat diet.

What if we did not fear fat?

What if carbohydrates were killing us slowly?

It is time to challenge your beliefs about healthy food & exercise:

Food - what exactly is "healthy" food?

Exercise - just how important is it and how do you really get lean?

Weight Loss - have we all been looking the wrong way?

Vitality - why do our energy levels rise and fall

              - and how can you fix that today?

Cholesterol - what you (and your doc) really need to know.

Type 2 Diabetes - is it 100% avoidable?

http://www.cerealkillersmovie.com/

From Bulletproofbodies we salute the Cereal Killers team.

World Transplant Games & a girl from Winchester

Elspeth French is from Winchester in Hampshire, is 14 years old and has just come back with a fist full of medals from the World Transplant Games in Malaga, Spain.

 


          

 “Hard work and a belief that you can achieve your goal.”

At only 18 months old Elspeth required a liver transplant after being diagnosed with an aggressive tumour.

Elspeth brought home a bronze, two silvers and a gold medal.

Great Britain had the largest team in the competition and this is proof that the UK is doing a great job at getting people active after transplantation.

Well done to all the medical, social and hospital staff that support all transplant athletes.

Elspeth French, the Bulletproofbodies Team salute you.

The new way of thinking about Pain

One of my Physio heroes is a guy called Professor Lorimer Moseley and he is from Australia.

His work made me entirely re-evaluate the way I thought about pain and the way I talked about pain to my patients.

Hi work is truly fascinating and he is a great speaker too.

This is his new project, “Tame the beast.” 

                  

When pain becomes persistent, e.g. longer than 3 months, we need to treat if differently from "failed healing."

1 in 4 people will experience "Chronic Pain."

Pain is not an accurate measure of tissue health.

Sometimes, the tissue is not the issue and the joint is not the point.

Rather, pain is a protector against threat. A warning signal if you like.

Your body learns pain, because pain is in the brain.

Don't let pain become a beast.

Remember the difference between Pain and Nociception.

How do we retrain your pain system?

Check out the website below:

https://www.tamethebeast.org/

Or check out his book, "Explain Pain."

Lorimer, the Bulletproofbodies team salute you!

Mark Ormrod Former Royal Marine & Invictus Athlete with Bulletproofbodies

                     

Quite simply, Mark "Rammers" Ormrod is one of the most inspirational people I have ever met.

It was an absolute privilege to be his Physiotherapist at Headley Court after he survived an Improved Explosive Device (IED) whilst surviving in Afghanistan.

I did an interview with Mark last year and this is his inspirational story:

What motivated you to join the Royal Marines in the first place?

When I was about 15yrs old & approaching the end of my compulsory education I had a sudden realisation that once I had taken my GCSE's & the exams were over that I had a huge choice to make, that choice was to either continue my schooling with further education or go out into the big bad world & start earning a living.

At that point I was pretty much done with school, not because I didn't enjoy it or I wasn't any good at it (I got 9 GCSE's A-C & 1 D) but because I wanted to be out there earning & gaining an education in life. Now the problem that I had was that I really didn't know what it was that I wanted to do, I knew that I didn't want to be in a suit working a 9-5 but I wasn't really sure what all of the wider options were. After lots of thought, research & seeking advice from others eventually I narrowed my options down to the Fire Brigade, the Police or the Army.

As a 15yr old I really had no idea just how much the Fire Brigade actually do & assumed that all they did was put out fires (I now know much differently) & back then that didn’t really appeal to me and so I scratched that off my list.

Joining the Police didn’t materialise either as I thought that maybe that could be something I’d look at when I was a bit older & had a bit more life experience & so in the end I decided to join the Army. So one day I went down to the careers center, spoke to the guy in charge & came home with all of the relevant paperwork. Once my parents found out my plan my Dad took me to see an Uncle of mine who unbeknown to me had been a Captain in the Royal Marines. He talked to me about the differences between the Army & the Royal Marines & told me a little bit about his career, after that I went back to the careers centre and spoke with the man in charge of recruiting for the Corps. I sat down with him & had a chat, watched the standard recruiting video & that was the moment that I made my decision that I wanted to become a Royal Marine’s Commando. What appealed to me was that these guys were so flexible & could deploy to any environment in the world, arctic, desert, jungle, woodland & they could do it by land, sea or air, it seemed like the complete package & I knew that by joining it was going to make me grow enormously as an individual. I also did a lot of research & found out just how hard the training was & so I thought to myself “might as well go all in & push myself to see if I have what it takes”

What kept you going at Lympstone (Commando Training Centre Royal Marines)?

I think what kept me going through my training initially was my ego & pride. I was only 17 at the time & one of the youngest in the troop & so I felt like I had something to prove, it also made me sick to my stomach the thought of quitting because it was too hard or being kicked out because I wasn’t good enough.

As the weeks went by I watched people quit & get kicked out & I imagined how bad they would feel being on that train on the way back home & having to face their friends & family & tell them that they didn’t make the grade, I couldn’t handle the thought of that being me & so I used that to push me on through the tough times. Even if we were doing things like speed marches, yomps or any other kind of physical test as hard as it was & as much as I wanted to quit (even at times throwing up as I was running) I couldn’t bare the thought of getting back trooped & having to go through that pain again in two weeks time with another troop. It would feel like all of the pain I was going through was for nothing & I remember always thinking to myself “well I’m already in pain, it already hurts so I might as well get a reward from it” & so I continued to push.

Of course there’s also the rest of the lads that are around you. Everyone has their strengths & everyone has their weaknesses & when a member of the troop is struggling the rest of the lads rally around to help him through & then later down the line he usually repays the favor, that’s how the military works.

There was of course also the thought of becoming a fully trained Royal Marines Commando by the age of 18! That really spurred me on. I remember thinking how cool would it be not only to have passed the longest & hardest regular forces infantry training in the world, but to have done it by 18 would have made me a stud! (Well in my mind anyway)

What motivated you after the success of getting your green beret?

After I got my Green Lid what motivated me was standards. I had an absolutely incredible training team when I went through Lympstone and every single one of them always held themselves to the highest professional standards at all times, they were men that I respected & looked up to & men that I wanted to be like.

There was also pride. Training to become a Royal Marine is world renowned for its difficulty & so when people see that Green Lid or those Commando flashes or that Globe & Laurel tattoo they know what you’ve been through & what kind of man you are. Now I don’t necessarily mean a tough guy/steely eyed dealer of death etc… but the kind of man that holds himself to a high standard & pushes himself to be better & who never quits & always finds a way around things, that’s what I wanted people to see when they looked at me & that motivated me even more to be all that I could be. I also had visions one day of being on a training team myself & having other young, raw recruits look up to me the way I looked up to my training team. 

How you felt after you got injured?

After I got injured I felt the same way I guess most people felt. I knew deep down that my career was over & I had no idea what I was going to be able to do to support my family. I thought my days of being physically fit & able to train were over (boy was I wrong!), I knew my days as a Thai Boxer were over which was hard to take & I really had no idea what the future held.

The early days during my recovery were turbulent & like most people I’d have good days & I’d have bad days. Some days I felt suicidal like everything I had ever worked hard for had been taken away from me & I’d have to start again from scratch to rebuild my life but then I’d think “OK well I’m 24yrs old so there’s plenty of time to rebuild.”

It was tough trying to figure everything out & it was an emotional roller-coaster for everyone that was involved but there was so much help & support on hand that it helped me & everyone around me to focus on the positives & the little wins & get through the hard times.

 What inspired you to keep going with your rehabilitation?

To keep me going through my rehab & to keep me moving forward I had a mindset shift & started to look at things differently & tried to pull all of the positives out of my situation. I started to look at my situation as a challenge just like when I was a 17yr old going through training with the odds stacked against me except now I was the UK’s first triple amputee from Afghanistan with no path to follow & I just thought “well if I can get through training I can get through this”. Again pride played a huge part in my recovery

If you were to change the way the Military trains its personnel, how would you change it?

I’m not sure to be honest its hard to say as the training needs to be brutal, it needs to push you mentally & physically to your breaking point because when you’re in a combat zone you need to know you have what it takes when the lead wasps start flying in your direction.

I think after training it would be really useful to have mentors/coaches available to help guide people through their careers as when you’re a young man/woman it can all be a bit overwhelming & sometimes people aren’t always aware of what is available to them, I know I certainly wasn’t.

The biggest change I’d like to see is more support during the final 12 months of people leaving the services. This may have changed now but I remember situations where friends had put in there notice to leave & during their final 12 months they were sent out on 3-6 month exercises on the other side of the world rather then focusing on things like re-training, re-settling their families & preparing themselves for civvy street.

How do you motivate yourself and what lesson can we learn from your example.

I motivate myself by given myself mentors & role models to aspire to be like & by constantly setting myself goals in all of the areas of my life which are important to me.

The only advice I can give is to not get stagnant & to pro-actively keep moving forward & setting yourself goals not matter how unobtainable they may seem or what anyone else thinks of them. You have to make a choice to focus on the things you want in life, cut out the drama & things that aren’t important & keep heading towards what it is that you do want.

Mark Ormrod MPSA

Motivational Speaker

Director: Mark Ormrod Ltd

WWW.MARKORMROD.COM

Facebook: Mark Ormrod-Motivational Speaker 

Twitter: @MarkOrmrod

Instagram: @MarkOrmrod 

YouTube: Mark Ormrod

LinkedIn: Mark Ormrod 

Thank you Mark, you are an inspiration to us all.

Good luck at the Invictus Games.

The Bulletproofbodies Team salute you.